#like my friend’s car is built so that you have to take off the wipers and a huge engine bay trim piece to replace the battery

[parasolids]

me being an automotive engineer at a manufacturing plant and understanding why vehicles are designed in ways that prioritize manufacturability over ease of repair

vs

me having to take out the door panel, window switch, disconnect the locks, and take off the whole window liner just to replace a side mirror (and midway through my friend said maybe we should’ve disconnected the battery first to prevent the airbags going off)

[apixrl]

DRIVER'S LICENSE.

katsuki bakugou x fem! reader

WARNING(S): angst. cheating. swearing because it's bakugou.

word count: 4.5k

song: drivers license // olivia rodrigo (i wonder why...)

note(s): so i captioned this *at the time of writing* 'hello and welcome to i've had the worst two weeks ever so i wrote a katsuki oneshot to cope' and it's probably one of my most personal pieces of writing tbh

"-come Tuesday and we'll potentially see an end to this heavy downpour of rain. Temperatures will be on the rise to around-"

The talk on the radio cut short at the jab of your finger, heaving a great sigh which faded into the muffled pitter-patter of rain from outside. The streets had been showered with heavy downpours for the last week or so, no sign of sun or a still and restful day. Notwithstanding the miserable outdoors, the windscreen wipers on your car never ceased in their duty to grant you a clear view of the road ahead. And whilst you were grateful for their devotion, it didn't feel clear in the slightest. In fact, the road had never felt so blurry.

Shivering against the cold night chill and tucking your knees cosily to your chest, you eyed the raindrops on the windows. They raced against one another before they dripped down to your car's body, their glossy presence obvious thanks to the many hues of street lamps that surrounded them. You could have watched them for hours, being honest. Something about the droplets of water battling it out quite enticing. Anything to take you away from the cruel reality you were living in.

Your heart ached and yearned. But to no avail, the one you ached and yearned for didn't love you back.

Not anymore, at least.

Just the mere thought provoked a pulsating pang to resonate throughout your entire body. A pang filled with grief and sadness. Anger and hurt. You missed his sun-kissed face on the sunny mornings. You missed his eyes and how they gazed at you from across the room. You missed the smiles and laughter he would only show for you and you alone. The sense of glee and euphoria that came with that honour. Yet all of it was gone and there was no way you could get it back.

The memories of what had been triggered more waterworks. Hot, salty tears dug at the corners of your eyes and trickled down your face. Your motionless car concealed your cries and sobs. Every thrash against the wheel as you questioned to nobody in particular what went wrong and why. How you didn't see the signs sooner. What you could have done better. When he stopped loving you. If he ever planned to stop loving you. Whether it would have hurt more if you found out sooner.

All these questions with nothing to answer them.

Katsuki Bakugou had always fascinated you. From the very moment you met. You accompanied your friend on a double date, and he was the guy who she matched for you. Whilst he originally acted as though a blind date was the last place he wanted to be, underneath the aggression you could tell there was something much more genuine and true.

And your assumptions were correct. Truth be told, Katsuki Bakugou was one of the most genuine and truest people you had met (at the time). Once it was just the two of you, he allowed his true colours to unveil. Through the smallest of kind gestures that still haunted your mind to this day. Then upon confrontation, as you bid each other goodbye at your back door, his denial resulted in a flirtatious contest which then proceeded to an intimate night that changed your life forever. From there your mind was set.

He was the one.

Emphasis on was.

So blinded with a fairy tale love you grew so accustomed to, you never saw it coming. Never in your two-year relationship - that had so much strength and commitment built on top of it, never did you think that Katsuki Bakugou would throw it all out of the window like it was nothing. Disregard your loyalty and adoration for a drunken one night stand that slowly became an occasional hookup. Which soon became a mandatory pastime once a fortnight. Then twice. Maybe more than that. You wouldn't put it past him with what you knew now.

He kept it from you for nearly six months. Six months. The only reason you discovered his lies and deception was because you were let off early one night from work. You worked a night shift, see. Your last job had fallen to shambles, and it was temporary whilst you searched for a new one. And whilst that did take a toll on your relationship with Katsuki Bakugou, mostly finding time for intimacy since his working hours were during the day, none of that gave him any right to go and do what he did.

That wasn't one of the only reasons, you knew that for sure. There were other motives for his lack of loyalty. But you were never told. After you froze at the sight of another woman under his hold and stormed straight back to your car to flee. After he chased you down the flights of stairs in nothing but baggy pants into the streets of a twilight Musutafu. After you screamed into the darkness and belted your fists against his chest. Fists that were driven with rage and hurt and every emotion that burned like the hottest of fires and froze like the coldest of ice. He never even told you. He never made an effort to address it. Nor had he attempted to call or even try to visit your Mom's house - where you stayed as you searched for a permanent place to live. Just because you retreated for your car and cried that it was over, he never tried. But that didn't mean you weren't allowed an explanation. An apology. Something to give you a form of closure and a reason to move on. But you never did.

That wasn't even what hurt the most, either.

As silly as it was, the thing that hurt you the most was the very car you sat in.

EIGHT MONTHS AGO . . .

The red glow of traffic lights hit Katsuki's vermilion irises as he stared dead ahead at the long line of vehicles, the ash-blond heaving a sigh into the air. His finger tapped impatiently against the steering wheel he gripped with one hand, the spare rested casually against your upper thigh affectionately.

"I can't believe we have to sit through this torture just to go to some damn party," Katsuki grumbled, taking a glance over at you. His brows furrowed when he met you peacefully slouched down, nose dug into your phone as you presumably played some sort of game to pass the time. Like you had no care in the world for your predicament.

"It's your best friend's birthday, love," You mused back, Katsuki surprised you even listened based on your focused expression directed towards your phone. "It's not like we can just miss it,"

"Yeah, but we could have missed all this pain by taking the train instead of driving across town during rush hour,"

"Trains are icky, the seats would have ruined your suit and my dress," You pointed out, looking at the blond over your screen, sending him a sweet smile. He cocked a brow, a smirk creeping its way onto his lips as a scoff of a laugh broke out between them.

"Right, and laying down like a sloth is gonna help keep your dress uncreased?" He returned, amused at your realisation. At his comment, you sat up faintly and pouted your lip.

"Driving means more time to play Gravity Pops, and so does traffic,"

"Seriously? That's the game you're playing? You're such a dumbass,"

"Yes! I'm in the top 11% globally! I need to get to number one!" Was your protest, your arms flailing ahead of you briefly for dramatic emphasis. Katsuki clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes, though the small smile plastered over his lips betrayed his initial reaction. Unable to deny your determination, he spoke with confidence and almost a sense of pride.

"Number one, hm? Clearly rubbing off on you aren't I?"

"In a way, yes,"

"That's my girl," Katsuki remarked, earning a giggle from you that was uplifting to hear. It was there your attention went back to your phone, but Katsuki wasn't done. "So, speaking of cars, Y/N," Hearing his chosen tone - which sounded suggestive, you eyed him closely. Hesitant to reply as you had a sense of what he planned to say.

"...Yes?"

"Have you thought any more about getting your driver's license yet?"

Called it.

"...No,"

"What?" Katsuki began, tilting his head. He was surprised that he felt surprised. You had said those words in regards to this topic countless times. Still, he persisted. "Is that a no meaning you haven't or no meaning that you don't want to?"

"Both?" You half-guessed, sheepishly grinning at the look you were sent. "Look, cars scare me okay? And so do roads. And people. My nerves wouldn't be able to handle it! I can barely communicate with people face to face, so me being on the road is a recipe for disaster!"

"I know but -," Katsuki exhaled sharply, understanding your reasoning. You had voiced these concerns when confiding to Katsuki about your fears of the road. Something built and corrupted from social media as well as phobias and fears in general, it was a battle you had yet to overcome. You wanted to drive but was terrified of messing up or causing chaos on the road. Potentially inflicting harm to someone and yourself. You still weren't sure what triggered it all, but over the years it had manifested into something quite irrational, to say the least. Katsuki had been supportive of it and whilst he truly would love to always act as your personal taxi - you couldn't hide from it forever. It wasn't his job to keep you in your comfort zone. That, and he couldn't always be there for you that way. What if he was miles away and you had somewhere urgent to go like the hospital? "It's not as scary as you think. I know it's hard to believe that but seriously. The freedom you get from driving is amazing,"

"I'll think about it a little longer, okay?" You said with hesitancy, looking at Katsuki for a sign of confirmation. He nodded in defeat, knowing you probably needed more time and felt put on the spot. So he averted his eyes back to the road to check if the traffic had moved at all. It had not.

"Okay," Katsuki said. "But I can't be your taxi service forever,"

"But I like you being my taxi service," You jokingly said, a little sadness in your tone. "Your road rage is funny and I like watching you get out of the car and walk to my door after pulling up in my driveway,"

"What do you mean?" Katsuki asked, catching the twitch of a smile on your face upon saying those words. It struck his interest in what you could mean.

"You know, like when you say you're coming to pick me up?" You explained. "You pull up at my driveway and I don't know... simple things like that just remind me of how much I love you. It's dumb really, but it's important to me,"

"Really?" Katsuki questioned in disbelief. How something so small and meaningless could mean so much was puzzling. He couldn't understand why it was so special to you. But that didn't invalidate it in any shape or form. So he pushed that aside, replacing his wonder with gratitude. He returned to your bashful and flustered features, feeling a smile grow on his face.

"Yeah," You said, shrugging to downplay your words. "I love you. Stuff like that means a lot to me,"

"I love you too, even though you're a dumbass," Katsuki said, humbled by what you had said. The two of you shared a gentle exchange, your hand grabbing hold of Katsuki's as you gave it a squeeze. He squeezed back, and silence ensued. Had he realised such a thing sooner, then Katsuki would have pulled up in your driveway much more than he had been doing. But at that a thought struck his mind, victoriously smirking as he had an idea on how to potentially sway your worries. Or begin swaying it. Something was better than nothing, after all. "But what if I wanted you to pull up in my driveway one day?" His words caused you to look over at him in curiosity, hearing the seriousness in the question. It caught you off guard momentarily, having to contemplate as you gradually concluded that he had a point.

"Well one day, maybe I will," You vaguely replied and sat up a little bit. The hand holding yours pulled back and lifted to land on your shoulder, gripping reassuringly tight.

"I hope you do, I'd like to get in on this driveway action," He joked and smirked, faith riddled in his expression. You giggled ever so slightly, tempted to lean forward and peck Katsuki on the lips in thanks, but never a thing was to happen as the alerting red light from outside switched to warm amber.

"Ah!" Katsuki yelled in triumph, his attention leaving you swiftly as he got back into the driver's seat. Giving you no opportunity to respond to him and overall ruining the moment. "Took fucking long enough!"

The light turned green, and he set the car in motion, leaving you with your thoughts and the words he had uttered that day as the traffic stood still.

All your efforts, all your time devoted to getting over your fear of driving and the road as a whole... all of it was pointless. You did it for him. You promised him you would overcome your fears and better yourself. He built that motivation up brick by brick until you could grab hold and seize control. He wasted all that time to get you to reach such a stepping stone only to abandon it once it was through.

Just so you could pull up in his driveway, just like he requested. And what did you get in return when you finally did? A stab in the back and the loss of your other half.

You wiped your eyes via the sleeve of your hoodie, dampening the cuffs. Sniffling and exhaling a shaky breath, your gaze landed on nothing in particular. Yet somewhere within your clouded mind, you found interest. As that was where your gaze remained for a certain amount of time. You weren't sure how long exactly. It could have felt like an hour and only been five minutes. Or it could have felt like five minutes and was actually an entire hour. Either way, the clock ticked on and didn't wait for you to stop.

It was a good thing you had pushed your fears down and rose above them. It just pained you that you didn't even do it for yourself. Without Katsuki Bakugou, you never had any intentions of doing so. As a matter of fact, you had set out to take the train or bus for the rest of your life. Hell, you were going to use a bike and scooter if you got desperate. Had he even acknowledged how much work you put in just to get where you were? Was all that effort part of the reason why he decided to cheat? There was absolutely no telling. Absolutely no telling at all.

You wondered what he was doing now. Was he laid in bed resting peacefully? Out with his friends for a boy's night only? Maybe cooking his favourite curry? Possibly on a late-night jog despite the harsh weather? It never stopped him other times.

Did he ever think about you? Regret what he did and the actions he took? Had he ever considered apologising? Would he ever apologise? What if he was celebrating the fact you were no longer in his life? Had there ever been any love there for you in the start? Did he ever actually want you to get your driver's license because he believed in you? Or was it so he could get rid of you with much more ease? Make his departure less severe and less selfish? A way to justify his choices because it's not like you were hopelessly left to suffer everyday life now that you had a means of transport. Was he really that cruel?

Your thoughts were interrupted by the sharp jingle of your phone, the device lighting up as it sat in the passenger seat to your left. It took two or three rings for you to glance over at it, E/C eyes sore and drained from crying out. You squinted them to read the caller, seeing the name 'Work' fade in and out on the brightly lit screen. For a second or two you argued back and forth on whether to even bother picking up. Something about reaching across for your phone requiring a magnitude of energy you no longer possessed. Having spent it all on your cries of agony and the deprivation of your old life as a whole.

However, you had ignored your work in the last couple of weeks too many times now. So many times that pulling the same stunt again would probably risk you losing your job. It's not like your work was interested in why you felt such overwhelming pain... all they cared about was you turning up to do what you were hired to.

So using a forceful hand, you leaned over to pick it up. You fumbled to grip your phone and accepted the call with a dainty tap of your thumb. Then you blinked away your tears and subtly sniffed, pressing your phone to your ear to address the caller.

"Hello?" You practically croaked, quick to clear your throat and push any signs of upset down. It was presumably dry from how much you'd cried in the last two hours.

"L/N! Hey! Glad you finally picked up!" Unlike the droll and unvarying tones of your boss, the person on the other end was much more lively and greeting. So much so you could only assume it was none other than your work colleague, Etsuko. Probably the only person you genuinely liked where you worked, and the only person who made the time pass by faster. "I was worried you were gonna leave me on answer phone again,"

"Hm, what? Oh right. Yeah. Sorry about that. Haven't been feeling too great," You lied, even though it wasn't a complete fib. You hadn't been feeling great at all. You had never felt so rock bottom. It all just originated from your mind over anything else. But when did work care about that?

"Sounds like it, I hope you've been okay!" Still cheery as ever, Etsuko followed up with a laugh to fill the silence you created by not saying anything. "Is everything well? It's nothing serious, is it?"

"No. It's not. Just some dumb cold I caught," You excused. "I'm better now, though," Slouching down in your seat, you decided to ask the question that had been roaming your mind the last minute or so. "So why are you calling?"

"Oh, right!" Etsuko said. "Mr Kobashigawa was just wondering when you planned on coming back - for schedule reasons and to get people to fill in for your shifts,"

"I er...," Not entirely sure how to answer, you stuttered as your words cowered away in your attempt to speak. "I don't -,"

"It's okay, he doesn't need an answer yet," Etsuko reassured. "Maybe in the next day or two, though? He wasn't really specific, being honest,"

You sighed at the guilt brewing in your stomach. You weren't even sick for crying out loud! Why were you lying just so you could wallow in your own sadness?! Like that was going to change anything! Sitting around and crying wasn't going to give you what you wanted. You weren't getting him back. Katsuki Bakugou wasn't yours anymore. He made that clear by cheating. By making minimal effort to give you an explanation. By causing you so much pain with little care or concern. Why couldn't you get it through your thick skull that your feelings didn't matter anymore?! That they were being wasted on a lost cause. A lost relationship!

"Well I mean -," You started, running a hand through your hair as you tread carefully on your words. "I could come in tonight? Has Mr Kobashigawa got someone to fill for me yet?"

"Um... no? I don't think so?" Etsuko answered, uncertainty in her voice. "Let me go check. Be right back!" And with that, the line fell dead. The call didn't end, just Etsuko placing the phone down to get an answer for you. Leaving you all by your lonesome once more.

Reflecting, you could see the logic in your thoughts. The best course of action would be to hold your head up high and live life the way it was before. When you were happy. Just... excluding the factors that actually made you happy. Which was him. Wouldn't that be healthier than crying all the time?

Yes, it would. But was it what you wanted? Not really.

"L/N!" The voice in your ear startled you to the point you nearly dropped your phone, panicking through a gasp as you fiddled to grab hold of it again.

"Wa-! Careful you nearly scared me half to death!"

"Oops, sorry!" Etsuko giggled softy, sounding as perky as ever. "I'm just excited to tell you that nobody's filling in your shift! You can still come in for ten-thirty!"

"I-I can?" You asked. After an upbeat 'yeah!' filtered through your ears, you considered your options. Remaining in the serene, quiet confines of your car with only the downfall of rain to accompany you sounded like utter bliss, given how you felt. But you felt an internal kick up the backside which told you - no... demanded you to just get over this moping attitude of yours and look on the bright side. To get over the lack of closure and simply... move on.

Yeah... if he found out you were an utter train wreck thanks to the damage he inflicted; Katsuki Bakugou would probably revel in it. He had a history of gaining pleasure from other's misfortunes... or it was rumoured he did (during his younger years, anyway). You had never wanted to believe it but you couldn't find a reason to refute it anymore. After all you had been through, it seemed to fit his character and personality more than ever. So with that fact apparent, you held a firm forefront and searched for a determined tone, and made your answer to your friend.

"You betcha I'm coming in! I'll see you in half an hour!"

Too enthusiastic? Probably. Still, it was better than acting pessimistic and hopeless. No matter, however, because that was exactly the attitude Etsuko had been hoping for.

"Alrighty!" She exclaimed, smile audible in her voice from the other end. "I can't wait to get our dynamic duo going again! I've missed you!"

"Yeah, me too, 'Suko," You hummed in agreement.

"Great! Catch ya later my partner in crime,"

"Heh. You too, dumbass," You found a reason to smile from her childish behaviour, though your choice of wording seemed to hit a nerve. It did more than that, it practically reverted all that confidence and progress you had made in the last ten minutes of being on the phone. All from one innocent word that escaped your lips.

Dumbass.

That's what he used to call you.

The phone call had ended without you even noticing, your phone still pressed to your ear as a small buzz sounded into it. You stared dead ahead, flashes of all the times he had said that word to you running through your memory. It was his form of a pet name. Some might see it as a little degrading on the surface, but you never minded. Once you learned the deeper meaning of the name, it became something equivalent to the likes of 'Sunshine' or 'Angel'. If anything, you ended up preferring it to those sorts of nicknames. Hence why Katsuki Bakugou had called you it on so many occasions.

No. Stop it. You can't let something like that bother you. Not after the efforts you just went to. Stop. Shaking yourself out of it, you returned to reality and permitted your phone to drop onto your lap. Your hand once holding it gripped onto your steering wheel, the other following shortly behind to do the same.

"I love you too, even if you're a dumbass,"

That rung in your head one final time, tormenting and mocking your present. The things you'd be willing to do to hear him say that to you one last time...

"No," You firmly shook your head, banging it lightly against the headrest to return yourself to reality. An attempt to knock those words to the back of your mind where you could lock them in a securely tight safe for the rest of eternity. "Just... just don't think about it. Easy. Just focus on what you're doing now," You reached for your keys which sat in the ignition, taking hold and turning them ever so slightly. Your car stirred to life, engine rumbling and the dials lighting up in a form of warm greeting. "You're going to work. No more feeling sorry for yourself,"

No more feeling sorry for yourself.

Your eyes set themselves on the road ahead. The vacant, dark and solitary road that didn't wait for you to make your decision. Life moved on after all, so if you were going to do anything - it was to catch up and take the winning lead.

So despite your circumstances; your inner desires and wishes and begs for what you wanted back but to no avail would ever get, you pulled out of your parking space (which had long exceeded the time limit, thankfully nobody was around to see) that drowned in pitiful rains of the night, and began to make your way down the street. In search of a place better than the one you were trapped in.

An endless road that wasn't all that clear, you were going to tackle it. Not for anyone else, unlike the last time you met difficulty and hardships. No, no, no. This time it was for your sake. All the mental energy to recover and become a better version of yourself, in the endgame it was all for you. You could push past all the deceit and lies you had been told and you could push past your normality which was him. Katsuki Bakugou. The man that hurt you as nobody had ever done before. You could create new normality without him.

A thought of forever he created and destroyed, resorted to driving alone past his street, never to be thought of again.

[time-to-cause-chaos]

i still hear your voice in the traffic (we’re laughing)

Tony promised Peter he'd teach him to drive, he's not here anymore though. (or Happy and Peter talk about Tony and Nat over a steering wheel)

AO3 link  WC: 2, 466

tw: brief suicide mention, not of Peter or the Avengers though

Peter was now 16 years old.

It was about 8 months after Tony and Nat had both sacrificed themselves to bring back the lost half of the world and defeat Thanos.  That 50% of the population that had turned to dust were all back and so many people were reunited with their loved ones, which would have been great.

Except it was overlooked that so many people hadn’t had that luxury.

There was one of Peter’s neighbors, he was in college the last time he’d seen him.  Anyways, his moms lived together and Peter  always saw him around visiting them and bringing them dinner and flowers.  Apparently they had both been blipped which left him an orphan in college.  They never got to see him graduate and he had killed himself not even 2 weeks after the ceremony.

The suicide rates had shot up a lot during those years, so many people had quite literally vanished and it was impossible to stay hopeful when there was absolutely nothing they could hold on to and a lot of people saw suicide as the only solution.

But when those dusted people came back, the people they seeked out in the crowds were gone, already long lost.

May told him when the parents had been brought back and everything had settled, they’d gone around looking for anyone who’d know where their son was, May was the one who had to tell them before they drove themselves crazy looking.  May had to tell them that the kid who’d always bring home the pasta he knew they liked and the chocolate bars he knew were their favorites, was gone, and that was just one story.

Honestly from what Peter had heard, during those 5 years, it had been like watching an empire collapse all around you and you being stuck in the middle with no way to help, just constricted to seeing everything around fall into rubble on the ground and collect into towers of misery and ash.

There was a part of Peter that was overjoyed that he hadn’t been one to stick around because without MJ and Ned who were also dusted, he doesn’t know what he’d do, another huge part of Peter wished he had stuck around (not that he had had a choice), just so he could help everyone else, so he could have talked every single person who had to live through that and just fix all of their problems because that must have sucked beyond anything he could ever imagine.

And Peter knows he hasn’t lost as many people as most because others lost everything, their families, their friends.

 But he lost Tony.  

He lost another person who he thought he could protect and who he, naive as he is, thought he would have forever.

But he messed up.

And he messed up bad, because now Tony had an incredible daughter Morgan who didn’t have her dad anymore because Peter had to stand by uselessly and cry while he listened to Tony’s heart stutter to a hard stop.

Pepper didn’t have her husband, Rhodey and Happy didn’t have their best friend, and the world didn't have their Iron Man.

(And Peter didn’t have his Tony)

Happy was supposed to take him driving later and Peter has been stalling for months now.  It's not because he doesn’t wanna know how to drive because he definitely does, that would be awesome, but Tony promised him he’d teach him to drive and he’d let him take one of his fancy cars for a spin and going without him felt wrong, like when you lose a tooth and there’s a weird new gap there that's not supposed to be there.

Tony had promised he’d teach him.

He was not going to be able to wriggle his way out of this one though, his excuses just kept getting flimsier and flimsier.

“Hey Peter want me to take you driving later” “Shoot, I wish,  but I have a decathlon meet”

“Are you free later to go for a ride?” “Sorry, I have a test I need to study for”

“You still need to learn how to use the shifts, Pete” “I know, I know, but I wanted to get some extra patrolling in tonight”

Happy had actually brought the issue up in person once, “Kid, it’s fine if you don’t wanna learn but is there a reason?  You used to always talk about learning to drive.”

He had mumbled a quick excuse and sprinted out of there.

His entire class already knew how to drive and everyone was always carpooling to each other's houses but Peter could care less.  He only hung with Ned and Mj for the most part, so it never really affected him anyways.

Another thing was he felt like he was letting May down, because he knows she really wants him to get his license, but every time he tries to even think about it he feels nauseous, like he just dropped on a roller coaster.

Knock knock

The nausea was back.

Peter reluctantly shrugged on his jacket and opened the door to the apartment.

“Hey Happy,” he waved.  He was pretty sure Happy could see something was wrong, but he hasn’t said anything yet.

“Hey kiddo, you ready to go?” he asked.

Peter nodded and stepped briskly out the door.

Happy was driving them to some empty parking lot to get him started off with and the ride was pretty much silent except for when Happy asked if May was home, Peter had said no, May had taken an extra shift and  was still at work.  Then Happy asked if he was feeling alright and pressed a cool hand to his forehead to check his temperature, Peter easily brushed him off and changed the subject as he tried not to fidget.

They pulled into the lot and switched seats once they’d parked, Happy gave him another quick run through of the gears and shifts even though he’d already heard this a dozen times and had him drive through the parking spaces setting up a path for him to go through. 

“You know, if you really don’t want to do this, it’s fine Pete, right?”, Happy said from the passenger's seat.

He knows that, and he knows Happy would be fine if he told him the truth, if he told him that even the thought of driving made him go dizzy and he knows Happy would understand but it seemed like he was the only one still hooked on this.  Everyone else seemed fine at family game nights and when they’d all get together for dinner, but every time Peter felt tears well up because Nat wasn’t there to absolutely demolish them in Jenga and Tony wasn't there to outsmart his way to the top of every monopoly round, the gaps were everywhere taking up no space and yet so much at the same time.

He’d see pictures taken recently of everyone and the first thing his mind would go to was who wasn’t in that picture?  Who was missing from the picture because of stupid Thanos (or because Peter wasn’t good enough to have helped save them-)?

Peter tightened his grip on the steering wheel, “It’s fine, I can do this,”.

Happy still looked unsure but he let him go ahead, driving slowly through the spaces and twisting through the planters spaced throughout.

After a while Happy helped him drive onto the street and showed him what to do at the lights and gave him little tips about whenever he turned.  

How to turn your blinker on.

Those were the windshield wipers.

Something about the rearview mirror…

And suddenly there were the sounds of horns honking and Happy was reaching over and jerking the steering wheel, pulling them out of the center of the road where- where Peter had almost slammed into another car.

Shit

Happy, still leaned over him, steered them both to the side as Peter stayed frozen clutching the edges of the seat with white knuckles.

The cold fist around his heart was suddenly squeezing the second they were parked on the side of the road, he was sobbing before Happy could even ask what the hell just happened.

He had almost hit another car.

That person could have died and it would’ve been his fault.

There could’ve been a family in that car.

His fault, again.

Where was Tony?

Words practically tumbled out of his mouth, the elaborately built wall holding everything in just broke and his mouth was moving against his will between each separate sob.

“I’m sorry, I-I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to” Peter gasped, it felt like a vacuum had come and sucked up every ounce of oxygen, because he could not breathe.

Happy was staring at him in confusion, really worried, probably because Peter had almost hurt another person.

“Jesus, kid, it’s alright, okay?  It’s alright, see we’re both fine, nothing happened”  Happy’s brows are tense as he watches Peter crumble.

His face fell as he watched Peter cry, “There was a reason you didn’t want to come out here, wasn’t there?”

Peter’s breathing is everywhere as he gives a harsh nod, refusing to lift his eyes up to meet Happy’s.

“Tony said- he promised he’d show me how to d-drive”

Tony’s voice in his head, laughing as Peter bonked his head on the lab table in his excitement  before asking if he was alright.

“and N-Nat said once I got my license, s-she’d let me drive her to her favorite restaurant and you k-know she hates letting other people drive her” Peter choked, “She said we could get ice cream after”

Nat’s favorite restaurant was the Syrian place with the majestic Arabic letters painted inside on the walls, she loved the frozen yogurt place where it was self-serve and she could load it with as many boba bubbles and chocolate chips as she wanted.  

The first time they’d trained together, she had let him win, after the match he’d told her to not underestimate him, she’d only lost 2 more times after that.  

MJ was nervous to talk to Nat at first, and MJ was never nervous, after though, they’d talk all the time and it was immediately decided that they were probably one of the most terrifying and badass duos to ever walk the Earth.

Happy was still watching him in a frozen silence, “Tony told me h-he’d let me take his old red car for a drive, and we’d always l-laugh and talk about which car suited me b-est” a new set of tears was coming, “He kept saying he’d get me the best car there was and I always said you don’t have to because I wanted to earn it, myself” his breath hitched again and his next sentence was practically squeezed out of him, “He always said I’ve already earned it”

Tony and him laughing in the lab and dancing to the music FRIDAY had put on for them.  Pepper coming down and just watching wearily with a smile as something caught on fire and they both ran around like idiots trying to put it out.  

Somehow, he always ended up sleeping on Tony during movie night and the team had an abundance of pictures in the album with them.  

Tony claiming he burned everything he cooked, but making pasta that could rival anyone’s anyways. 

 Peter calling him after a nightmare and just talking until he eventually fell asleep.  

He and Ned had worshiped him growing up and even after meeting him a gazillion times, Ned still stared with wide eyes as he walked away, because he was Tony Stark, he was Iron Man for god’s sake.  The shock of it never got old, Peter felt the same most of the time.

“Happy-”, another hitch, “Happy, they’re both gone” Peter finally looked up at him and did a double-take when he realized there were shining tears in his eyes, and the older man was looking at him with a conflicted look, but Peter needed to finish this first.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I couldn't help or do anything-” he takes in a shuddering breath and Happy looks mad, why was he mad?

“Peter, you’re going to listen to me when I say this” Peter nods confirmation and Happy’s voice is a lot softer, “It wasn’t your fault, none of it was, at all, I promise.  Tony did everything he did for you, kid I-” Happy coughed, trying to subtly wipe the tear that fell, “Do you know how devastated he was every time your name would pop up on the missing or he saw a picture of you?  The first months, we’d have to drag him out of his lab, kicking and screaming because he was still trying to find ways to bring you back.” Peter shut his eyes, trying not to imagine the horrific scene. 

“When he had Morgan he was so worried he’d mess up and he’d always tell us about how happy you would be if you knew you had a sister.  He didn’t want to lose Morgan because he’d already lost you, he thought with Morgan he had a second chance and I know he never ever stopped thinking about you.” Happy looked wistful, and his gaze may have been on Peter but it was obvious he wasn’t really seeing him.

Happy breathed in, closing his eyes, “And Nat, well that girl was one hard kick.  You know the first time I met her she flipped be over, I had bruises that lasted weeks” 

Peter huffs, trying a laugh, “That seems like Nat”

“She talked about you too, a lot, she was pretty fond of you,  talking about how awesome you were.  I remember in the first few years where you were gone, she’d always be down in the training room but I never once saw her actually training.  You were one of her favorite people to spar with and she worked around the clock trying to bring everyone back.  You were a part of her family, we all were.” Happy zeroes in on him again, “Tony and Nat were alike in a lot of ways, but one of the big ones was they both loved you, kid.  Those two are peas in a pod and I have never seen them look as proud as they were when they looked at you, it’s not your fault they’re gone.  They knew the risks and what it would take to bring you back”

Peter listened, numb,  as Happy’s words echoed through his head dully, bouncing, back and forth, back and forth.

They both loved you, kid.

It’s not your fault.

Happy squeezed his shoulder, blinking his irritated eyes, “Let’s go get some food, kid.  We can finish the driving lessons some other time.”

thanks for reading, i hope you liked it! (Reblogs appreciated!)

[whatthe-tuckb]

The Tornado Trio | Discord Para

with: @carofms, @beckhcm when/where: the night of the tornado/ Tucker’s Truck

tucker

tucker turned the key to start his truck, the engine coming to life and luckily so did his heat and winsheild wipers. The rain that soaked his clothes made him shiver, or maybe it was the fact that the adrenaline from moments before with caroline were still racing through his mind causing his whole body to tremble. Reaching forward he turned on the heat, "You okay?" he asked looking over at her, a small smile finding his lips. "I haven't heard from Beck.." Tucker said pulling out onto the road which now had more than an inch of water. "I'm worried he usually hits me back quick..." he chewed his lip as he drove turning up the wipers another speed. "You up for a rescue mission?" he turned to her, a twinge of a smirk peaked the corner of his mouth. She was his adventure partner. "I'm going to drive down some streets check some places he could be. I hope he's already at Blue's party but part of me feels like he's off being the main character somehwere knowing him."

caroline

getting into the car was the first time caroline noticed she was freezing. the south carolina heat didn't have much of a match on the cold rain that soaked her clothes, and she mirrored his shiver in the car. a smile was tugging at her lips but for some reason she couldn't make eye contact with tucker right now. "i'm good," she responded, lifting her hands to the heat. finally she lifted her eyes to look over at him, concern growing on her face at the mention of beck. "you know me. of course i'm up for it. let's go find the idiot." she responds jokingly, shifting her gaze to the front window and throwing her feet up on the dash. she stifles a laugh at his comment. "i wouldn't be surprised in the slightest. he's probably -- wait, stop the car, i think i see him!" she shouts, pointing at a figure that resembled their friend.

𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐤

beck is walking back and forth on the curb as he watches a tow truck take away christian's car.  he's going to kill him, plain and simple. he's going to kick him out of the apartment and then kill him on the streets for wrecking his 'baby'. and then there's the mess with leo.... beck shakes his head trying to put all of that on the back burner.  if he's ever going to deal with that it will be with a help of a licensed professional.  out of the corner of his eye, he catches a glimpse of tucker's truck. he hears caroline's voice and feels a weight lifted off his shoulders, at least he won't be walking home alone in the middle of a tornado- that's one win out of a million loses. he runs up to the truck too afraid to look back at the mess he made. beck gets in without saying as much as hello, wrapping his arms around his body making himself small. there's a deep breath, followed by small wines, and before he realizes it he's crying.

tucker

looking over at care he nods, knowing the heat is good for her he feels his own body start to warm contradicting the coolness of his clothing causing goosebumps on his skin. at her comment tucker chuckles and nods, indeed let's go find this fool he called a a best friend. scanning the streets he was looking off at something when his attention was called to wherever caroline had spotted someone who was either beck or resembled him. Tucker didn't think it would be this soon but to his dismay the familar figure of his friend came out of the shadows. "Well I'll be damned.." he said shaking his head with the lightest chuckle. Stopping the truck instantly he slowed down to a stop, reaching back and unlocking the door. Before he even said anything and busted his ass about how he almost sent the natonal guard to come find him he looked at beck, then over at caroline- locking eyes with her before turning them back to Beck. "Hey man. You okay? What happened out there? I figured you were off being a main character or some shit and having your moment in the rain but what- what's going on.." he asked not sure if he wanted to talk all that much.

caroline

caroline noticed the tow truck before realizing it was beck's car on the back of it -- and it looked bad. as soon as she felt the car door open, her head twisted to look at the blonde, sitting in the back seat, sulking -- as anyone would. but shock washed over her when she heard cries coming from him. she never thought she'd ever see that from him. her eyes met tuckers before watching him comfort his best friend. "was that your car on the tow truck?" she asked for clarification once tucker finished speaking.

𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐤

the back of the car echoes with his cries, each one getting louder than the last.  he doesn't know where all of these feelings are coming from. he is fine. "no!" he screams between sobs,  rubbing at his eyes so hard he can see stars "itschristianscarandhesgonnakillme" he wails so fast he doubts either of his friends can understand what he's saying.  it's getting harder for him to keep a steady breath as a year's worth of built-up emotions pour out of him, "andialmostkilledadogandifeellikeafuckingidiot" frustrated with everything he throws himself across the backseat, burying his face in the seats crying everything out just to get the theatrics over with.

tucker

tucker just sits and listens, the calming tapping of rain against the tin roof of his truck pitter patter in the silence that fills the void inbetween beck's sobs. he somewhat made out what he was saying, beck's words jumbling together in a run on sentence. Tucker sucked in his bottom lip in thought before knowing what to do, taking the truck he moved off the side of the road into an empty parking lot nearby. Putting the car in park he climbed into the back with Beck, stepping between the seats and plopping down next to him. Looking up at Care he nodded for her to come join them. Not saying anything Tucker wrapped his arms around his friend and just held him, not saying a word but squeezing. "You're not an idiot man and a car is a car. It can be replaced you know what can't? You." he said confidently. "And I'll fuck up anyone who makes you think differently." he said his language bold- piercing- but true. "You're a brother to me. I mean that." he leaned his head against beck, wrapping his arms around him and meeting caroline's on the other side. "Who do I need to beat up? Tell me?" he tried to lighten the mood.

caroline

as soon as she got the signal to join the pair, caroline followed suit and climbed to the back, taking a seat on the other side of beck. upon instinct, her hand went to his back, resting it there for added comfort. sure, they annoyed the living shit out of each other — but she didn’t like seeing him like this. the girl allowed tucker to give him the pep talk; who was she to interrupt a couple of best friends having a moment? she gave a soft smile when his arms wrapped around the both of them, joining them willingly in the group hug. “and i may not be a good physical fighter, so i’ll leave that one to tuck, but i’m willing to bully someone if they try to fuck with you.”

𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐤

he supposes all of this affection is supposed to make him feel better however it only makes him cry harder. mostly because he knows tucker is a man of his word. he said  he would go to war for him and meant it,  but how is he supposed to tell him that the person he needs to beat up is beck himself.  because once again he dug his own grave and is now bearing the consequences. he looks up at caroline, brow raised in confusion. she cared about him. that was definitely new but not unpleasant.  he sits up slightly, his weight still resting on the other blonde before he looks up at tucker.  "i can't fucking stop" he cries, "knock me out. sedate me. do something!"

(beck in a gif rn : here) 

tucker

tucker still has beck wrapped in his arms, feeling caroline's arms joining him he was glad that she climbed back to support beck in his time of need. Reaching his hand over to her free hand he found her hand and squeezed it almost as if to say ' thank you for doing this for him for me' and in another way to say I didn't forget about what happened between us only minutes before and that if she was in her head this would get her out of it. Despite all the crazy that was going on with him it was good to be the reason to calm someone else. He'd do anything for Beck and he knew that he knew that. A foster kid, an orphan he had nobody even close to a brother who felt the way Beck did to him or meant that much. He was family. Swallowing he nodded listening to Beck speak, "I hate to do this Beck- forgive me." he grimaced and raised his hand to slap his cheek. "Snap out of it man. You'd want me to do this if you were in a better mindset so don't come for me." he clarified grasping Beck by the shoulders. "Pull yourself together man. Remember who you are. You're not this guy. You're gonna figure it out and fuck Care and I will come after those who don't agree. So tell me. What. Do .You. Need." he blew on his face like you blow on a baby who is crying so hard they need to catch their breath. A cheeky smile crept onto his mouth. "You need too feel but you also need to breath. What happened? How bad is the damage? What do I need to do? Help you hide a body just tell me."

( see attached image for reference of how tucker/care were looking at eachother in this moment : here ) 

caroline

her mind was still racing from what happened earlier with her and tucker -- so many thoughts about what this meant and if he was thinking about it, too. but the look he gave her put her mind slightly at ease and allowed her to compartmentalize that until she knew beck was feeling more at ease. watching them together made her smile -- it reminded her of her friendship with blue. just as their sweet buddy moment was at it's peak, caroline's eyes widened and she backed away just as tucker's hand met beck's face. sitting in shock, she couldn't help but crack a smile. "remember, beck, as much as i hate my parents... they do have the funds to help you out. i'm sure i can pull a few strings and cover some of the cost of the damage."August 21, 2021

𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐤

people who knew how to deal with shit in a healthy way, this would be the part where they hugged and talked about their feelings. instead, beck raises his hand and returns the slap, striking tucker across the face "ouch!" he complains rubbing at his face, " but thank you." he says sounding more like himself. if there was any dignity left in him he would feel embarrassed about the show he just put on but right now all he feels is exhausted. he rubs his nose with the sleeve of his sweatshirt and turns to caroline, "no need to call the big dogs. i'll work it out myself"  a pause,  "i always do."  beck appreciates his friends, honest, if they hadn't found him on the street he probably would've jumped into the ocean and let the tide take him away. however, their proximity is starting to suffocate him, he shifts uncomfortably in his seat and looks down at his hands, "i don't need you to hide a body. i need you to get me a drink."August 23, 2021

tucker

he didn't know what hit him. quite literally and metaphorically. when beck raised his hand tucker's face felt a sting then heat before his eyed widened and he looked at caroline then back at beck. taking a deep breath he held his cheek then started to laugh softly. "Okay." he nodded a smirk of all things finding his lips. "feel better?" he asked at this point fully laughing and rubbing his cheek. "damn bro I didn't know you got that much power behind you." he smiled. Tucker took a breath and grabbed his friends shoulders. "Listen dude. You don't need to. That's what we're saying here. I know you're capable of doing this shit on your own but sometimes people- believe it or not- want to be there for their friends and help take a load off. So you don't have to go all lone ranger on this one okay? Just think about it alright?" he asked, giving his shoulder a loving tap before crawling back into the drivers seat. "Now that...I can do, and quite frankly need after this." he looked over towards Caroline. "Co-pilot?" he nodded his head towards the seat as if to gesture her to come up. Turning over the ignition he started out of the empty lot  "Alright Beck, you're on aux but don't make me regret it." The rain had somewhat calmed down enough that the road to blue's was manageable and luckily the party had not gone too long without them.

[patriotsnet]

Did Republicans Riot After Obama Was Elected

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/did-republicans-riot-after-obama-was-elected/

Did Republicans Riot After Obama Was Elected

Undocumented Kids Are Saved By Obamas Executive Order Daca Which Would Put A Halt To Deportation For Those Whod Entered The Country Before Age 16 And Yet In A Bid To Get The Gop To Come Over To His Side On Immigration Reform The President Has Also Deported A Record 15 Million People In His First Term

A Family Caught in Immigration Limbo

When Belsy Garcia saw her mother’s number appear on her iPhone on the afternoon of June 15, she felt what she calls the “uncomfortable fluttering” sensation in her chest. She knew that daytime calls signaled an emergency. The worst one had come the previous year, when her sister told her ICE agents had placed their father in federal custody.

Garcia was attending Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, when her father was marched out of her childhood home. As an undocumented immigrant — like both of her parents, who are from Guatemala — she couldn’t qualify for loans. She financed her ­education through scholarships and a stipend she earned as a residential assistant. Now she wondered if her mother was calling to say her father had been deported, which might force her to leave school to become the family’s breadwinner.

But this call was different. “Go turn on the television,” Garcia’s mother said. “You’re going to be able to work, get a driver’s license.”

Onscreen, President Obama was announcing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Undocumented immigrants who had arrived in the United States as children could apply for Social Security numbers and work permits. Garcia qualified: Her parents had brought her to this country when she was 7 years old. DACA transformed her into a premed student who could actually become a doctor. “It was like this weight was lifted,” she says. “All of that hard work was going to pay off.”

In The Next Hundred Days Our Bipartisan Outreach Will Be So Successful That Even John Boehner Will Consider Becoming A Democrat After All We Have A Lot In Common He Is A Person Of Color Although Not A Color That Appears In The Natural World Whats Up John Barack Obama White House Correspondents Dinner

And Then There Were Three

The first woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court did so in 1880. It would take another 101 years for a woman to sit on that bench rather than stand before it. Even then, progress was fitful. Over the 12 years that Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg served together, their identities evidently merged; lawyers regularly addressed Ginsburg as “Justice O’Connor.” When O’Connor retired in 2006, she left the faux Justice O’Connor feeling lonely. Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned of something far more alarming: What the public saw on entering the court were “eight men of a certain size, and then this little woman sitting to the side.” They might well represent the most eminent legal minds in America. But there was something antiquated, practically mutton-choppy, about that portrait.

How many female justices would be sufficient? Nine, says Justice Ginsburg, noting that no one ever raised an eyebrow at the idea of nine men.

Seal Team Six Kills Osama Bin Ladenraiding His Secret Compound In Abbottabad Pakistan While Obama And His Top Advisers Watch A Live Feed Of The Mission From The White House Situation Room The Picture Of The Assembled Becomes The Last Supper Of The Obama Era

Poop Feminism

For me, it’s one moment. All the bridesmaids have come to the fancy bridal shop to see Maya Rudolph try on wedding dresses. This should be a familiar scene: The bride emerges from the changing room and … This is the dress! The friends clap. The mother cries. Everyone is a princess. Go ahead and twirl!

But when the bride emerges in Bridesmaids, almost all of her friends have started to feel sick. Sweat coats their skin. Red splotches creep over their faces. They try to “ooh” and “aah,” but it’s already too late. It starts with a gag from Melissa McCarthy, followed by another gag. Then a gag that comes simultaneously with a tiny wet fart. It’s the smallness of the fart that’s important here. It’s the kind of fart that slips out — a fart that could be excused away, a brief, incongruous accident. Women don’t fart in wedding movies, and women certainly don’t fart at the exact moment that the bride comes out in her dress. This can’t be happening. ­Melissa McCarthy blames the fart on the tightness of her dress. We breathe a sigh of relief.

Then sweet Ellie Kemper gags, and the sound effect is surprisingly nasty. Ellie’s face is gray. Melissa’s face is red. They look bad. They are embarrassed. How far is this going to go?

The camera cuts. We are above now. We look down from a safe perch as the release we have been anticipating and dreading begins. It is horribly, earth-­shatteringly gross. A woman has just pooped in a sink. The revolution has begun.

The Government Acquires A 61 Percent Stake In Gm And Loans The Company $50 Billion The Auto Bailout Will Eventually Be Heralded As A Great Success Adding More Than 250000 Manufacturing Jobs To The Economy

The Auto Industry Gets Rerouted

“The president was very clear with us that he only wanted to do stuff that would fundamentally change the way they did business. And that’s what we did. There were enormous changes. For example, General Motors had something like 300 different job classifications that the union had. If you were assigned to put the windshield wipers on, you couldn’t put tires on. And we wiped all that stuff out. We basically gave back management the freedom to manage, to hire, to fire. People stopped getting paid even when they were on layoff. We reduced the number of car plants so that there wasn’t so much overcapacity. So now, when you have 16 million cars sold , they’re making a fortune.”

Black Lives Matter Activists Are Arrested In Baton Rouge Louisianaprotesting The Murder Of Alton Sterling; More Than 100 People Are Detained In St Paul Minnesota Protesting The Murder Of Philando Castile

What Is the Point of a Quantified Self?

Melissa Dahl: The Fitbit was introduced at a tech conference eight years ago. It’s kind of incredible to realize that, before then, this idea of the “quantified self” didn’t really exist in the mainstream.

Jesse Singal: I feel like it’s the intersection of all these different trends: Everyone plays video games these days. You got smartphones everywhere. And people are realizing that solutions to the big problems that lead to sleeplessness and anxiety and bad eating — unemployment and income inequality and yada yada yada — aren’t gonna get solved anytime soon.

MD: That’s interesting, because all of this self-tracking is also, according to some physicians, giving people more anxiety! A Fitbit-induced stress vortex.

Cari Romm: It feels like productive stress, though. I’m talking as a recovered Fitbit obsessive, but it does make you look at Fitbit-less people like, “You mean you don’t care how many steps you took today?”

MD: Oh, God. I don’t care. Should I care? Sleep is the one thing I obsessed over for a while. Which does not really help one get to sleep.

JS: Do you think an actually good and not obsession-­inducing sleep app could help, though?

MD: There’s some aspect to the tracking idea that really does work. I mean, it’s just a higher-tech version of a food journal or sleep journal, right? Ben Franklin 300 years ago was tracking his 13 “personal virtues” in his diary.

JS: Would Ben Franklin have been an insufferable tech-bro?

Officer Darren Wilson Fatally Shoots Michael Brownin The St Louis Suburb Of Ferguson Sparking A National Protest Movement And Setting Off Unrest That Will Remain Unresolved Two Years Later

On the Triumph of Black Culture in the Age of Police Shootings

In the two years since Mike Brown was fatally shot by the police in Ferguson, and the video footage of his dead body in the street went viral, we have seen the emergence of a perverse dichotomy on our screens and in our public discourse: irrefutable evidence of grotesquely persistent racism, and irrefutable evidence of increasing black cultural and political power. This paradox is not entirely new, of course — America was built on a narrative of white supremacy, and black Americans have simultaneously continued to make vast and essential contributions to the country’s prominence—but it has become especially pronounced. And it’s not just because of the internet and social media, or the leftward shift of the culture, or black America’s being sick and tired of being sick and tired. In fact, it is all of these things, not least two terms with a black president. In the same way that black skin signals danger to the police , his black skin, to black people, signaled black cultural preservation. African-Americans didn’t see a black man as the most powerful leader in the free world; we saw the most powerful leader in the free world as black. This is what comedian Larry Wilmore was expressing at the 2016 White House Correspondents’ Dinner when he said, “Yo, Barry, you did it, my nigga.” It was a moment of unadulterated black pride.

Militants Attack American Compounds In Benghazi Libya Killing Us Ambassador Chris Stevens And Three Other Americans There Will Eventually Be Eight Congressional Probes Into The Incident

“I Know I Let Everybody Down”

“Before the debate, David Plouffe and I went in to talk to him and give him a pep talk and he said, ‘Let’s just get this over with and get out of here,’ which is not what you want to hear from your candidate right before the debate. We knew within ten minutes that it was going to be a ­debacle. We had armed him with a joke — it was his 20th anniversary, and he addressed Michelle — and it turns out Romney was expecting just such a line and had a really great comeback. And Romney was excellent — just free and easy and clearly well prepared and showed personality that people hadn’t seen before. Obama looked like he was at a press conference.

We had a meeting at the White House and he said, ‘I know I let everybody down and that’s on me, and I’m not going to let that happen again,’ and that was his attitude. We always had debate camps before, where we’d re-create in hotel ballrooms what the set would look like, and all of the conditions of the real debate. When we went down to Williamsburg, Virginia, for the next debate camp, he seemed really eager to engage in the prep. We had a decent first night. That was on Saturday. On Sunday night, Kerry, playing Romney, got a little more aggressive and Obama a little less so; it looked very much like what we had seen in Denver. It was like he’d taken a step back.

Scott Brown Is Elected Massachusetts Senatorturning Ted Kennedys Seat Republican For The First Time Since 1952 And Suddenly Throwing The Prospect Of Passing Obamacare Into Jeopardy

Plan B

“I’m talking to Rahm and Jim Messina and saying, ‘Okay, explain to me how this happened.’ It was at that point that I learned that our candidate, Martha Coakley, had asked rhetorically, ‘What should I do, stand in front of Fenway and shake hands with voters?’ And we figured that wasn’t a good bellwether of how things might go.

This might have been a day or two before the election, but the point is: There is no doubt that we did not stay on top of that the way we needed to. This underscored a failing in my first year, which was the sort of perverse faith in good policy leading to good politics. I’ll cut myself some slack — we had a lot to do, and every day we were thinking, Are the banks going to collapse? Is the auto industry going to collapse? Will layoffs accelerate? We just didn’t pay a lot of attention to politics that first year, and the loss in Massachusetts reminded me of what any good president or elected official needs to understand: You’ve got to pay attention to public opinion, and you have to be able to communicate your ideas. But it happened, and the question then was, ‘What’s next?’

Sheryl Sandbergs Lean In Hits Bookstores Making The Feminist Case That Women Should Be More Aggressive And Ambitious In Their Careers And Making Feminists Themselves Very Angry

The “Mommy Wars” Finally Flame Out

After decades of chilly backlash, we find ourselves, these past eight years, in an age of feminist resurgence, with feminist websites and publications and filmmakers and T-shirts and pop singers and male celebrities and best-selling authors and women’s soccer teams. Of course, as in every feminist golden age, there has also been dissent: furious clashes over the direction and quality of the discourse, especially as the movement has become increasingly trendy, shiny, and celebrity-backed.

Perhaps the most public feminist conflagration of the Obama years came at the nexus of policy and celebrity, of politics and pop power. It was the furor over Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who gave a viral 2010 TED Talk about women in the workplace who “leave before they leave” — who alter their professional strategy to accommodate a future they assume will be compromised by parenthood — which led to the publication of her 2013 feminist business manifesto, Lean In.

It’s a lesson of the Obama era: One approach to redressing inequality does not have to blot out the others. Sometimes, attacking from all angles is the most effective strategy.

Texas State Senator Wendy Davis Laces Up Her Pink Running Shoes And Spends Ten Long Hours Attempting To Filibuster A Billthat Wouldve Imposed Statewide Abortion Restrictions

“The Concept of Dignity Really Matters”

“I was given an enormous degree of latitude. I did communicate with the White House counsel on occasion about high-profile cases, but it was much more in the nature of just giving them a heads-up, to calm any nervous feelings they might have. There’s only one exception to that, and it was on marriage equality, in the Hollingsworth v. Perry case in 2013. We were contemplating coming in and arguing that it was unconstitutional for California to refuse to recognize the legal validity of same-sex marriages. But we didn’t have to do it . And because it was a discretionary judgment, and it was such a consequential step, that was the one matter where I really sought out the president’s personal guidance. I wanted to make sure the president had a chance to thoroughly consider what we should do before we did it. It was really one of the high points of my tenure. It was a wide-ranging conversation about doctrinal analysis, about where society was now, about social change and whether it should go through the courts or through the majoritarian process, about the pace of social change, about the significance of the right at stake. He was incredibly impressive.

A Golf Summit Between John Boehner And Barack Obama Stirs Hopethat Perhaps The Two Parties Will Come To A Budget Agreement And Forestall A True Crisis Secret And Semi

A Grand Bargain That Wasn’t, Remembered Three Ways

“The president of the United States and the Speaker of the House, the two most powerful elected officials in Washington, decided in a conversation that they both had to try to make something happen. Maybe it would be the way it worked in a West Wing episode in a world that doesn’t work like a West Wing episode. That’s how it started — two individuals saying we’re going to try. I think they both shared a belief in the art of the possible, and they both did not think compromise was a dirty word.

When our cover was blown — a Wall Street Journal editorial came out saying that Boehner and Obama were working on this and attacking the whole premise — that was devastating. It resulted in Cantor being a part of the talks. Cantor and Boehner came in, and I think it was a weekend private session with the president in the Oval Office, and they were talking about the numbers. At one point Cantor said, ‘Listen, it’s not just the numbers. There’s concern that this will help you politically. Paul Ryan said if we do this deal, it will guarantee your reelection. If we agree with Barack Obama on spending and taxes, that takes away one of our big weapons.’ There were so many obstacles, some of them substantive — how much revenue, and what about the entitlements? — but there was also this overlay of ‘This is going to help Obama.’

Illustrations by Lauren Tamaki

The Obama Administration Unveils Its Plan For Regulating Wall Streetwhich Is Then Introduced In Congress By Senator Chris Dodd And Representative Barney Frank

MJ=JC?

Lane Brown: Michael Jackson’s death was a big deal for lots of obvious reasons, including the surprising way it happened and the fact that he was arguably the most famous person on the planet.

Nate Jones: He was an A-lister with an indisputable body of work; he was 50 years old, his hits were the right age — old enough that every generation knew them, but not too old that they weren’t relevant anymore.

LB: But it was also the first huge celebrity death to happen in the age of social media, or at least the age of Twitter.

NJ: MJ’s death came alongside the protests in Iran, which was when Twitter went mainstream.

LB: It also meant that so much of the instant reaction was to make it all about us.

Frank Guan: In a lot of ways, the culture prefers the death of artists to their continuing to live. Once an artist gets launched into the stratosphere, there’s no way to come down, and that permanence becomes monotonous. They run out of timely or groundbreaking material and the audience starts tuning out. At some point, their fame eclipses their art, and then the only way to get the general audience to appreciate them anew is for them to die.

LB: People seem to like the grieving process so much that even lesser celebrities get the same treatment.

Congresswoman Gabby Giffords Returns To The House Floor For The First Time Since Being Shot In A Massacre In January Casting A Vote In Favor Of The Debt

A Rare Moment of Unity

“I was doing intensive rehabilitation in Houston at the time but was following the debate closely, and I was pretty disappointed at what was happening in Washington. I’d seen the debate grow so bitter and divisive and so full of partisan rancor. And I was worried our country was hurtling toward a disastrous, self-inflicted economic crisis. That morning, when it became clear the vote was going to be close, my husband, Mark, and I knew we needed to get to Washington quickly. I went straight from my rehabilitation appointment to the airport, and Mark was at our house in Houston packing our bags so he could meet us at the plane.

That night, I remember seeing the Capitol for the first time since I was injured and feeling so grateful to be at work. I will never forget the reception I received on the floor of the House from my colleagues, both Republicans and Democrats. And then, like I had so many times before, I voted.

I worked so hard to get my speech back, and honestly, talking to people who share my determination helped me find my words again. I’ve been to Alaska, Maine, and everywhere in between. Best of all, I got back on my bike. Riding my bike once seemed like such a huge challenge. It seemed impossible.”

Miley Cyrus Twerks At The Mtv Vmassetting Off A Controversy About Cultural Appropriation That Soon Ensnares Seemingly Every White Pop Star On The Planet

• Karlie Kloss wears a Native American headdress and fringed bra at the Victoria’s Secret fashion show.

• Justin Timberlake is accused of appropriating black music when he tells a black critic “We are the same” after praising Jesse Williams’s BET Humanitarian Award speech about race and police brutality.

• DJ Khaled gets lost on Jet Ski, snaps the whole time.

• Two UW-Madison students snap their meet-cute as the entire student body cheers them on.

• Playboy Playmate Dani Mathers films and mocks an anonymous woman in the gym shower.

• A Massachusetts teen records the sexual assault of a 16-year-old girl. The video is later seen by a friend of the victim.

Prior To Going To War In Iraq Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Optimistically Predicted The Iraq War Might Last Six Days Six Weeks I Doubt Six Months

What’s more, Vice-President Dick Cheney said we would be greeted as liberators by the Iraqi people after we overthrow Saddam.

They were both horribly wrong. Instead of six weeks or six months, the Iraq war lasted eight long and bloody years costing thousands of American lives. It led to an Iraqi civil war between the Sunnis and the Shiites that took hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. Many Iraqi militia groups were formed to fight against the U.S. forces that occupied Iraq. What’s more, Al Qaeda, which did not exist in Iraq before the war, used the turmoil in Iraq to establish a new foothold in that country.

The Iraq war was arguably the most tragic foreign policy blunder in US history.

In 2012 Republicans Predicted That Failure To Approve The Keystone Pipeline Would Send The Price Of Gasoline Sky High And Kill Large Numbers Of Jobs

Despite the fact that the Keystone Pipeline was not approved, the price of gasoline continued to drop below $1.80 per gallon, millions of new jobs were created and unemployment dropped from 8% to 4.9% by early 2016. The most optimistic predictions say that the Keystone Pipeline would only create a few dozen long-term jobs and would do nothing to lower the price of gasoline.

Eric Cantors Stunning Primary Loss Suggests No Politician Is Safe From The Rage Of The Tea Party Not Even The Tea Partys Canniest Political Leader

From Party’s Future to Also-Ran in a Single Day

On the day his political career died, Eric Cantor was busy tending to what he still believed was its bright future. While his GOP-primary opponent, David Brat, visited polling places in and around Richmond, Virginia, Cantor spent his morning 90 miles away at a Capitol Hill Starbucks. He was there to host a fund-raiser for three of his congressional colleagues — something he did every month, just another part of the long game he was playing, which, he believed, would eventually culminate in his becoming Speaker of the House.

The preceding five years had brought Cantor tantalizingly closer to that goal. In the immediate aftermath of Obama’s election, he’d rallied waffling House Republicans to stand in lockstep opposition to the new president’s agenda. In 2010, he’d helped elect 87 new Republican members, giving the GOP a House majority and making Cantor the House majority leader. He became the champion of these freshmen members, stoking their radicalism during the debt-ceiling fight and working to undermine Obama and John Boehner’s attempt to strike a “grand bargain.” His alliance with the ascendant tea party was strategic — it gave him leverage not only over Obama but over other Republicans who might also have had aspirations of becoming Speaker. It never occurred to him that the wave he was trying to ride might crash on him instead.

In 1993 When Bill Clinton Raised Taxes On The Wealthiest 15% Republicans Predicted A Recession Increased Unemployment And A Growing Budget Deficit

They weren’t just wrong: The exact opposite of everything they predicted happened. The country experienced the seven best years of economic growth in history.

Twenty-two million new jobs were added.

Unemployment dropped below 4%.

The poverty rate dropped for seven straight years.

The budget deficit was eliminated.

There was a growing budget surplus that economists projected could pay off our national debt in 20 years.

Republicans Predicted That We Would Find Iraqs Weapons Of Mass Destruction Even Though Un Weapons Inspectors Said That Those Weapons Didn’t Exist

The Bush administration continued to insist that WMDs would be found, even when the CIA said some of the evidence was questionable. As we all know, the WMDs predicted by the Bush administration did not exist, and Saddam Hussein had not resumed his nuclear weapons program as they claimed. Ultimately, both President Bush and Vice President Cheney had to admit that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Republicans Predicted That President Obamas Tax Increase For The Top 1% In 2013 Would Kill Jobs Increase The Deficit And Cause Another Recession

You guessed it; just the opposite happened. In the four years following January 1, 2013, when that tax increase went into effect, through January 2017, unemployment dropped from 7.9% to 4.8%, an average of more than 200,000 new jobs were created per month, Wall Street set new record highs, and the budget deficit was cut in half.

Over 5.7 million new jobs were created in the first two years after that tax increase. That’s more jobs created in two years than were created during the combined 12 years of both Bush presidencies.

In 2001 When George W Bush Cut Taxes For The Wealthy Republicans Predicted Record Job Growth Increased Budget Surplus And Nationwide Prosperity

Once again, the exact opposite occurred. After the Bush tax cuts were enacted:

The budget surplus immediately disappeared.

The budget deficit eventually grew to $1.4 trillion by the time Bush left office.

Less than 3 million net jobs were added during Bush’s eight years.

The poverty rate began climbing again.

We experienced two recessions along with the greatest collapse of our financial system since the Great Depression.

In 1993, President Clinton signed the Brady Law mandating nationwide background checks and a waiting period to buy a gun.

Apple Announces That It Has Sold 100 Million Iphoneswithin A Few Months It Will Overtake Exxonmobil As The Most Valuable Company In The World

Earthlings Gain a New Appendage

What if we had the singularity and nobody noticed? In 2007, Barack Obama had been on the trail for weeks, using a BlackBerry like all the cool campaigners, when the new thing went on sale and throngs lined up for it. The new thing had a silly name: iPhone. The iPhone was a phone the way the Trojan horse was a horse.

Now it’s the gizmo without which a person feels incomplete. It’s a light in the darkness, a camera, geolocator, hidden mic, complete ­Shakespeare, stopwatch, sleep aid, heart monitor, podcaster, aircraft spotter, traffic tracker, all-around reality augmenter, and increasingly a pal. At the Rio Olympics you could see people, having flown thousands of miles to be in the arena with the athletes, watching the action through their smartphones. As though they needed the mediating lens to make it real.

This device, this gadget — a billion have been made and we scarcely know what to call it. For his 2010 novel of the near future, , Gary Shteyngart made up a word, “äppärät.” “My äppärät buzzing with contacts, data, pictures, projections, maps, incomes, sound, fury.” Future then, present now. His äppäräti were worn around the neck on pendants. Ours are in our pockets when they aren’t in our hands, but they also sprout earbuds, morph into wristwatches and eyeglasses. Contact lenses have been rumored; implants are only a matter of time.

Let’s face it, we’ve grown a new organ.

Republicans Said Waterboarding And Other Forms Of Enhanced Interrogation Are Not Torture And Are Necessary In Fighting Islamic Extremism

In reality, waterboarding and other forms of enhanced interrogation that inflict pain, suffering, or fear of death are outlawed by US law, the US Constitution, and international treaties. Japanese soldiers after World War II were prosecuted by the United States for war crimes because of their use of waterboarding on American POWs.

Professional interrogators have known for decades that torture is the most ineffective and unreliable method of getting accurate information. People being tortured say anything to get the torture to end but will not likely tell the truth.

An FBI interrogator named Ali Soufan was able to get al Qaeda terrorist Abu Zubaydah to reveal crucial information without the use of torture. When CIA interrogators started using waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation methods, Zubaydah stopped cooperating and gave his interrogators false information.

Far from being necessary in the fight against terrorism, torture is completely unreliable and counter-productive in obtaining useful information.

In 2008 Republicans Said That If We Elect A Democratic President We Would Be Hit By Al Qaeda Again Perhaps Worse Than The Attack On 9/11

Former Vice-President Dick Cheney stated that electing a Democrat as president would all but guarantee that there would be another major attack on America by Al Qaeda. Cheney and other Republicans were, thankfully, completely wrong. During Obama’s presidency, we had zero deaths on U.S. soil from Al Qaeda attacks and we succeeded in killing Bin Laden along with dozens of other high ranking Al Qaeda leaders.

Game Of Thrones Arrives On Televisionwith An Assemblage Of Dragons Torture Nudity Incest And Despair A Show The Whole Family Can Enjoy

Explaining Kale

ADAM PLATT: Many things in Foodlandia, these days, have a political element to them, and if you want to emblazon a flag to be carried into battle, you could do worse than a bristly, semi-digestible bunch of locally grown kale.

ALAN SYTSMA: To eat kale is to announce you’re a person who cares about the matters of the day.

AP: The idea of kale is much more powerful than kale itself. In short order it went from being discovered, to appreciated, to being something that was parodied. Frankly, I’m all for the parody.

AS: The same thing happened to pork. Remember bacon peanut brittle? Bacon-fat cocktails? There’s bacon dental floss.

AP: Ahhh, bacon versus kale. The two great, competing forces of our time.

AS: Do you think one gave way to the other?

AP: What we’re really talking about is artisanal bacon, and the more sophisticated-sounding pork belly, made from pigs that were lovingly reared at upstate farms and fed diets of pristine little acorns. Bacon is the great symbol in the comfort-food, farm-fresh-dining movement, a kind of merry, unbridled pulchritude. Kale is the righteous yin to pork’s fatty, non-vegan yang.

AS: But pork has an advantage: People like the way it tastes.

AP: That’s a huge advantage, one that will hopefully see it through to victory.

[ddagent]

Festive prompt: (Inspired by the Last Christmas video) Brienne gets invited to spend Christmas with Sansa and her friends at a remote snowy cabin. She accepts reluctantly after Sansa pleads with her. This could either be a fluffy established relationship take, where she and Jaime both are invited as a couple, or she meets Jaime at the cabin and all they do is squabble. I can't decide. Or if you feel like neither, you could do sth entirely else with it. Point is: Snowy cabin holiday :D

Okay, this probably isn’t quite what you had in mind, but here it is. 

Brienne pulled up to the cabin in her dented, blue convertible. Oathkeeper’s roof was doing its best to shield her from the snow that had begun to fall as soon as she’d passed the sign for White Harbour and pulled onto the King’s Motorway heading for Winterfell. She sat in the front seat, engine running and windscreen wipers going, and stared up at the rustic cabin located a few miles outside Last Hearth. Outside were three cars. Inside, three couples. 

Three happy couples, and Brienne Tarth. Always the seventh. Always the Stranger. 

Sighing, Brienne turned off the engine. The sooner she entered, the sooner Sevenmas could begin, and the sooner she could leave. Opening her car door, Brienne ducked out and raced for the boot; the snow falling even heavier, now. Grabbing her duffel bag, Brienne locked the car and crunched her way up to the front door. Through the large, picture window, Brienne could see them dressing the dree for Sevenmas. Sansa and Podrick. Margaery and Robb. Loras and...and Renly. 

And Brienne Tarth, always outside looking in. 

Just then, a flicker of light caught her attention. With the heavy snowfall, she hadn’t noticed the cabin set just along from theirs. It was larger; a single car covered with a tarp in the driveway. A single light on upstairs. Brienne had already turned towards the second cabin without truly wondering why she was doing it; why she hadn’t knocked on their cabin door and been admitted to the warmth of the inside, the warmth of her friends. 

Instead, she knocked on the door of the second cabin and waited. Waited for a second light to come on downstairs, and the door to swing open. “Yes?”

Framed in soft light stood the most beautiful man Brienne had ever seen. More handsome than Renly; taller, well-built. Dark-blonde hair brushed the collar of his button-down; sharp green eyes dragged themselves from her snow-covered boots and damp jeans to the flakes falling in her hair. His jaw was as sharp as the blades Brienne handled in the museum. Of course, she had sought sanctuary in such a place, with a man who could never understand. 

“Can I help you?” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you here to serenade me with Sevenmas carols? Are you selling sugar cookies or gingerbread? Are you a white walker; is this the start of the apocalypse?” 

“My friends are next door,” Brienne blurted. “My ex-boyfriend and his new boyfriend are next door. I can’t—”

“—alright.” The man’s lips twitched. “You can come in for a moment; dry yourself off.” 

“Thank you.” 

The man opened the door wider. “Stay on the doormat, I’ll just get something.” 

Brienne nodded and waited on the doorstep for the man to return. He came bearing old copies of the Winterfell Herald. He laid the black and white print across the hardwood floors, and gestured for her to step on top. It was only then that he closed the door behind her. The man did not linger, however; as soon as she began to drip onto the newspaper, he took his leave into the adjacent kitchen and began pouring water into a kettle. One cup. 

“I really appreciate this!” Brienne called out; the snow seeping through her wool coat. Her t-shirt underneath began to stick to her skin. “Is there any way I could hang my things up?” 

“You’ll be wanting a key next.”

Brienne frowned. “You didn’t have to let me in.”

“You didn’t have to knock on my door. You could have faced the music like a grown-up and gone next door, or, here’s a thought, not agree to celebrate Sevenmas with your ex.” The man left the kettle whistling as he returned to his doorstep. “Although I imagine you don’t have a lot of friends.”

“You don’t know anything about me.” 

“I know you’re hiding at a stranger’s cabin rather than being with them right now, so I imagine they’re not good friends.” 

“At least I have people to celebrate with. With an attitude like yours, I’m not surprised you’re spending Sevenmas by yourself.” 

A muscle twitched in his jaw. He moved past Brienne; she truly thought he was going to yank the door open and push her out into the snow. Instead, he grabbed the newspaper and lay out more in front of the coat pegs. Then, he tugged at the ends of her Tarth FC scarf and unwound the material from around her neck. He took the sodden scarf and hung it on one of the pegs, beside one of crimson and gold. Brienne attacked the buttons of her coat lest her grumpy samaritan start to undress her. 

She had peeled it off her shoulders by the time he came back. She handed it to him with a flourish. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” 

His gaze slid over her torso, and the damp white t-shirt she wore. Brienne crossed her arms; the man snickering as he retreated back to the kitchen. As if he would, Brienne. A man like that could fill his bed every day of Sevenmas. Seven times over, most likely. But there was no one in this house apart from the two of them. She standing on the doorstep, dripping onto newspaper; he in the kitchen, dumping a teabag into a cup. He glanced in her direction and pulled down another mug. 

After the kettle had boiled, the tea leaves steeped, the man strode over and thrust a cup into her clammy hands. “Never let it be said that Jaime Lannister does not rescue a maiden in distress.” 

“Not quietly, at any rate.” 

Jaime Lannister smirked and took a sip of his tea. “The snow will stop soon, and you can head next door to your ex and all the happy couples.”

“Thank you.” Brienne drank a mouthful of tea. The warm liquid helped her thaw from the Northern chill. Jaime was still stood in front of her; she’d half expected him to take his leave, sit on the sofa, and blare something obnoxious on the television. Instead, he stood in companionable silence. “Why did you let me in?”  

He shrugged. “Because I did the smart thing and chose not to celebrate Sevenmas with my ex. Consequently, it’s just me this year.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

They didn’t speak again. Brienne finished her tea, handed Jaime the cup, and picked up her less-damp clothes from the coat pegs. The snow had slowed; she should be able to make it next door without further incident. Perhaps she could even come by again. No one should be alone on Sevenmas.  

[secretpianer]

Apple Juice

hey look another bunny fic where butters runs away

Hell in Butters’ mind was never a pit of fire that burned for an eternity, or an nightmarish abyss roiling with the souls of the damned; it is a flat, infinitely expanding plane of frozen, desolate loneliness; a spearing cold that eats brutally at your flesh, then your muscles, then your bones, until they turn brittle, crumbling to ugly flecks of dust and blown into the windchill where they’d become part of the iced, hard landscape.

This is Hell; broken down five miles past Stark’s Pond at four in the morning with a snowstorm on its way. All of his possessions are in his car– well, the important ones are, like blankets, pillows, clothes, his laptop, some food and even toilet paper, enough to pack the entire backseat full, and as smoke plumes from the hood of his poor sedan all he can think is how cold it’ll be when he opens the door, and that if he can’t fix the engine the heat built up in his car will escape and his fingers will freeze off before he has a chance to figure out what went wrong or what to do next.

He can’t risk it. He’ll have to call someone. He takes out his phone, ignoring the tremble in his hand. His parents? He’d rather die of frostbite than ask them for help. His “friends” might be up– he considers Stan, but Stan’s reliability depends on Kyle, whose moral compass is radically skewed by whatever mood he or his mother is in, and at four in the morning it might not be so peachy. Cartman would come, only to laugh at his misfortune and then leave him to be buried in the storm. There’s only one option, the only one that was there from the beginning.

Butters prays for the signal to go through, and then smiles as the phone begins to ring. It rings for a long time. Butters is on edge, the muscles in his tensing jaw causing his teeth to chatter. The heat is rapidly draining from inside his car. Soon, he’ll have no choice but to consider about walking–

A click.

“Hello?”

The voice is groggy and agitated, but it’s there. Warm tears of relief brim his eyes.

“Kenny, I’m so sorry for waking you up, b-but I’m in a bit of a pickle here and I need your help.”

“Is it important enough that I have to get out of bed at four– shit fucking hell, it’s four in the goddamn morning–”

Butters sniffles. The tears brimming his eyes threaten to fall– it’s painful to hold them in, but he does. “I’m broken down. Dead in the water. I wouldn’t have called otherwise, but I’m out of town and it’s gonna snow soon, not just any snow but a storm and I might get trapped here a-and turn into a popsicle or get murdered by my parents and then turned into a popsicle–”

“Slow down.”

Butters hears a grunt and some shuffling, then Kenny is back on the receiver, more alert but more irritated.

“Where are you at?”

His pulse quickens with hope. “The interstate outside Sewell Park, about ten minutes out. I’m so gosh darn sorry about this, if I had just gotten the stupid thing maintenanced before I went out–”

“Hush. You owe me for this, Stotch.” Butters hears what he’s sure is a suppressed yawn. And then, in a gentler tone, “Hang tight, and stay warm. I’m on my way.”

Kenny ends the call and Butters sets his phone down. Streetlamps line the white roads. Through the orange glow, snow begins to fall.

Powdery and light at first, he knows, but soon it will rain in heavy torrents from the sky. The clouds have been blocking the sun and stars for days. He wanted to leave town before then, but like always, things didn’t turn out how he wanted. At least he’s not going to freeze. He leans his head back in the chair, closing his eyes.

Being buried in snow is not as fluffy and soft as Butters had used to imagine. It’s a slow, suffocating weight, a cold so dry and consuming that it burns. He used to love rolling in fresh falls of it, because it was so pillowy, light, and shallow enough to trudge through knee-deep, but ever since he bought his own car he’s dreamt of driving to Arizona, basking in its blistering heat, or even California, lounging on a breezy beach with burnt shoulders and sand in his hair.

Kenny arrives to him curled up tight into one of his extra coats. The engine has stopped smoking, and Kenny is looking from it to Butters, who is slow blinking awake in the driver’s seat and stiffly unwinding his frigid limbs. Kenny knocks on the window.

“You still alive in there?”

Butters opens the door and whimpers as ice cold air floods into his car. Kenny does not look pleased; he’s wearing his parka, snow caught in its fur, with his iron man pajama bottoms and unlaced hiking boots. Butters bows his head.

“Unfortunately.”

Kenny sighs heavily. “Don’t say that. Are you okay?”

“Dandy.”

He peers into the backseat. “Uh, going somewhere?”

Butters sniffs. “Not anymore.”

Kenny scratches the back of his neck. “Well, I honestly don’t know how to fix something like this. If it were a tire change, that’d be different, but...”

Butters can’t lift his gaze from the ground. “I just need a ride back home.”

Home. The thought hits him in the gut with cold nausea. He can feel Kenny looking at him, unyielding to the cold, his hands in his pockets and the wind picking up through his sleep-mussed hair. 

“I’ll take you,” Kenny says, nodding towards his truck. “Hop in. We’ll call a tow-truck in the morning. Anything in the back that you need out?”

Bewildered, Butters stares at him, his answer delayed. “Uh, yeah...”

They transfer some of his more valuable possessions into Kenny’s car. Kenny suggests bringing the food as well, and then the blankets because it’s so cold, and then eventually they’re unpacking the entirety of Butters’ supplies under the tarp of the bed of Kenny’s truck and driving it all back the way he had left. He’s completely silent as he sits in the passenger’s seat, and Kenny offers nothing to fill it, focused on the road with one hand on the wheel and the other propping his head up against the window. The windshield wipers sweep dreamily in front of them, swiping snow out of the way as it piles up.

They pass the park, and then the old elementary school, but Kenny keeps going, missing the turn to Butters’ house. Butters sits up.

“What? But my house is–”

“You think I’m taking you back there? Really?” Kenny doesn’t look away from the road. Butters admires his stern, unrelenting profile.

“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” he says, his voice small.

“My place.”

Butters mouth hangs open. Kenny’s apartment. It became a sort of legend ever since the rumor started going around that Kenny had his own place, which was just his older brother’s apartment, to party and hang out. Then, when he was around 17, he made plans to move in, but no one believed that he’d go through with it until the day he turned 18 and sister was completely settled into his old room. He works to help pay rent and utilities, keeping his brother company, while not being too far from Karen. Butters couldn’t be more envious.

They pull into the apartment lot, which is across the street from a Target and Walmart shopping district. This late at night (or early in the morning) the rows and rows of windows and doors give off a threatening eeriness that Butters would never want to intrude upon if Kenny weren’t with him. But they are nice; he’d give anything to live alone in a place like this.

“It’s really nice,” Butters says, stepping out of the car and following Kenny up a short flight of stairs. Kenny’s keys jangle as he shakes the chains.

“I got lucky.” They climb the stairs to the second floor and then step into a hallway for a bit before stopping halfway through; the number on the top says 23. “It’s a really good gig.”

“Will your brother be mad that you’re coming back this late...er, early?”

“Kevin? Nah. He’s a heavy sleeper. Though he might be surprised to see that I brought you home.”

“Huh?” Butters’ anxiety spikes. “Why? I’m not intruding am I?”

“No, that’s...that’s not what I meant.”

Kenny is illuminated by a single hallway light that flickers feebly as he jams the key into the lock. He never finishes his thought, and Butters is too nervous to ask him to, especially since Kenny’s gone a little pink in the cheeks and he might not want to. Butters would never push anyone to do anything they weren’t comfy with, especially someone whose opinion he holds so highly. Kenny opens the door, and Butters follows the way in.

The kitchen light was left on. Kenny doesn’t say anything, heading straight around the corner to what Butters assumes is his bedroom. Butters takes a quick glance around; there’s leftovers sitting on the counter, a few dirty plates and an opened bottle of vodka, but otherwise, it’s pretty tidy.

“Kenny?” he calls out, afraid to step anywhere out of his welcome.

“Come on in,” he says, and Butters heads through the hall to Kenny’s room.

Everything is completely clean. Butters isn’t sure what he expected, but having seen his room at his parent’s house he might’ve anticipated some games lying around, dirty clothes out of the hamper, something, but every sock has its pair and every drawer is closed and dusted. The layout of the furniture is a little unusual, just because there is none; what could be the nightstand is pushed into a corner far from the bed, and the bed itself has no frame or base but sits plush on the floor with all of Kenny’s sheets. It’s completely bare, except for a couple of sexy posters, the least surprising feature of the room.

“U-Um,” he says, holding his hands close to his chest. He brought a bag with his pillow and some sleeping supplies, but he’s not sure what to do with them. The bed looks too small for them both, and Butters distinctly noticed that there was no sofa or futon in the sitting room.

Kenny sheds his parka and collapses onto the mattress, pulling the sheets over himself. “You can sleep here with me. It’s a tight fit but I don’t mind.”

Butters does. He minds very much. “I-I think I’ll sleep out in the living room, it’s carpeted and I have some blankets–”

“There’s no heater out there. You’ll freeze.” Kenny’s eyes are closed and he faces the wall. “I’m too tired to argue about this. You’ve been shivering ever since I picked you up. If you don’t stay warm, you’ll get sick for sure.”

Butters lower lip trembles. It’s scary. Sleeping means dreaming and dreaming is scary. But...he’s tired of being cold. The bed looks so soft, so safe, especially with Kenny in it, a cozy body completely at ease in Butters’ presence. With some dread he sets down his bag and sheds his outer layers and boots, immediately seized by the chill and dropping down to the bed. He hurries to get under the blankets and gives Kenny a wide berth of space, so far on the end of the mattress that he could roll off simply by shifting his leg.

It’s still cold.

The blinds don’t block all the light that comes in from outside. Occasionally a car will pass, shadows sliding across the walls and then fading out. Butters hears Kenny breathing deeply beside him, feels the heat of his back seeping into his own. He’s squeezing his eyes tightly shut, hoping that the harder he presses the faster he’ll fall asleep.

Soon, he hears voices.

Far off ones, like he’s hearing them from another room or downstairs. Their whispers scrape against his eardrums, a sinister, incessant pressure that simmers under the surface of his anxiety. Their volume grows, from an urgent, compressed undertone to a shrill scream that booms through the house. Butters buries himself under his pillow, hoping the sound will be muffled or go away, but it only gets louder. He can hear every word clearly.

They’re wrong, he tries to tell himself over the voices. He’s not worthless. His mom isn’t a whore. His dad doesn’t wish he had a different son, doesn’t wish that he had a different family, doesn’t think that Butters will never contribute anything meaningful to society and will always be an embarrassment–

The door slams open and Butters jumps, wide awake. He listens hard for several minutes, until he realizes that he’s not in his home, and the door to his bedroom didn’t really open. 

“You’re a piece of shit. Fucking useless sack of shit. You and your mother.”

Butters can’t repress a small whimper. He cowers under the sheets, rubbing his hands hard over his cheeks to try and hold back the hot wetness that trickles down them, but it won’t stop. If it were just a dream, maybe the voices would fade more quickly, but the memory of his dad’s spiteful tone won’t leave his head, ringing like a terrible alarm.

“Butters?”

Lord, it keeps getting worse. This is exactly why he wanted to sleep in the living room.

“Sorry, just...had a bad dream.”

The sheets shift around him as Kenny turns. Butters feels his warmth, less than an inch from touching him, but Kenny keeps his distance. “What about?”

“I...” He sniffs, immediately wincing at his own inability to control himself. He’s such a wuss. “I just...I just wanna sleep. But I can’t. It’s cold, and I...keep having nightmares...”

A hand comes down on his forearm. Butters jolts, his sniveling stopping short with his breath.

“You were running away, weren’t you?”

Butters stares at the far wall. It’s too early for the sun to start rising but he knows it will soon. He starts to shiver.

“If you don’t want to talk about it, it’s cool.” Kenny yawns, and Butters feels a puff of it near his ear. They’re so close. “But I’m here if you want to.”

He doesn’t have it in him to respond. Kenny’s hand is heavy on his shoulder, and he knows if he doesn’t address it Kenny never will, so Butters gathers all the courage in him that he has and slips his hand over it.

“Kenny?”

“Yeah?”

Tears fall freely down his cheeks. “Can I stay here for a couple days?”

When Kenny doesn’t answer immediately, Butters takes his other hand and slips it over his mouth to muffle the noises. It’s just sad. He wants to hide, bury himself under the blankets, under snow, suffocating beneath bitter-cold sheets of it until he’s left to crawl out of the pile by himself and walk home wet and shivering only to get sick and yelled at by his parents.

He hates this town and everyone in it. He hates the cold, permanently embedded into his bones, inside his chest, his gelid blood. He hates everything, except for Kenny, who has started to scoot closer, is slipping his hand from Butters’ shoulder to wrap around his waist and pull him against his chest. Kenny’s warmth encases him, melts the snow into the water that gathers on Butters’ pillow.

“You’ve always been such a crybaby,” Kenny murmurs into the tangle of Butters’ hair, “because you hold shit in like this.” He sighs; he could be falling asleep again. Butters focuses on the heart beating slow against his back. “Stay however long you want. I like having you around.”

“You...” Kenny’s words float around in his head, dimming the others. “You do?”

“Mhm.” Involuntarily, maybe, or maybe on purpose, Kenny pulls Butters closer. “You smell like apple juice.”

Butters is too stunned to think of a reply, but when he does, soft breaths tickle down his neck. Kenny’s fallen asleep. Butters smiles to himself.

He’ll tell him what happened in the morning. For now, he indulges in the touch that Kenny has given him, snuggling into his welcome heat.

It’s a lovely moment, or several hours, of peace, until the door to Kenny’s bedroom opens and Kevin finds them wrapped around each other like pieces of tangled string and snoring soundly.

Except Butters had no idea. Kenny tells him about it later, after everything has settled and they’re sitting comfortably in the living area watching cartoons while the storm blankets South Park.

Kenny had looked at his brother, and Kevin looked back, saying nothing. And then he left them to continue sleeping.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” Kenny says over a bowl of cereal. “You definitely needed the sleep.”

“Thank you, Kenny.” Butters smiles, filled with his own warmth. “For everything.”

[coyotebombsquad]

Bikepacking down the California Coast

Words and photos by C.J. Foster

Prologue:

Last April, I was transitioning between jobs and scored nearly two weeks off; enough time to throw together an adventure -- something that would offer a moment to reflect, reset, and prepare for the road ahead.

I set out for the California coast. I rented a car and drove to Crescent City (20 miles shy of Oregon). This is where I would begin my real journey -- pedaling home to San Francisco -- a grand total of 420 miles and 32K of elevation, after all was said and done.

Leaving behind the city, I began to feel a quiet peace settle upon me. It was the sense that a chapter had ended and a new one was beginning. There were big changes to ruminate on, something that journeying through forests helps coax along, but still I was eager, anxious, and nervous about taking on a solo trip of this magnitude.

Day 0 (SF to Crescent City -- 355mi + 100 bonus miles due to rerouting )

Heavy rain was in the forecast; just what California needed to replenish our depleted water table and reservoirs. More roads were washed out with each downpour, serving a deterrent for this bike packing trip. Despite poor conditions, I retrieved my rental car, picked up some last minute provisions, and impulsively purchased a quality point and shoot while on a lunch pitstop at In N Out -- this wouldn’t be a road trip without it.

I crossed my fingers that the rain wouldn’t be too bad or last too long.

While on the road, worst case scenarios played out in my mind and doubts churned in my head. Questions about my fitness levels, on-the-fly bike maintenance, and my safety all nagged at me. I have taken numerous solo trips before, but I was still greeted by familiar doubts. I warded off these old friends and pushed the accelerator, willing this trip into fruition.

A landslide had occurred the night before just North of Leggett, which closed highway 1 (just North of where 101 merged with 1). I thought I could outsmart the landslide and the CHP by taking a route that I found on my phone, but the locals and tow trucks dissuaded me. There were potholes that my rental car wouldn’t negotiate successfully. A CHP officer suggested that I drive back to highway 20 and cutover to highway 5 and back on highway 36 -- an extra 7-8 hours of driving to get around one landslide. I was highly motivated to find an alternate route and was successful! There are some windy gravel mountain roads that cut through Covolo to Zenia off highway 162. They were sketchy, pocked with potholes, and many blind corners had cattle hanging around them. Nearly 4 hours and 135 miles later, I was dropped back onto 101. Just in time for a wild downpour to obscure my visibility nearly entirely for the last two hours of my drive. As the wipers whipped away, there were a few moments that I questioned if I should abort the trip and go find a B&B somewhere to lounge around and take it easy. Where’s the adventure in that though?

I made it to Crescent City after numerous bursts of sketchy downpours and 11 hours of driving. At a cheap hotel, I took the last hot shower that I’d have in several days and drank an IPA to settle all my nerves from the drive.

Day 1 (Crescent City to Clam Beach) -- 75mi/4.2k ft

https://www.strava.com/activities/948298792

When you roll out of bed and see your bike next to you, you know it’s going to be a good day. The storm had ended (for now). I returned the car at the world’s tiniest commercial airport after running a few last minute errands (patch kit and lighter are crucial). A polite and professional looking middle aged woman in a knee high skirt helped check the car back in. As I went to check the mileage a man with a mangled undercarriage came driving back up with a dumbfounded expression -- the cowling of the car was dragging on the ground, making an infernal noise. The rental car woman casually walked back in to grab a pair of tin snips. When she returned, she squatted down and removed the offending piece, then informed the man that he was all set. What service!

From there, I was free, off on my two wheels, fully supported. The day was sunny, dry, and a bit windy, but still gorgeous. The road felt solid under my self-propelled vehicle; my legs marginally ready for the physical challenges ahead. The cliffs along the ocean fell away like they had been cleaved by the great Paul Bunyan himself. The ocean would be my comfort, my well of motivation for the next several hundred miles.

The miles of coastline stretched endlessly in front of me. I rolled along undulating roads that led to tiny coastal towns; nearly forgotten, yet timeless. The forest stood sentry over the towns, over the coast, and over me.  

Several hours of headwinds and roughly 40 miles in, I stopped in Klamath Falls to admire the 40 ft tall Paul Bunyan and Babe the Big Blue Ox. It dwarfed me and my bike. My hunger had built, so I indulged in a plate full of chili fries and a sandwich at a nearby cafe in False Klamath; got to love being a cyclist, you can eat anything and it’s all considered fuel for the next ride. I had been cruising at 13 MPH, slow and steady, and this would be pretty much the fixed speed that I’d be moving at most of the trip.

After lunch, there were a few decent climbs: one up to Prairie Creek Redwoods and another out towards the stunning Patricks Point. A few lagoons loomed in the distance, they distracted me well enough for about 10 miles as I rounded my way to the campground.

I landed in Clam Beach State Campground after deciding to press on passed Patricks Point (my original stopping point for the day). The tent was a small project, as it was my first time pitching this new 1p tent, which proved to be a trivial task. The hunger was driving me to skip the backpacking meal and opt for some pizza at a local joint in McKinleyville. The kids working did not care if I brown-bagged it while eating a few slices in their store -- likely not their first dirtbag cyclist. Four slices and a 22oz of IPA prepped me pretty well for passing out. There was a slow ambling pedal along the airport road that led me back to camp. A few small planes landed during the sunset and I soaked in how light everything felt, nothing was tugging at me or compelling me to do or be anywhere, I was exactly where I needed to be.

Day 2 - Clam Beach Campground to A.W. Way County Park (Mattole Road) -- 75mi/5k ft

https://www.strava.com/activities/949287569 https://www.strava.com/activities/950851373

The first light of the morning woke me and I felt rested. I wanted to get an early start on the morning since rain was in the forecast, but not until afternoon. I planned on covering a fair amount of ground before the rain came (hah). As I packed up, my camp neighbors warmly offered me a cup of coffee, they lived locally and told me they were getting ready for work -- made me reminisce about camping up at Hawk Camp back home during a work night. The kindness of strangers would be a recurring theme during my trip.

Breakfast was eaten on the bike; the convenience of a breakfast burrito and a chocolate milk on the road. It conjures up an image of a train engineer shoveling coal into his engine to keep it chugging along. The morning was beautiful, I mostly pedaled by coastal farmlands and a smattering of small towns. The headwinds were ever-present, but I felt strong nonetheless. I caught up to another cyclist in Eureka who looked like he was out bikepacking with his loaded panniers, I excitedly asked him where he was off to. He was commuting to work and wasn’t on much of a journey. I wouldn’t encounter another cyclist until my last days of riding.

The farm roads gracefully lead me to Ferndale (my halfway point for the day) where I loaded up on provisions. While visiting a grocery store, I absentmindedly left my sunglasses on a rack and left for a pastry and coffee (I retrieved them). A local who had been in the store had noticed me down the street and flatly observed “you didn’t make it very far” when he saw me in front of the bakery. I’ll call that small town humor.

The climb out of Ferndale was absolutely brutal. It felt like hitting a vertical wall and only the powers of levitation would be able to lift me up the ridgeline that I was attempting. I was desperate to move quickly, but humbled by the aggressive grade and the howling winds at the top of the climb. The threat of rain was no longer merely a threat, I donned my rain gear quickly and prayed that I’d stay dry and cool enough to finish out the next 30 miles. From Ferndale, I covered about 4.2k ft in 35 miles. Brutal with packs, brutal without them.

Needle like rain stung my face for over an hour, my amusement during this section quickly changed. A sketchy winding descent led into Capetown, where I lost one of my water bottles and I narrowly missed being crushed under a dump truck’s wheels. The trucker that was just a tad too comfortable with the roads and cyclists on them.

Following the descent into a cove, a local in a green Tacoma stopped ahead of me and dangled a construction high-visibility vest out of his truck window and stated “dude, you need this!” His name was Oliver, and again, strangers with endless kindness had been looking out for me with safety and hydration (Oliver gave me a water bottle to replace mine, it was even alkaline, for sensitive stomachs). My flickering flame was ablaze for the adventurous path again.

A few miles ahead there was the town of Petrolia with a little gem of a bar called White Rose. I saddled up at the bar to wait out the storm. A beer would revive my sense of humor and the locals were entertained by my very presence. Who bikepacks in the rain, they asked? A few randos contributed to a hot shower fund in their own amusement since AW Way Campground had a coin-op hot shower. The kindness of strangers also contributed another gift from Humboldt county too, a special little doobie hand rolled under the bar. Despite the fact that it had only been two days of pedaling, I felt the beginnings of loneliness assuaged by strangers. I was striving to stay open to any experience along this road.

The campsite was a few flat miles from The Rose (as the locals referred to it), I even turned down several ride offers, told them that this was my journey to power. The campground boasted 30 soggy sites, they were all empty, so I had my choice. The hot shower was restorative, a bit of magic for a renewal that I would need for tomorrow.

Day 3 (AW Way Campground to Wright Beach 76mi/10.3k ft via Usal Road)

https://www.strava.com/activities/950851391 https://www.strava.com/activities/951928834

There’s always an odd sense of waking up in a campground without anyone else around; it’s a bit eerie, but also deeply peaceful. Rested, I packed up and hit the road, noticing a new lovely creaking noise my bottom bracket had developed due to all of the rain.

The plan was to take Mattole Road and connect to Usal road despite most people informing me that Usal road was still closed, but I felt that I didn’t have much of a choice since the reroute due to all the highway road closures would climb up and over Garberville and add an extra 70-80 miles (I had no idea how much climbing it would add). The folks from the White Rose had informed me that the Bryceland Market would be a good place to stop for food and road intel.

Still groggy with sleep encrusted eyes, I rounded a bend, and from the shoulder of the road a blur of black streaked ahead and veered into the center of the road and turned around to face me. It was a bull, of sizable proportions! He pawed at the ground as if to feign a charge. This frightened me, but I took comfort in the fact he didn’t have horns, nor did he have testicles (minor thing noted when he ran ahead of me), but I was leery of this 1500lb bulldozer and hoping he wasn’t too aggressive. I stopped about 50 yards away from him, facing him down like it was a standoff (it felt like a David and Goliath faceoff). I first yelled at him, then rang my bell, tossed small rocks in his direction to get him to move out of the road. He wasn’t budging. Then I thought to channel my inner cowboy spirit, and boldly rode towards him, yelling at the top of my lungs “GO ON, GEEEIIT!!”. This magically compelled him to turnaround and he trotted in the direction that I was rolling in. My inner childhood cowboy was giddy and terrified all at the same time. Such power I yielded. The bull veered off the side of the road before we got to a cattle catcher and I was free from my escort/keeper. I pedaled off to safety, and continued binging on serial killer podcasts, such a odd choice for a sojourn on desolate mountain roads.

Honeydew was a good restocking point where I pounded yogurt like it was water. They had a map of the area and informed me that Usal road was still closed, but I should check in with the BLM office in King’s Range. Just outside of Honeydew, there is a massive climb that aggressively stretches up to King Peak. It humbled me. I stopped several times to give my knees a break and to lube my chain. At one mini pitstop, a local named Grant stopped to check in on me, and I informed him that I was ok, and instead of speeding off to his day, he casually chatted with me for a few minutes. I inquired about Usal road, but he didn’t know much about its current state. The next several hours were a virtual elevator of careening ridgelines, towering forests, washed out roads, and serial killer podcasts.

Dropping into Thorn Junction, I crossed paths with Grant again, he was hauling a load in his truck, and chatted with me briefly and offered up an apple juice. I was thankful for the offer, and took him up on it. Each drop was refreshing, the kindness of strangers continued.

The BLM office was down the road another mile. There was one woman with a colleague there, they both heavily advised me not to take Usal, not that it was a fool's errand, but pretty close, saying that I needed a mountain bike or something beefier than my cross bike (on semi slick 32s). They weren’t exactly too far off, but I decided Usal was my best option, considering my current location and what I could physically tolerate (at this point I was 40 miles in and nearly 5k ft climbing).

There was a awkwardly situated cafe in a lumberyard called Caffe Dolce. Their pastries and sandwiches were exceptional. Both the fuel and the rest were a much needed respite. I was surprised at how busy the cafe was. There was a constant stream of people coming out to pick up a sandwich, I surmised that they were all potentially pickers at some of the farms in Humboldt county. I overheard an Aussie gal talk about going back to the farm.

Back on the bike, there was a smell of dank herbal piney resins wafting at me, I was definitely in Humboldt county. To punctuate that point, I was nearly at Usal road, pedaling along fern laden roadways, when a women walking along the road was most certainly on a different plane than I was. She stated everything is beautiful and asked me for a hug, which I complied and listened to her delve into hyper connected beauty and how we’re all one. I was grasping for an understanding of what all she was conveying to me. I pointed her the way that she should continue walking, and hoped that somebody would return her to wherever she had come from. Bizarre.

Usal’s beginning was a formidable muddy clay-like road, deeply rutted and pocked. The mouth of the whale that would swallow me up and eventually spit me out some ~30 miles and 4k ft climbing later onto highway 1. I ignored the closed gate and passed by. There were rollers that climbed and descended into expansive groves, with each descent typically requiring me to dodge pond-like flooded sections of the road. At least 3 cars were abandoned, a Honda Civic had no chance, the two trucks, despite having 4 wheel drive, succumbed to the relentless muck.

I pushed on. I was grinding away at 6-7MPH for the next 6 hours. I had to dig deep and find humor in the pain and to not let all the beauty wane. My nerves were starting to wear and my body was feeling tired of endlessly riding the brakes and carefully choosing my line, which was even harder with a load. The risk was high since both ends of Usal road were closed and I didn’t have any phone reception. A single mechanical issue could ruin the trip, a fall was a different story… actually, I laid the bike down on one slick descent and took a tumble. I was incredibly thankful -- no mechanicals or injuries.

After a few more hours of rocking out (fittingly enough to If These Trees Could Talk) and noting the descending sun, worry began to set in. I wondered if I’d ever get through this seemingly endless road. My strength was waning, but mentally, I was committed to getting through this. After rounding one of the innumerable bends, Usal beach revealed all its glory, just in time for the sunset. This helped to steady my nerves, as I knew there should be a camp nearby. Indeed there was a camp at Usal Beach, but I was pumped and ready to bid this road farewell, so I cranked on into the night. I climbed another 2k feet and rode another 16 miles in the dark. Thankfully, I had my headlight that was charged, but unfortunately, my taillight died on me. There were just a few cars that passed me (it was 9pm on a Thur night with a highway closed just North of me, hence why I decided to commit to Usal route).

Haggard and nearly broken, I arrived at Westport-Union Campground. I had been on my bike for nearly 15 hours that day. The campsite was on a bluff, the chill winds were refreshing, and helped to cool my nerves. What a day.

Day 4 Westport-Union Landing to Russian Gulch (28mi/1.5k ft)

https://www.strava.com/activities/951928593 https://www.strava.com/activities/953575322

There���s a smile that creeps across your face knowing that you accomplished something that most people wouldn’t dare to attempt, it’s not like I rode a 24 hour endurance race, but it still something to take some level of pride in the accomplishment. As the sun crept up and the ocean sang it’s morning chorus, I couldn’t help but reflect on the tough day; my body was spent. Thankfully, there was a short road to a recovery day, as I was meeting the rest of the Coyote Bomb Squad in Russian Gulch for two chill nights of camping.

I pedaled through Westport, a quirky little coastal town (more like a hamlet), with a tiny cemetery situated on the bluffs and some funky whale mosaic fountain. I savored my breakfast sandwich from a small market run by sweet earthy ladies and then slowly rolled towards Fort Bragg. Coming into Fort Bragg, I stopped in the local coffee shop before hitting the local bike shop, Fort Bragg Cyclery, and chatted with the owner, Mark. Later, I picked up some Teknu since I had managed to hit some poison oak on Usal road. After scarfing on the best pizza in town, Piaci Pizza, and sharing a surprise beer with Mark (bike shop owner), I cruised off to the campsite to meet up with my friends.

Several days on the road riding solo can be a great time for self-reflection and really stoke the fires of your inner hobo, but there are those moments when you’re inundated with gratitude for good friends and their adventurous spirits. I was happy I didn’t have to ride any further and more importantly, elated to be around the warmth of friends and the warmth of my first campfire of the trip. The sunset on the bluffs was of epic proportions.

Day 5 Russian Gulch Exploring, Canoeing, and Hardcore Chilling

Nothing is sweeter than sleeping in and waking up to the smell of hot buttermilk blueberry pancakes cooked on cast iron. Resting, chowing, and some mellow canoeing was on the agenda for the day. We gawked at the ultra-marathoners running through our camp; a funky route, and oddly enough, the canoeing location was the finish line.

Catch a Canoe and Bicycle Too was a quirky shop filled with collectors bikes suspended in the rafters, a series of beautifully crafted “toy” rockets, which looked like they could deliver at least a marmot to outer space, all run and owned by an idiosyncratic shopkeeper. He seemed half-wizard, half rocket scientist, and likely was the most intriguing person that I had encountered while on the trip. His knowledge of photography and rockets was astounding, and he ran a bike shop and a canoe rental business too. And these weren’t just any canoes, these were real works of functional art, just like one would imagine with a beautifully crafted bike, these were easily the most beautiful water-worthy canoes I had ever seen, not to mention the fastest; replete with outriggers for stability. I can’t recommend this experience enough; anyone can manage to enjoy a languid paddle up a gentle river in one of these. On the river, there’s a calm that’s induced that coaxes one to slow down to drink in all the fresh air and sights. Even a handful of seals with pups laid around without a care in the world. A few hours worth of this and it’s like hitting reset on your body. Just mellow; nowhere to be, but right where you are.

The remainder of the day was just chilling with friends, scarfing yet another burrito, and roaming around the bluffs followed by an epic paella cooked by the birthday boy himself, Youngblade.

Day 6 Russian Gulch to Bodega Bay (102mi/6.5k ft)

https://www.strava.com/activities/955648904

These are the types of days that most riders dream about: a good deal of rest, a pancake breakfast, and an epic tailwind that would leave most vikings envious. Despite the fact that the option to hop in a car was there, I opted to pedal the remaining miles back home in 2 days. This might have been one of my favorite days of riding. The hills were fast rolling, each corner plunged down toward the ocean and climbed back up along a coastal bluff. The farmlands added to the serene and bucolic views that elicited a smile. Such a beautiful coastline, such a simple life that calls you to standstill, reflect on a slower pace of nature and the simplicity of it.

Each descent propelled me closer to home and I began to squirm a little thinking about joining the fray again. I pushed on.

Point Arena is a small town that boasts having one of the oldest lighthouses on the coast. It’s a cute and quaint little pitstop close enough for a number of motorcycle riders to reach it from the Bay. A weird sight: hippy/coastal/biker community. California is filled with contradictory juxtapositions, but that’s one of the reasons I love this state. After a solid lunch, I caught up to a crew of riders bikepacking, the only legit riders I had seen! The trio were Canadians heading down from, well, Canada and going down to LA. I was impressed with the amount of beer they were loaded with and sad to turn them down to join them. I had hoped to finally exchange some road stories with fellow riders. There was a brief stop at Salt Point with them, but I felt great from that luscious tailwind, even after 75 miles, and decided to push on to Bodega Bay, about 30 miles down the road.

I rolled into Bodega Bay around 6pm and treated myself to a quality glass of wine and a massive fillet of halibut. So perfect, so nourishing. The campsite at the dunes was a windy one, and made it challenging to sleep despite wearing earplugs. No wonder it’s a favorite spot of windsurfers. Some peculiar dreams crept in that night. Maybe the corporate lifestyle or the dread of the routine that was right around the corner.

Day 7 (Bodega Bay to Larkspur to SF 65mi/3k ft)

https://www.strava.com/activities/956749405

The morning dew hung tightly to everything in sight, it limited my vision, and would eventually morph into a full rain. Undeterred, I knew a hot bath and a cold beer was at the end of my road, but first, I needed a solid breakfast. Estero Cafe delivered. Seated just outside of Marshall, it’s a quaint little organic farm to table type of place, but felt more like a cafe that you might encounter in anytown USA with the local sheriff stopping in and a few regulars just picking up their morning joe. The mist had built up to a sprinkle after I finished my last bite, so it would be a drizzly ride home. Another 60 miles of meandering through dairy farmlands and verdant hills. A  host of classic porsches from the 50s zipped along the same roads, they respected me and I certainly marveled at their classic contours.

Fairfax is always a favorite destination of mine, as many bikers can attest. There is a shared love for bikes in this upper-crust hippy town (seemingly contradictory). Gestalt was on my mind, after collecting rain in my shoes for the last 50 miles, I was ready for a beer and a sausage. Both were savored. I felt lonely and wanted to share my journey with someone like I had done the previous year after a longer tour, but nobody extended me the pleasantries. A tired and weariness settled in from the week of riding, yet there was a lingering satisfaction from knowing what I had accomplished.

I opted to take the ferry back to save a few miles and to soak up the bay and the bridge from a different perspective. The quiet Monday afternoon in the city made it feel like a distant stranger, as the streets were quiet. The city towered over the mouse in a familiar concrete cornfield. It felt good to be home; an appropriate way to close out one chapter and start a new one. The cycle continues, as does the adventure, it always will.

[simplemoneyman-blog]

The Things You Own End Up Owning You

More and more I’m starting to believe the more we have, the more we spend on maintenance, repairs, replacements and excuses to buy even more things.  For example, several months ago I sold and extra car I had. When asked about it, I said to my friend that I didn’t really need and it was somewhat controlling my spending via random expenses.   When I owned it, I had to get an oil change for a car I wasn’t even driving that much because it was past due and I didn’t want to damage anything in the engine.  So I felt like it owned me and I didn’t like that feeling. If we go through our home, slowly and methodically, I’m sure we can find several things that we can donate, sell, or just throw away because we may be hoarding onto them; perhaps for no good reason. The point is to let go of things that we think we may like, but instead the reality is those things actually own us.  

Sold an Extra Car 

    It felt like my car was controlling me and I wasn’t in control. It was a 2009 Mercedes C-300 4-matic. Fortunately, I didn’t need to or get any major work done to it for the almost two and a half years I had it. There were just oil changes and a couple of new tires. During the time I owned it, I got an offer in the mail for free wiper blades from the dealer. I knew that if I went to the dealer, sure they would put on the wiper blades but they’d also give me an estimate of all the additional work I should get done.   And sure enough they did and it didn’t seem that critical to me. One of the items they recommended to replace and I kid you not was the HORN on the car! The horn was working fine, but according to them, it had a “dull” sound and should be replaced – are you kidding me?! Nevertheless, guess what?   It was at this point that I decided I don’t really need this car,  I don’t really want this car, I don’t really want this car to own me, I want to own myself (wait does that make sense). Anyway, so I sold the car invested the proceeds in an ETF and never looked back! six months later, I’ve made over a couple hundred in dividends, in contrast to probably a couple hundred or more I would have lost in depreciation and probably some other kind of maintenance.   A study mentioned in Time magazine suggests that material possessions may be obsessed if you lack love from others and for others in your life. It made sense to me as it stated “when someone suffers from “social deficits” (i.e., loneliness), he’s more likely to grow attached to possessions. This sort of love may, in turn, lead to further “deficits,” causing a chicken-egg situation for those in the throes of materialistic love.” It’s interesting because one cause mentioned is that you can control the material possession, but instead unknowingly it ends up controlling you!  

Other Items Donated (hello tax deduction), Sold, or Straight Up Trashed

  Donated – Two large trash bags of gently used clothes Donated – Two VCR/DVD combos Donated – Brand New Laser Printer (I already have a printer). Sold – Entertainment Table (5 years old and I got $10 more than what I originally paid) Trashed – Three worn out suitcases   One item I currently have on Craigslist and Offer-up is my leather couch set. I’ve had it for more than 5 years, didn’t buy the best quality I’ll admit and now it’s falling apart, literally. I’ve patched it up as mentioned above and am trying to sell it.  But at the same time, since I’ve patched it up, it doesn’t look half bad, is still totally functional (can still recline to almost 180 degrees) and comfortable. Usually we put a red blanket on top to hide this too. Take a look at this picture (back and head rest on the right side):  

  Trashed Useless Things From The Attic

  Yes! This was one of my goals for 2017 and I can proudly say it’s done! I ended up throwing away an old bike, some beat up chairs, three suitcases (where either the handle or one of the wheels broke off), and a few empty boxes that I didn’t need (e.g., big Dyson vacuum box which I bought years ago had the box just in case). I’ll say that it definitely feels a bit liberating to get rid of things and simplify your home a bit. Now that I don’t have it, the area is nice and uncluttered and it makes my mind feel a bit nice and uncluttered well.   Recently I came across a very interesting video from the Minimalists. They talk about how less in life equals being more happy and rich in a sense of fulfillment. Check it out:   Even though I’m not quite at the minimalist level, I do see how having less can translate into happiness. Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich authors of Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes discuss the conundrum of do we own our money or does our money own us? Particularly in terms of spending, they go into the psychological reasons as to why we spend on so many material things and decide to love them as illustrated in the endowment effect and then the logical reasons for why we shouldn’t or at least scale back a little bit. So is there something you value so much that it may be controlling you a bit? Have you freed yourself from a material possession and as a result felt liberated?   The Things You Own End Up Owning You – Tyler Durden, Fight Club   __________________________________________________________________________

I use  because (1) it’s free, (2) it tracks all of my accounts and overall net worth, (3) my account balances automatically update, (4) it shows how my investments are diversified and allocated in various sectors, and (5) can use built-in tools like “Investment Checkup” to get….wait for it…free personalized advice!   Read the full article

[swedenandbeyond]

June 27- June 29 AM

We left our hotel mid-morning because we had to wait for an electronic store to open at 10 a.m. to buy a few more days extension on our cell phone plan which expires on June 29th. If there's one thing negative to say about Scandinavia, it's the business hours and attractions hours. Hardly anything opens before 10 a.m. and most everything closes at  4 p.m. That's a good deal if you're working, but not so good if you are sightseeing breakfast is over normally over by 8:30. Breakfast last longer in most hotels but we usually are finished eating by 8:30 so we have an hour and a half or more to wait to visit anything. The upside is the grocery store stay open longer hours in Scandinavia and any other country been in except Spain. Not a lot of need for us to go to grocery stores but we do like our snacks with cocktails and a good piece of chocolate in the evening. Anyway, we had a long and boring drive through some pretty country, but it's like driving across Montana, Idaho, Kansas etc. The speed limits go up and down through all the little towns and my GPS monitors the speed limits that show up on my dashboard. However, sometimes the GPS doesn't register the increase in speed as you leave a little towns. I'm not sure if it's recording all the times I'm above the legal speed limit or not. Our Swedish friend says that big brother is not that big in Sweden and I can tell you most people do not obey the speed limits unless there's a camera in the vicinity. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned that before, but I was stuck on 70 as my legal speed limit but the real speed limit was 100 kilometers per hour. People don't like to be behind a slow car anywhere in the world. We found a nice hotel in downtown Ostersund. The building was built in 1882, as we have been told, as a theater with a very fine balcony area. In 1992 Best Western turned it into a hotel. The building looks like it did in the 1800's with some updates. There are a lot of Oriental rugs in the lobby of the theater and the boths are covered in velvet with a lot of overstuffed chairs typical of the times. Architecturally it is very nice and Elizabeth is very happy in these surroundings. The staff, as usual, is very helpful and barring any bad weather we will be visiting an outdoor museum depicting life from the late 1700’s through 1956. Then we'll visit a small island in the big lake to see the northernmost runestone in the Sweden. Sometimes you just get lucky. We walked over to the island to see the rune stone and back to the museum this morning. We got a good long walk in about two and a half miles from hotel to rune stone and to the museum. it was supposed to rain today and it started raining at 11:30. I hate it when the weather man is right. We had a wonderful time touring the outdoor museum it's all beautiful sights. We entered the outdoor museum and started wandering around. We ended up at a bus stop near a 1956 Shell service station mock-up. I’ve got to say service station was pretty accurate as far as I was concerned. I went inside the station and they had the old quart oil can spouts that you shoved into the can to put the oil in your car. The garage had authentic antique 56 Volvo and a old motorized bicycle. As I was leaving, a lady drove up in an old Volvo with a shell service station attendant uniform. We got on the bus to take a tour of the museum. While we were waiting, the bus driver gave us tutorial on the bus. He was in costume and by law had to wear certain emblems on his hat and buttons on his jacket. His entire uniform was spelled out in the regulations for bus drivers. The only thing he could change was the color of his tie. The chassis was a 1924 Model T but the body was built in Sweden in 1925. The motor has been converted to a late model Volvo and had an automatic transmission. Everything else was original, even to the manual wiper blade and The flipper turn signals that popped up on the outside of the bus. This bus was used to transport people between towns and it was restricted to 20 km per hour. But it only took 5 hours to traverse the distance between two towns that took two days in a horse and wagon. The museum found the bus being used as a weekend cabin outside Ostersund and there had been a stove installed in the right side of the front windshield. The door was on the left side because until 1967 Sweden drove on the left side of the road. They completely changed over one weekend and according to the bus driver everything went very well. We got off at the first stop to go visit in 1942 logging camp that might have a military officer walking around in the area. I found the logging camp and it was the real deal. There was a bunk along the back wall that had places for 16 people to sleep, I repeat, a bunk it was just a long platform for people to sleep. The two guys in the building we're cooking on the stove in the middle of the building. They were making fry bread in canola oil. They completely acted it out a scenario that they were in 1942 during the war. They could not have bacon because it wasn't available at that time. They were there harvesting timber to provide heat and fuel for the surrounding area because no cold or oil could be shipped into Sweden. A Swedish military officer came in to talk with us. Again he played the role of a 1942 military officer. He asked where we came from and we said Oklahoma. He said my how did you get here in a really inquisitive fashion. We had a long discussion about the military, the war and what Germany had done in Sweden and Norway. I said we will be leaving on July 6th. He said how we get across the Atlantic in 1942? There are wolf packs of German submarines sinking ships. I said I had a secret weapon he said “oh my, are you a spy”. I said I have a time machine and we will be okay. As you can imagine we had a much longer conversation and we got to taste the fry bread that none of the other visitors got to taste. It was a very enlightening visit and we're very impressed that the role players stuck completely to their role. We left and went to the lineman's Cottage which the soldier and his wife owned before he got drafted. It's too much to go into detail here, but he had an actual wife and family there and they even had wedding pictures  on the piano in the living room. I mean the Swedes really do the reality show up right. There was also an indoor exhibit of life in Scandinavia going back 8000 years. I didn't take a lot of pictures in the indoor museum, because we seen a lot of that already. We walked back to the hotel in the rain about a mile and a quarter. It was not too bad because it was not windy and not too cold. We decided to have dinner in the hotel restaurant and ordered the Caesar salad with chicken. The salad came out with two chicken breast slices on the top. We were used to having the chicken sliced. When I took my chicken to slice it, I noticed it wasn't quite done. Let's put it this way, it was so uncooked if I threw it on the floor it was spongy enough to bounce back up to me. The waiter and waitress were aghast when they saw the chicken and took it back to be cooked or bring us new chicken. We kept the salad and picked at it because she said it would take 8 minutes for the chicken to be cooked. We weren't in a hurry, but they brought out a whole new salad with cooked chicken that we chowed down on. It was really good and afterwards we spoke to the waitress Jessica and waiter John. Jessica took us to see the stage in the Opera House. She is a dancer and gets to perform on the stage. Looks like a mini Brady house. She got John to turn on the lights so we can take a picture of the original Chandelier from the 1800s. We talked about where we were from and what we are doing.  She asked for the name of our blog because she was going to look it up. We do meet the nicest people and we invited them both to visit us in Tulsa if they ever come to America. The sun came out about 5 and it's very windy so we hope the weather will stay dry with a week and a few days to go on our trip. We tried to change our flight to an earlier time again but we were unsuccessful. Not worth the trouble now.

I'm tired of dictating so I'm going to wrap this up and get it on the blog.

June 29 AM We're headed southwest In the direction of Oslo by way of Lillehammer. We have 3 days to get to Oslo and are not sure how will fill those 3 days. One mountain town we wanted to go to that was an old copper mining center is going to have a high temperature of 45 today. We're going to pass on that and try to find a warmer place to spend the night. We hope you enjoy the pictures and I promise some videos soon.

[anodyne-sunflower]

The Yearbook (Part 2)-High School series

A/N: It’s here! Part 2, turtle doves. I love writing this stupid fic, all because I had a whack ass dream about Balem being a dick to Newt in school…oy. Anyway, I know Marius has an English accent lol but for drama sake, he’s got a French one in this. Use your imagination. Also, if you requested to be a teacher in this, I will slowly (try) to introduce you. That being said, I’m not basing any of their actions off y’alls personality. That’s too much work, and I’m lazy…cut me a break. So, it’s name only haha. Enjoy!

MOOD MUSIC: Feel it still by Portugal. The Man

***

You threw your backpack onto the table, pulling out a chair and taking a seat as you looked around the almost empty library. No other students plagued the aisles of books, or extended their stay on the empty computer desks. It was how you enjoyed the library, quiet and devoid of all other life. Save for your best friend, who was busy burying his nose into another wildlife book to pay much attention to your topic of conversation.

“Newt!”

The freckled boy glanced up, blinking at you stupidly before smiling. “Sorry, did you say something?”

“Never mind…” You sighed into your jacket sleeve, restlessly leaning back and forth in your chair as you watched the clock tick by. School wasn’t entirely awful, but in the realm of activities, you’d much rather be sleeping at this ungodly hour. “I am not looking forward to drama class. Why is that even important? I have no use for acting classes…”

“Perhaps you should’ve taken biology.” Newt mumbled nonchalantly, flipping the page and highlighting parts he found particularly interesting.

“I am, but…wait,” You fell forward into the table, hands slamming into the surface and scaring the other student from his reverie of animals. “Did you not sign up for drama class? First period? With Ms. Derboven…?”

Newt stared pathetically at you, a sudden dark cloud emerging over his messy head of hair. You knew that look all too well, you had been victim to it many times in your friendship. That guilty smile, that nervous laugh…it was just another blow to your already annoyed mood.

“Newton Artemis Fido Scamander,” you threatened between gritted teeth, leaning closer to your friend. Your proximity caused a flush of red to sweep along his cheeks, and he lifted his book to cover the obvious sign of nervousness. “So help me god if you didn’t-“

“I swear it was not intentional…” he attempted to soothe your anger, still keeping that sheepish grin on his features. He assumed it would make it all go away, as it usually did. But, you only glared deeply at him, getting closer until your noses were touching and he had no choice but to sit silent and listen. Not that it was difficult for him, your perfume and entrancing eyes were enough to gain his focus.

“Newt, I don’t want to take that class alone! They say the teacher is eccentric and expects you to perform for her the very first day! I don’t know how to act! I’m not even sure I know how to create art…I’m gonna die…that’s it…my social life is now null and void and I will forever be known as the girl who fucked up her monologue.”

“That’s a tad dramatic, don’t you think?” Newt cleared his throat, taking his chance to move away from you while you wallowed in your self pity.

“What’s dramatic is leaving your best friend to endure a full hour and a half of drama class.” Perhaps you were being a bit of a whiner, but facing courses without anyone you knew was always a rough situation. One you didn’t want to deal with senior year.

“I don’t believe dramatic fits that sentence-“

“There you are, Newt!”

The two of you looked up, your eyes falling upon a young man running over to you both. He was dressed like a complete hipster, one you’d find on some Instagram post about charcoal ice cream or what not. His fedora tilted sloppily to the side, giving him a very relaxed look that was only overshadowed by his striking red hair. He certainly knew how to gain attention.

“Oh, hello…” Newt dropped his book to the table, watching as this boy took a seat next to him and began going on about money and drawings. None of it made sense to you, and you sat there completely befuddled by his sudden appearance.

“So, I kind of need the money now…any chance you can pay?” The red head held his hand out, a huge smile on his face when Newt fished through his pockets and handed him some crumpled up bills.

“That should be sufficient.”

“Thank you, I need new supplies…”

“Um,” You interjected, nudging Newt on the arm to introduce you to this new kid. He looked faintly familiar, but it was hard to forget someone with his looks and hair. So you imagined he didn’t make a huge impression the first time, if you ever met him before that is. “Newt?”

Newt, glad for the distraction from your anger, held his hand out towards the red head and quickly blurted out an introduction. As if he didn’t really see the point in doing so. “That’s Jack. He offered to do some drawings for my book I’m writing.”

It dawned on you then, the red hair, the somewhat messy tie. You had seen him before, he was a frequent flyer in the principal’s office, although his offenses were of a lesser degree than the resident bad boy, Eddie. “You’re the one who makes those really amazing murals, right? On the gymnasium, and men’s bathroom!”

Jack hadn’t been paying much attention to you or Newt, he was busy counting the money and figuring out what to purchase with it. But, the moment your melodic voice hit his ears, he nearly froze in his actions. With a surprised expression he glanced up, green eyes widening when he saw you. He could count on one hand the number of girls he found attractive at this school, because the fact was, you were the only one he found charming. Every other girl was so caught up in their looks or social lives it grated on his nerves. There was something refreshing about you though, a trait he wasn’t yet knowledgeable about but, he felt it.

You pursed your lips, eyeing him strangely while he just stared. The silence built to a level that even gained Newt’s attention, and with a curious glance he turned to his friend.

“Jack-“

Before he could get another word out, Jack leaned forward, a glint of wonder in his eyes as he looked you over. “Can I draw you?”

It was an odd request, one you didn’t expect to receive today. To say you were flattered though, would be an understatement. A soft blush formed on your features, a smile curling along your lips as you giggled nervously. “I, uh-“

Newt watched the exchange, somewhat annoyed, but otherwise keeping his mouth shut. He didn’t care for the way Jack looked at you, it was reminiscent to the way you eyed Stephen earlier. A hint of arousal, and longing that only made the animal lover jealous. Try as he might, Newt wasn’t very adept at burying his feelings. “Stop asking everyone to let you draw them.”

“How else am I supposed to practice?”

“Perhaps you should do your art assignments.”

“What a waste of time. Art isn’t something you can schedule or direct…” The entire time he spoke, his eyes fixated on you and only you. It was as if he was already sketching you into his mind, taking every lovely detail and canvassing it into his memories. “It has to be free, spontaneous…”

There was something in the way he spoke that made your heart flutter, like the very passion he conveyed could be felt in his words. It was mesmerizing, and you nearly toppled into his spell if not for Newt interrupting him.

“Jack,” It was when he reached out to touch you that Newt had enough, and with a sigh he held his book up, blocking the artist’s wandering hand. “Sorry, but shouldn’t you finish your painting in the gym?”

The switch went off in Jack’s head, and he rose quickly from his chair, giving a quick farewell before taking off in a rush towards the doors. You smiled at him, a thoughtful look on your face when you considered your observation carefully.

“You know,” you paused, eyes following the retreating back of the talented student. “If it wasn’t for the red hair, I’d say he could be your twin, Newt.”

Newt glanced up from his book, blinking at you skeptically before looking towards Jack. He raised his eyebrow for a second, before pursing his lips and scoffing at the notion. “Absolutely not.”

Before you could think of a single snappy remark, the bell rang, indicating the next five minutes should be spent getting to class. An audible groan flew from your lips, the dread of drama class becoming far too real now. You wanted to drag Newt along with you, but taking him from his beloved science classes was too cruel to entertain.

“Would you like me to accompany you there?”

“No, don’t worry. I’ll survive.”

Newt felt awful about the change in classes, but his counselor was adamant he take courses geared towards his interests. It would help in college, and he had to admit it was a smarter plan than wasting his time watching the drama kids reenact their favorite Shakespeare play.

“If you say so, Y/N…”

You hummed back to him, throwing your bag over your shoulder and sending a wave of goodbye as you walked out the library and into your horrible hour and a half fate. The walk to first period was uneventful, save for the nasty look some girl gave you. You weren’t aware of her dispute with you, but the faint whisper of ‘Balem’ was heard as you passed by. If you were to venture a guess, she was not overly fond of the way you interacted with him this morning. Every girl here was swooning over the rich man, constantly leaving letters in his locker or on his windshield. It was a dim-witted attempt to get his attention, but he rarely ever read the love notes. On one occasion you even saw him use his wipers to release the perfume scented letters from his precious car. Yet, in spite of his cruelty, they still flocked to him like moths to a flame.

“Ow!” The rough material of someone’s jacket pushed into your forehead, making you flinch back and grumble about small hallways. Why Balem’s mother couldn’t pull her purse strings for a bigger building was beyond you. “Watch it!”

“Easy there, darlin’.” An amused chuckle was all you needed to realize who it was, and you reluctantly moved your hand away. View now obscured by the devilish grin of Eddie Kreezer. “Where you off to in a hurry?” He was already pulling a cigarette from his jacket pocket, lighter hidden in his cowboy hat as the staff walked by. You envied his devil may care attitude, but you didn’t need to be caught with him today.

“To class, you idiot. Where you should be going.”

“Tsk, didn’t your momma ever teach you to be nice?” He teased, lighting his smoke and blowing some of it into your face.

“You’re one to talk!”

Eddie was always amused at your temper, but that was due to him being one of the few people who could bring out that spark of anger. It was amusing and quite frankly, hot to him. “Damn, sweetheart. What? Daddy didn’t love you enough as a kid? Is that where all this misdirected rage comes from?” He laughed heartily, pushing one finger into your forehead to keep you away as you launched your fists at him. It was a weak attempt to defend yourself, and it only made the cowboy laugh harder until you gave up. “I’ll be your daddy if you want.” He had the gall to wink, to flirt amidst all this teasing like you were just going to cave under his southern wiles. It fueled that fire of fury inside you, and admittedly was just a bit charming…which only made you angrier.

“You-“

“Ah, ah, ah!” Eddie easily trapped you into the lockers, smirking down at your expression of discontent. “Daddy don’t like the attitude, darlin’.”

The last straw, that was it, and with all your strength you kneed Eddie in the stomach, taking his momentary lapse of judgement as a sign to run away. The last bell had rung, and with the halls now clearing you took the chance to turn back to him, hands balled into fists as you yelled, “And for the record you’re too young to be a daddy!”

The cowboy glanced up, a huge smirk now forming on his lips as he laughed. You figured he’d finally lost it, the recreational use of drugs eventually killing off his last brain cells. That was until you heard your name, a huge blush going head to toe when you realized who was behind you. With a stiff posture, you turned, growing redder when Stephen came into view. He looked confused, green eyes darting from you to Eddie with a hint of worry.

“Are you alright?”

“I-“ you couldn’t form a proper sentence, and in your embarrassment the only helpful thought that came was to run off into the halls. So with a quick mumble of farewell, you brushed passed the athlete and somehow found your way to the theatre. Life could be dramatically unfair sometimes, and having to say such a stupid thing in front of your crush was probably on the top ten list of don’ts. Lamenting over your actions did no good though, and with a troubled scoff you slowly opened the drama room doors. All eyes fell on you then, the piercing ones of your teacher among them. It sent chills up your spine, and even though they all saw you, you still attempted to sneak across the stools lined up to the stage.

“How good of you to join us.”

You fell into the stool, trying to ignore Ms. Derboven’s irritated glare. Thankfully, another student began to sing softly on stage, taking her attention elsewhere. She was positively thrilled when the student sang, like the world was suddenly brighter for it. In your mind, it was a simple distraction, but the pining sighs of women made you finally look towards the center of the auditorium. A tall, handsome student was on stage, crooning out his rendition of a Les Miserables song. Something about empty chairs and tables, not that you knew any of it, musicals weren’t exactly your hobby. But, you welcomed the talent he displayed. If only to have your teacher preoccupy herself with his enchanting voice.

“Isn’t he charming?”

You sank back into the air, trying not to fall from your stool as this girl leaned far too close to you. She had pretty green eyes, her blonde hair set into intricate curls that seemed to have taken hours to do. You didn’t recognize her from anywhere, and with a French accent you wondered if she had any relation to the new boy singing up there.

“Um-”

“Oh, no need to answer. I already know you agree.”

She giggled, hand on her cheek as she sighed happily while eyeing the handsome student on the stage. Drama wasn’t your forte, and if it wasn’t for the insane obligation to take an elective you’d be far from here. But, you humored her affections, eyes darting towards the stage and watching as the other French student recited his lines. He was rather talented at it, even more when he broke into song again. Even if that made it feel awkward to be in here. All the girls, and possibly even the teacher seemed entranced by his voice now, like he suddenly became the first male siren in history.

In your musings, you hadn’t realized he stopped, all the girls clapping and cheering their hearts out to him. Some of the boys reluctantly did so, more than one of them grumbling about how unfair it was to have so many good looking guys at this school. You had to agree there, lately it seemed like an abundance of them came crawling from out of the woodwork. With a defeated breath, you started clapping along as well, looking towards the clock on the wall and praying it would move faster. At least this new kid took up a good chunk of time for you.

“Come on…” you pleaded silently with the clock, as if that would somehow aid your impatience.

“Cosette, would you like a turn?”

You watched as the girl you were speaking to got up, clearly the one known as Cosette. She clapped happily, getting off the stool and heading to the stage to begin her own monologue. You envied her bravery, but the puppy love look on her face made you roll your eyes. She had it bad for that other guy, and judging by his smile he seemed somewhat interested in her in return.

“May I sit here?”

His French accent was enamoring, but you weren’t about to fall head over heels just because he seemed exotic.

“Sure.”

“Thank you.” He smiled politely, eyes constantly moving to look at you. “I’m Marius Pontmercy, and you are?”

At his greeting, you turned to him, offering a smile as you held your hand out to shake his. Only he seemed more intent on being a true gentleman. With a delicate touch he took your hand, twisting it around and laying a sweet kiss to the back of it. The French truly did inspire romance…

“I’m…um,” The words would not come out, and unfortunately making a fool of yourself seemed to be a reoccurring theme this school year.

“Won’t you tell me?” Marius smiled widely, chuckling when you looked away from him. You seemed on edge, and he had no intention to make it worse for you. “It’s alright if you wish-“

“Y/N.” You spat it out harshly, your nerves making you agitated enough to seem rude. Lucky for you, Marius took no offense to your curt tone.

“It’s a beautiful name…” He said quietly, eyes transfixed on you from the start.

There was a notable tension in the air, one that confused you greatly. But, the longer he gazed into your eyes the more you felt your chest cave to the attractive French student. In just a few short hours, you found life at eighteen proving difficult already. How on earth could you navigate this school year with all these men being distractions? Stephen was always your source of affection, and even though you still held strong feelings for him…you found yourself hooked on these new characters. Maybe Newt was right, sexual maturity had officially peaked and you hated every minute of it.

***

A/N: Alright, tell me!! Who do you ship Reader with so far?! Hope you liked it! There’s nothing greater than writing a trashy cliche high school fic. Takes me back, my loves…takes me back. Feedback appreciated! ❤️

[patriotsnet]

Did Republicans Riot After Obama Was Elected

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/did-republicans-riot-after-obama-was-elected/

Did Republicans Riot After Obama Was Elected

Undocumented Kids Are Saved By Obamas Executive Order Daca Which Would Put A Halt To Deportation For Those Whod Entered The Country Before Age 16 And Yet In A Bid To Get The Gop To Come Over To His Side On Immigration Reform The President Has Also Deported A Record 15 Million People In His First Term

A Family Caught in Immigration Limbo

When Belsy Garcia saw her mother’s number appear on her iPhone on the afternoon of June 15, she felt what she calls the “uncomfortable fluttering” sensation in her chest. She knew that daytime calls signaled an emergency. The worst one had come the previous year, when her sister told her ICE agents had placed their father in federal custody.

Garcia was attending Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, when her father was marched out of her childhood home. As an undocumented immigrant — like both of her parents, who are from Guatemala — she couldn’t qualify for loans. She financed her ­education through scholarships and a stipend she earned as a residential assistant. Now she wondered if her mother was calling to say her father had been deported, which might force her to leave school to become the family’s breadwinner.

But this call was different. “Go turn on the television,” Garcia’s mother said. “You’re going to be able to work, get a driver’s license.”

Onscreen, President Obama was announcing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Undocumented immigrants who had arrived in the United States as children could apply for Social Security numbers and work permits. Garcia qualified: Her parents had brought her to this country when she was 7 years old. DACA transformed her into a premed student who could actually become a doctor. “It was like this weight was lifted,” she says. “All of that hard work was going to pay off.”

In The Next Hundred Days Our Bipartisan Outreach Will Be So Successful That Even John Boehner Will Consider Becoming A Democrat After All We Have A Lot In Common He Is A Person Of Color Although Not A Color That Appears In The Natural World Whats Up John Barack Obama White House Correspondents Dinner

And Then There Were Three

The first woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court did so in 1880. It would take another 101 years for a woman to sit on that bench rather than stand before it. Even then, progress was fitful. Over the 12 years that Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg served together, their identities evidently merged; lawyers regularly addressed Ginsburg as “Justice O’Connor.” When O’Connor retired in 2006, she left the faux Justice O’Connor feeling lonely. Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned of something far more alarming: What the public saw on entering the court were “eight men of a certain size, and then this little woman sitting to the side.” They might well represent the most eminent legal minds in America. But there was something antiquated, practically mutton-choppy, about that portrait.

How many female justices would be sufficient? Nine, says Justice Ginsburg, noting that no one ever raised an eyebrow at the idea of nine men.

Seal Team Six Kills Osama Bin Ladenraiding His Secret Compound In Abbottabad Pakistan While Obama And His Top Advisers Watch A Live Feed Of The Mission From The White House Situation Room The Picture Of The Assembled Becomes The Last Supper Of The Obama Era

Poop Feminism

For me, it’s one moment. All the bridesmaids have come to the fancy bridal shop to see Maya Rudolph try on wedding dresses. This should be a familiar scene: The bride emerges from the changing room and … This is the dress! The friends clap. The mother cries. Everyone is a princess. Go ahead and twirl!

But when the bride emerges in Bridesmaids, almost all of her friends have started to feel sick. Sweat coats their skin. Red splotches creep over their faces. They try to “ooh” and “aah,” but it’s already too late. It starts with a gag from Melissa McCarthy, followed by another gag. Then a gag that comes simultaneously with a tiny wet fart. It’s the smallness of the fart that’s important here. It’s the kind of fart that slips out — a fart that could be excused away, a brief, incongruous accident. Women don’t fart in wedding movies, and women certainly don’t fart at the exact moment that the bride comes out in her dress. This can’t be happening. ­Melissa McCarthy blames the fart on the tightness of her dress. We breathe a sigh of relief.

Then sweet Ellie Kemper gags, and the sound effect is surprisingly nasty. Ellie’s face is gray. Melissa’s face is red. They look bad. They are embarrassed. How far is this going to go?

The camera cuts. We are above now. We look down from a safe perch as the release we have been anticipating and dreading begins. It is horribly, earth-­shatteringly gross. A woman has just pooped in a sink. The revolution has begun.

The Government Acquires A 61 Percent Stake In Gm And Loans The Company $50 Billion The Auto Bailout Will Eventually Be Heralded As A Great Success Adding More Than 250000 Manufacturing Jobs To The Economy

The Auto Industry Gets Rerouted

“The president was very clear with us that he only wanted to do stuff that would fundamentally change the way they did business. And that’s what we did. There were enormous changes. For example, General Motors had something like 300 different job classifications that the union had. If you were assigned to put the windshield wipers on, you couldn’t put tires on. And we wiped all that stuff out. We basically gave back management the freedom to manage, to hire, to fire. People stopped getting paid even when they were on layoff. We reduced the number of car plants so that there wasn’t so much overcapacity. So now, when you have 16 million cars sold , they’re making a fortune.”

Black Lives Matter Activists Are Arrested In Baton Rouge Louisianaprotesting The Murder Of Alton Sterling; More Than 100 People Are Detained In St Paul Minnesota Protesting The Murder Of Philando Castile

What Is the Point of a Quantified Self?

Melissa Dahl: The Fitbit was introduced at a tech conference eight years ago. It’s kind of incredible to realize that, before then, this idea of the “quantified self” didn’t really exist in the mainstream.

Jesse Singal: I feel like it’s the intersection of all these different trends: Everyone plays video games these days. You got smartphones everywhere. And people are realizing that solutions to the big problems that lead to sleeplessness and anxiety and bad eating — unemployment and income inequality and yada yada yada — aren’t gonna get solved anytime soon.

MD: That’s interesting, because all of this self-tracking is also, according to some physicians, giving people more anxiety! A Fitbit-induced stress vortex.

Cari Romm: It feels like productive stress, though. I’m talking as a recovered Fitbit obsessive, but it does make you look at Fitbit-less people like, “You mean you don’t care how many steps you took today?”

MD: Oh, God. I don’t care. Should I care? Sleep is the one thing I obsessed over for a while. Which does not really help one get to sleep.

JS: Do you think an actually good and not obsession-­inducing sleep app could help, though?

MD: There’s some aspect to the tracking idea that really does work. I mean, it’s just a higher-tech version of a food journal or sleep journal, right? Ben Franklin 300 years ago was tracking his 13 “personal virtues” in his diary.

JS: Would Ben Franklin have been an insufferable tech-bro?

Officer Darren Wilson Fatally Shoots Michael Brownin The St Louis Suburb Of Ferguson Sparking A National Protest Movement And Setting Off Unrest That Will Remain Unresolved Two Years Later

On the Triumph of Black Culture in the Age of Police Shootings

In the two years since Mike Brown was fatally shot by the police in Ferguson, and the video footage of his dead body in the street went viral, we have seen the emergence of a perverse dichotomy on our screens and in our public discourse: irrefutable evidence of grotesquely persistent racism, and irrefutable evidence of increasing black cultural and political power. This paradox is not entirely new, of course — America was built on a narrative of white supremacy, and black Americans have simultaneously continued to make vast and essential contributions to the country’s prominence—but it has become especially pronounced. And it’s not just because of the internet and social media, or the leftward shift of the culture, or black America’s being sick and tired of being sick and tired. In fact, it is all of these things, not least two terms with a black president. In the same way that black skin signals danger to the police , his black skin, to black people, signaled black cultural preservation. African-Americans didn’t see a black man as the most powerful leader in the free world; we saw the most powerful leader in the free world as black. This is what comedian Larry Wilmore was expressing at the 2016 White House Correspondents’ Dinner when he said, “Yo, Barry, you did it, my nigga.” It was a moment of unadulterated black pride.

Militants Attack American Compounds In Benghazi Libya Killing Us Ambassador Chris Stevens And Three Other Americans There Will Eventually Be Eight Congressional Probes Into The Incident

“I Know I Let Everybody Down”

“Before the debate, David Plouffe and I went in to talk to him and give him a pep talk and he said, ‘Let’s just get this over with and get out of here,’ which is not what you want to hear from your candidate right before the debate. We knew within ten minutes that it was going to be a ­debacle. We had armed him with a joke — it was his 20th anniversary, and he addressed Michelle — and it turns out Romney was expecting just such a line and had a really great comeback. And Romney was excellent — just free and easy and clearly well prepared and showed personality that people hadn’t seen before. Obama looked like he was at a press conference.

We had a meeting at the White House and he said, ‘I know I let everybody down and that’s on me, and I’m not going to let that happen again,’ and that was his attitude. We always had debate camps before, where we’d re-create in hotel ballrooms what the set would look like, and all of the conditions of the real debate. When we went down to Williamsburg, Virginia, for the next debate camp, he seemed really eager to engage in the prep. We had a decent first night. That was on Saturday. On Sunday night, Kerry, playing Romney, got a little more aggressive and Obama a little less so; it looked very much like what we had seen in Denver. It was like he’d taken a step back.

Scott Brown Is Elected Massachusetts Senatorturning Ted Kennedys Seat Republican For The First Time Since 1952 And Suddenly Throwing The Prospect Of Passing Obamacare Into Jeopardy

Plan B

“I’m talking to Rahm and Jim Messina and saying, ‘Okay, explain to me how this happened.’ It was at that point that I learned that our candidate, Martha Coakley, had asked rhetorically, ‘What should I do, stand in front of Fenway and shake hands with voters?’ And we figured that wasn’t a good bellwether of how things might go.

This might have been a day or two before the election, but the point is: There is no doubt that we did not stay on top of that the way we needed to. This underscored a failing in my first year, which was the sort of perverse faith in good policy leading to good politics. I’ll cut myself some slack — we had a lot to do, and every day we were thinking, Are the banks going to collapse? Is the auto industry going to collapse? Will layoffs accelerate? We just didn’t pay a lot of attention to politics that first year, and the loss in Massachusetts reminded me of what any good president or elected official needs to understand: You’ve got to pay attention to public opinion, and you have to be able to communicate your ideas. But it happened, and the question then was, ‘What’s next?’

Sheryl Sandbergs Lean In Hits Bookstores Making The Feminist Case That Women Should Be More Aggressive And Ambitious In Their Careers And Making Feminists Themselves Very Angry

The “Mommy Wars” Finally Flame Out

After decades of chilly backlash, we find ourselves, these past eight years, in an age of feminist resurgence, with feminist websites and publications and filmmakers and T-shirts and pop singers and male celebrities and best-selling authors and women’s soccer teams. Of course, as in every feminist golden age, there has also been dissent: furious clashes over the direction and quality of the discourse, especially as the movement has become increasingly trendy, shiny, and celebrity-backed.

Perhaps the most public feminist conflagration of the Obama years came at the nexus of policy and celebrity, of politics and pop power. It was the furor over Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who gave a viral 2010 TED Talk about women in the workplace who “leave before they leave” — who alter their professional strategy to accommodate a future they assume will be compromised by parenthood — which led to the publication of her 2013 feminist business manifesto, Lean In.

It’s a lesson of the Obama era: One approach to redressing inequality does not have to blot out the others. Sometimes, attacking from all angles is the most effective strategy.

Texas State Senator Wendy Davis Laces Up Her Pink Running Shoes And Spends Ten Long Hours Attempting To Filibuster A Billthat Wouldve Imposed Statewide Abortion Restrictions

“The Concept of Dignity Really Matters”

“I was given an enormous degree of latitude. I did communicate with the White House counsel on occasion about high-profile cases, but it was much more in the nature of just giving them a heads-up, to calm any nervous feelings they might have. There’s only one exception to that, and it was on marriage equality, in the Hollingsworth v. Perry case in 2013. We were contemplating coming in and arguing that it was unconstitutional for California to refuse to recognize the legal validity of same-sex marriages. But we didn’t have to do it . And because it was a discretionary judgment, and it was such a consequential step, that was the one matter where I really sought out the president’s personal guidance. I wanted to make sure the president had a chance to thoroughly consider what we should do before we did it. It was really one of the high points of my tenure. It was a wide-ranging conversation about doctrinal analysis, about where society was now, about social change and whether it should go through the courts or through the majoritarian process, about the pace of social change, about the significance of the right at stake. He was incredibly impressive.

A Golf Summit Between John Boehner And Barack Obama Stirs Hopethat Perhaps The Two Parties Will Come To A Budget Agreement And Forestall A True Crisis Secret And Semi

A Grand Bargain That Wasn’t, Remembered Three Ways

“The president of the United States and the Speaker of the House, the two most powerful elected officials in Washington, decided in a conversation that they both had to try to make something happen. Maybe it would be the way it worked in a West Wing episode in a world that doesn’t work like a West Wing episode. That’s how it started — two individuals saying we’re going to try. I think they both shared a belief in the art of the possible, and they both did not think compromise was a dirty word.

When our cover was blown — a Wall Street Journal editorial came out saying that Boehner and Obama were working on this and attacking the whole premise — that was devastating. It resulted in Cantor being a part of the talks. Cantor and Boehner came in, and I think it was a weekend private session with the president in the Oval Office, and they were talking about the numbers. At one point Cantor said, ‘Listen, it’s not just the numbers. There’s concern that this will help you politically. Paul Ryan said if we do this deal, it will guarantee your reelection. If we agree with Barack Obama on spending and taxes, that takes away one of our big weapons.’ There were so many obstacles, some of them substantive — how much revenue, and what about the entitlements? — but there was also this overlay of ‘This is going to help Obama.’

Illustrations by Lauren Tamaki

The Obama Administration Unveils Its Plan For Regulating Wall Streetwhich Is Then Introduced In Congress By Senator Chris Dodd And Representative Barney Frank

MJ=JC?

Lane Brown: Michael Jackson’s death was a big deal for lots of obvious reasons, including the surprising way it happened and the fact that he was arguably the most famous person on the planet.

Nate Jones: He was an A-lister with an indisputable body of work; he was 50 years old, his hits were the right age — old enough that every generation knew them, but not too old that they weren’t relevant anymore.

LB: But it was also the first huge celebrity death to happen in the age of social media, or at least the age of Twitter.

NJ: MJ’s death came alongside the protests in Iran, which was when Twitter went mainstream.

LB: It also meant that so much of the instant reaction was to make it all about us.

Frank Guan: In a lot of ways, the culture prefers the death of artists to their continuing to live. Once an artist gets launched into the stratosphere, there’s no way to come down, and that permanence becomes monotonous. They run out of timely or groundbreaking material and the audience starts tuning out. At some point, their fame eclipses their art, and then the only way to get the general audience to appreciate them anew is for them to die.

LB: People seem to like the grieving process so much that even lesser celebrities get the same treatment.

Congresswoman Gabby Giffords Returns To The House Floor For The First Time Since Being Shot In A Massacre In January Casting A Vote In Favor Of The Debt

A Rare Moment of Unity

“I was doing intensive rehabilitation in Houston at the time but was following the debate closely, and I was pretty disappointed at what was happening in Washington. I’d seen the debate grow so bitter and divisive and so full of partisan rancor. And I was worried our country was hurtling toward a disastrous, self-inflicted economic crisis. That morning, when it became clear the vote was going to be close, my husband, Mark, and I knew we needed to get to Washington quickly. I went straight from my rehabilitation appointment to the airport, and Mark was at our house in Houston packing our bags so he could meet us at the plane.

That night, I remember seeing the Capitol for the first time since I was injured and feeling so grateful to be at work. I will never forget the reception I received on the floor of the House from my colleagues, both Republicans and Democrats. And then, like I had so many times before, I voted.

I worked so hard to get my speech back, and honestly, talking to people who share my determination helped me find my words again. I’ve been to Alaska, Maine, and everywhere in between. Best of all, I got back on my bike. Riding my bike once seemed like such a huge challenge. It seemed impossible.”

Miley Cyrus Twerks At The Mtv Vmassetting Off A Controversy About Cultural Appropriation That Soon Ensnares Seemingly Every White Pop Star On The Planet

• Karlie Kloss wears a Native American headdress and fringed bra at the Victoria’s Secret fashion show.

• Justin Timberlake is accused of appropriating black music when he tells a black critic “We are the same” after praising Jesse Williams’s BET Humanitarian Award speech about race and police brutality.

• DJ Khaled gets lost on Jet Ski, snaps the whole time.

• Two UW-Madison students snap their meet-cute as the entire student body cheers them on.

• Playboy Playmate Dani Mathers films and mocks an anonymous woman in the gym shower.

• A Massachusetts teen records the sexual assault of a 16-year-old girl. The video is later seen by a friend of the victim.

Prior To Going To War In Iraq Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Optimistically Predicted The Iraq War Might Last Six Days Six Weeks I Doubt Six Months

What’s more, Vice-President Dick Cheney said we would be greeted as liberators by the Iraqi people after we overthrow Saddam.

They were both horribly wrong. Instead of six weeks or six months, the Iraq war lasted eight long and bloody years costing thousands of American lives. It led to an Iraqi civil war between the Sunnis and the Shiites that took hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. Many Iraqi militia groups were formed to fight against the U.S. forces that occupied Iraq. What’s more, Al Qaeda, which did not exist in Iraq before the war, used the turmoil in Iraq to establish a new foothold in that country.

The Iraq war was arguably the most tragic foreign policy blunder in US history.

In 2012 Republicans Predicted That Failure To Approve The Keystone Pipeline Would Send The Price Of Gasoline Sky High And Kill Large Numbers Of Jobs

Despite the fact that the Keystone Pipeline was not approved, the price of gasoline continued to drop below $1.80 per gallon, millions of new jobs were created and unemployment dropped from 8% to 4.9% by early 2016. The most optimistic predictions say that the Keystone Pipeline would only create a few dozen long-term jobs and would do nothing to lower the price of gasoline.

Eric Cantors Stunning Primary Loss Suggests No Politician Is Safe From The Rage Of The Tea Party Not Even The Tea Partys Canniest Political Leader

From Party’s Future to Also-Ran in a Single Day

On the day his political career died, Eric Cantor was busy tending to what he still believed was its bright future. While his GOP-primary opponent, David Brat, visited polling places in and around Richmond, Virginia, Cantor spent his morning 90 miles away at a Capitol Hill Starbucks. He was there to host a fund-raiser for three of his congressional colleagues — something he did every month, just another part of the long game he was playing, which, he believed, would eventually culminate in his becoming Speaker of the House.

The preceding five years had brought Cantor tantalizingly closer to that goal. In the immediate aftermath of Obama’s election, he’d rallied waffling House Republicans to stand in lockstep opposition to the new president’s agenda. In 2010, he’d helped elect 87 new Republican members, giving the GOP a House majority and making Cantor the House majority leader. He became the champion of these freshmen members, stoking their radicalism during the debt-ceiling fight and working to undermine Obama and John Boehner’s attempt to strike a “grand bargain.” His alliance with the ascendant tea party was strategic — it gave him leverage not only over Obama but over other Republicans who might also have had aspirations of becoming Speaker. It never occurred to him that the wave he was trying to ride might crash on him instead.

In 1993 When Bill Clinton Raised Taxes On The Wealthiest 15% Republicans Predicted A Recession Increased Unemployment And A Growing Budget Deficit

They weren’t just wrong: The exact opposite of everything they predicted happened. The country experienced the seven best years of economic growth in history.

Twenty-two million new jobs were added.

Unemployment dropped below 4%.

The poverty rate dropped for seven straight years.

The budget deficit was eliminated.

There was a growing budget surplus that economists projected could pay off our national debt in 20 years.

Republicans Predicted That We Would Find Iraqs Weapons Of Mass Destruction Even Though Un Weapons Inspectors Said That Those Weapons Didn’t Exist

The Bush administration continued to insist that WMDs would be found, even when the CIA said some of the evidence was questionable. As we all know, the WMDs predicted by the Bush administration did not exist, and Saddam Hussein had not resumed his nuclear weapons program as they claimed. Ultimately, both President Bush and Vice President Cheney had to admit that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Republicans Predicted That President Obamas Tax Increase For The Top 1% In 2013 Would Kill Jobs Increase The Deficit And Cause Another Recession

You guessed it; just the opposite happened. In the four years following January 1, 2013, when that tax increase went into effect, through January 2017, unemployment dropped from 7.9% to 4.8%, an average of more than 200,000 new jobs were created per month, Wall Street set new record highs, and the budget deficit was cut in half.

Over 5.7 million new jobs were created in the first two years after that tax increase. That’s more jobs created in two years than were created during the combined 12 years of both Bush presidencies.

In 2001 When George W Bush Cut Taxes For The Wealthy Republicans Predicted Record Job Growth Increased Budget Surplus And Nationwide Prosperity

Once again, the exact opposite occurred. After the Bush tax cuts were enacted:

The budget surplus immediately disappeared.

The budget deficit eventually grew to $1.4 trillion by the time Bush left office.

Less than 3 million net jobs were added during Bush’s eight years.

The poverty rate began climbing again.

We experienced two recessions along with the greatest collapse of our financial system since the Great Depression.

In 1993, President Clinton signed the Brady Law mandating nationwide background checks and a waiting period to buy a gun.

Apple Announces That It Has Sold 100 Million Iphoneswithin A Few Months It Will Overtake Exxonmobil As The Most Valuable Company In The World

Earthlings Gain a New Appendage

What if we had the singularity and nobody noticed? In 2007, Barack Obama had been on the trail for weeks, using a BlackBerry like all the cool campaigners, when the new thing went on sale and throngs lined up for it. The new thing had a silly name: iPhone. The iPhone was a phone the way the Trojan horse was a horse.

Now it’s the gizmo without which a person feels incomplete. It’s a light in the darkness, a camera, geolocator, hidden mic, complete ­Shakespeare, stopwatch, sleep aid, heart monitor, podcaster, aircraft spotter, traffic tracker, all-around reality augmenter, and increasingly a pal. At the Rio Olympics you could see people, having flown thousands of miles to be in the arena with the athletes, watching the action through their smartphones. As though they needed the mediating lens to make it real.

This device, this gadget — a billion have been made and we scarcely know what to call it. For his 2010 novel of the near future, , Gary Shteyngart made up a word, “äppärät.” “My äppärät buzzing with contacts, data, pictures, projections, maps, incomes, sound, fury.” Future then, present now. His äppäräti were worn around the neck on pendants. Ours are in our pockets when they aren’t in our hands, but they also sprout earbuds, morph into wristwatches and eyeglasses. Contact lenses have been rumored; implants are only a matter of time.

Let’s face it, we’ve grown a new organ.

Republicans Said Waterboarding And Other Forms Of Enhanced Interrogation Are Not Torture And Are Necessary In Fighting Islamic Extremism

In reality, waterboarding and other forms of enhanced interrogation that inflict pain, suffering, or fear of death are outlawed by US law, the US Constitution, and international treaties. Japanese soldiers after World War II were prosecuted by the United States for war crimes because of their use of waterboarding on American POWs.

Professional interrogators have known for decades that torture is the most ineffective and unreliable method of getting accurate information. People being tortured say anything to get the torture to end but will not likely tell the truth.

An FBI interrogator named Ali Soufan was able to get al Qaeda terrorist Abu Zubaydah to reveal crucial information without the use of torture. When CIA interrogators started using waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation methods, Zubaydah stopped cooperating and gave his interrogators false information.

Far from being necessary in the fight against terrorism, torture is completely unreliable and counter-productive in obtaining useful information.

In 2008 Republicans Said That If We Elect A Democratic President We Would Be Hit By Al Qaeda Again Perhaps Worse Than The Attack On 9/11

Former Vice-President Dick Cheney stated that electing a Democrat as president would all but guarantee that there would be another major attack on America by Al Qaeda. Cheney and other Republicans were, thankfully, completely wrong. During Obama’s presidency, we had zero deaths on U.S. soil from Al Qaeda attacks and we succeeded in killing Bin Laden along with dozens of other high ranking Al Qaeda leaders.

Game Of Thrones Arrives On Televisionwith An Assemblage Of Dragons Torture Nudity Incest And Despair A Show The Whole Family Can Enjoy

Explaining Kale

ADAM PLATT: Many things in Foodlandia, these days, have a political element to them, and if you want to emblazon a flag to be carried into battle, you could do worse than a bristly, semi-digestible bunch of locally grown kale.

ALAN SYTSMA: To eat kale is to announce you’re a person who cares about the matters of the day.

AP: The idea of kale is much more powerful than kale itself. In short order it went from being discovered, to appreciated, to being something that was parodied. Frankly, I’m all for the parody.

AS: The same thing happened to pork. Remember bacon peanut brittle? Bacon-fat cocktails? There’s bacon dental floss.

AP: Ahhh, bacon versus kale. The two great, competing forces of our time.

AS: Do you think one gave way to the other?

AP: What we’re really talking about is artisanal bacon, and the more sophisticated-sounding pork belly, made from pigs that were lovingly reared at upstate farms and fed diets of pristine little acorns. Bacon is the great symbol in the comfort-food, farm-fresh-dining movement, a kind of merry, unbridled pulchritude. Kale is the righteous yin to pork’s fatty, non-vegan yang.

AS: But pork has an advantage: People like the way it tastes.

AP: That’s a huge advantage, one that will hopefully see it through to victory.

[calif0rnia-lovers]

Request (Anon): Tom and the reader have a fight so she won't sleep in the same bed as him

words: 1838

Eight months

That's how long you and Tom have been together. Exclusively at least. You've known each other for nearly six years, each of those years spent denying feelings for one other. So, whenever Tom finally silenced the words of encouragement from both his head and his friends and told you how he truly felt it was no surprise to anyone how easily the two of you fell together. Over the years, the two of you have had your share of fights. Best friends always do. Maybe that is why he hadn't expected your first fight as a couple to have such a terrible fallout.

He wasn't prepared to be on the other end of words that caused tears to fall from your eyes, or to be the one incapable of making them stop. Throughout the majority of your friendship, he'd been the one to comfort you in times like this. He was always the one to talk you out of moments of self-doubt. Only, today, he had nothing to say.

And that was the problem.

Instead of speaking, he'd shut completely down.

He left you alone in the house to replay the morning's argument on a loop to yourself. He went to retrieve your outfits for the wedding the two of you were obligated to attend tomorrow. When he'd returned at three, he shut himself in the bathroom long enough to shower and dress.

"You look beautiful, Y/N" he'd smiled softly when he'd met you at the front door.

Part of you knew he was trying to test the waters. You had merely switched out the sweatpants and the oversized shirt, he'd last seen you in, for a pair of jeans and a simple white shirt.

In his absence, he'd hoped your anger would subside, but after nearly two hours on the road, Tom was beginning to see this wasn't the case. If he wasn't afraid he could make the situation worse, Tom might actually be impressed with how well you've mastered the art known as the silent treatment. He couldn't remember the last time he hadn't been able to make you smile or laugh.

Impatiently tapping his thumb against the steering wheel, Tom glances into the rearview mirror. He forces himself to take in the music playing softly through the speakers, the thought of talking to you quickening the pulse of his heart. Part of him wants to reach forward and shut it off. Maybe that will force the two of you to talk. Just when he thinks he's built up enough confidence to do so, he reaches forward to adjust the tempo of the windshield wipers. Tapping his thumb to the rhythm of the wipers, music, and rain blending together he finds himself trying to fill the silence in the car. Anything to pretend he doesn't see your impatient shifting in the passenger's seat.

You release a sharp intake of breath before saying. "Can you not?"

Tom's actions instantly halt.

"Sorry," he clears throat before sitting straighter in his seat.

Keeping your eyes on the road before you, you watch as the highway lines blur beneath the heavy downpour.

"Maybe we should pull over." You suggest, the fact he was only doing twenty confirming your suspicions he was trying his best to be careful.

"That means we'd probably have to wait out the storm for the night."

"Better that than us not being able to see."

It takes nearly twenty more minutes for Tom to locate a motel. The parking lot was nearly empty. The bright sign read "Riverton Inn", the letters casting a bright blue hue across the dark ground. It wouldn't normally be his first choice, but Tom couldn't imagine staying on the road any longer in this storm.

Resting against the counter, Tom drags the silver bell across the surface before giving it a ring.

Movement can be heard coming from the back room, a pair of brown eyes peeking around the corner before disappearing again. Looking around the room, Tom finds his mind drifting to the rooms. The parking lot was nearly empty. He wonders if he's picked the correct stopping place.

"Welcome to the Riverton Inn," the young teenager sighs as he comes around the corner. He waits until he finishes typing on his cell phone, and have safely slipped it into his back pocket, to finish the rest of his greeting. "Where small town hospitality still exists. Thank you for choosing our service. How can I help you?"

"Yeah, can uh...can I get a room?"

"For one?"

Tom's gaze drifts over his shoulder to where you stand by the window, back towards him. He shakes his head in response.

Holding up two fingers, he reaches into his back pocket for his wallet. "Can we have two beds?"

"Friend zone?" The young man chuckles, the knowing look on his face causing Tom's posture to straighten.

He's not sure if it's the question itself that irritates him or the drifting of the young man's gaze over his shoulder towards you.

"Not quite...more like relationship problems."

Accepting the room key, Tom turns to find you squatting down in front of a slightly unhappy and drenched Tessa.

"So, I was thinking, we should probably get back on the road around seven thirty." Leading the way towards the room, Tom concentrates on keeping the bags out of the rain.

"Okay."

Pushing the door open, you pause the moment you step inside.

"There's only one bed."

"Huh?"

Dragging the suitcase to the door, Tom peaks over your shoulder for a better look.

"I said, there's only one bed" you repeat.

"That's strange," Tom's brow furrows as you glance back at him. "I asked for two...Want me to go back-"

"No," you huff, the exhaustion in your response easily outweighing any irritation. "It's fine. You can take the couch. Tessa and I will take the bed."

Tom doesn't bother objecting to your request. There is a reason he'd asked specifically for separate beds. Somehow, sleeping in his own bed seemed a lot less daunting than having to sleep on the sofa. Sleeping on the sofa typically means you're in the doghouse, right?

The entire time you're in the shower, he finds himself trying to picture how tomorrow's events will unfold. He knew you wouldn't dare ruin your friend's wedding, but something told him you wouldn't be dragging him to the dance floor for a dance marathon either.

"Come on, Tess." Pressing his lips against her head, Tom releases a soft sigh before letting his cheek rest against her fur. "You gotta help me out here. Work some of your magic, yeah, loosen her up a bit for me?"

The second the bathroom door opens, Tessa wiggles out of Tom's grip before running towards you.

"Hi, sweetie," you giggle as the wide-eyed pit bull applies a few licks to your leg and hand before letting you scratch behind her ear.  "Let's get you to bed."

Tom sends Tessa a silent "attagirl," before taking his turn in the shower.

By the time he's done with his shower, Tom finds Tessa's head resting in your lap. Combing his fingers through his slightly damp hair, Tom leans down to give her a kiss.

"Alright," he sighs as he retrieves the pillows from the vacant side of the bed. "I'm gonna go ahead and get some sleep."

It is his lingering along the slide of the bed that you makes you respond. You can't deny him a smile as he glances in your direction.

"Okay." Focusing on your phone, you try not to look at the puppy dog eyes in which he has perfected.

"Yep..." Tom releases a dramatic sigh before turning and starting in the direction of the sofa. "I'm gonna go ahead and get some sleep...all by myself...on the sofa...all the way across the room...away from the two most important women in my life..."

"Okay. Well, we'll be over here."

Dropping the pillows onto the sofa, Tom glances across the room to find you reaching over to cut off the bedside lamp.

"Tess, you wanna come over here?"

The soft giggle you release as the puppy remains where she is caused Tom to smile.

"I think you're on your own tonight," you reply as he lays down.

Even though you had cut the lights, you find that you do not fall asleep. Instead, you keep your eyes on the ceiling, listening to Tom's movements. He just couldn't seem to get situated. You suppress your smile as he shifts between fluffing his pillows and tossing and turning on the sofa.

If it weren't for the dramatic sighs he released every thirty seconds, you might have believed he was just trying to get comfortable.

After five minutes of this, you cover your face before sitting up. "Tom?"

Tom shot up at his name on your lips. His eyes adjust to your figure in the dark, in hopes he can read your expression. "Yeah? You okay?"

"You're making too much noise," you huff.

A deflated, "sorry," comes in response as you rest back against your pillow.

"Get over here," you sigh after a moment of silence. "Before you mess up your back."

Tom is off the couch in seconds, his pace slowing once he realizes he might come off too eager to your words. Carefully folding his blanket, he drapes it over the back of the sofa. His gaze shifts to the bed where you lay checking to see if you are going to sit up and change your mind. When you remain where you are he grabs his pillow and starts towards the bed.

"Thanks," he yawned as he climbs into bed. He leans over and quickly presses an unsuspecting kiss against your cheek. "I'm sorry for being a dick earlier. A dick who...does not think sometimes."

"You can definitely be a dick," you respond after a moment of silence. "Sometimes..."

Rolling over, you press a quick and light kiss on his cheek. It happens too fast for Tom to react. By the time he does, you are back on your side of the bed, and the heat of your lips is fading rapidly. You smile before looking back at him. Before you can lean over to kiss him, Tom's lips are on yours.

He holds you close, a sigh of relief coming once your fingers begin to toy with his hair. Peppering kisses along your neck he felt your pulse

"I love you," he mumbles against your skin. "Sorry for today."

[ingridgovaninsights]

The Elliott Chapters- Part 5

We went to the pharmacy and picked up two cartons of chocolate milk, and we drank one liter each, downing it all at once in the pharmacy parking lot. I was exhausted; I told Charlotte I wanted to go home. She nodded and we drove quietly over to my place.

As soon as I got out of the car, I stumbled and nearly collapsed on the sidewalk. Charlotte ran over to link arms with me, and I struggled to stay on my feet.

“Okay, careful there, you’re clearly still drowsy,” she said worriedly. “Also, it must hurt to walk. You don’t need like, crutches or something?”

I shook my head. “I’m perfectly fine. Let’s go.”

Charlotte helped me down the stairs to my place, which was turning out to be quite difficult. Every step was excruciating pain- after a couple of steps I had to take a break to catch my breath. Charlotte looked at me with great concern.

“Are you going to be okay staying here on your own?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I’ll survive.”

“I hate when you say that,” Charlotte said.

“Why?”

“Because I know you’ll survive. I’m talking about your comfort.”

“Being uncomfortable for a brief period of time is something that I am more than capable of handling,” I told her, wincing. “I have been in car accidents before.”

“Yes, but this one seems to be your worst yet,” she said. “Maybe this can be your wake up call. Maybe you could consider driving a little more carefully?”

“You know what?” I snapped, “you don’t get to tell me what to do!”

“It was a suggestion, Elliott,” she said slowly, carefully. “I wasn’t trying to upset you.”

“Yeah, okay, but you have to understand I am dealing with a lot right now in my life. I drive to escape that. You know me.”

“Yes… but at what cost?” she asked.

I shook my head. “That’s not your decision to make.”

I started back up the stairs towards outside. I couldn’t sit alone in my apartment and wallow in pity or wince in pain. I wasn’t the type to complain or take a lot of time off because I had a minor wipe out. I had three cars- two now after my accident- and I never really used my truck, but I thought maybe today would be a good day for that. Sometimes I would take it if I needed to run errands, like taking things to the dump, for instance.

Charlotte was running after me. Due to my injuries, she caught up pretty quickly. She grabbed onto my arm, with pressure. Desperately.

“Elliott, you can’t drive!” she cried. “You’re being unreasonable.”

“You know what is unreasonable?” I asked. “People expecting me to sit idly by while I wait for these injuries to repair themselves. And what else is unreasonable is you expecting me to let people boss me around anymore, when I took so much of that shit from Victoria.”

“I’m not bossing you around,” Charlotte said, “I’m trying to help you. There’s a difference. A pretty big difference, actually.”

“Well, I do not need the help right now,” I said, though I probably needed it more than ever. “But thank you for the offer. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going for a drive.”

Charlotte was speechless. I had that effect on people sometimes. I think it was my tendency to be brutally honest. People like to sugarcoat things… well, not me. It’s useless. It wastes a lot of time.

She stood, frozen in shock while I stepped up into my truck and drove away in a hurry. No, I did not learn my lesson about speeding. I mean, I am aware of the statistics on driving too fast and the consequences that it has, but what did I really have to lose?

About five minutes into my drive it started to rain quite heavily. I put on my windshield wipers but they just couldn’t move fast enough. I didn’t care. Some people pulled over when it rained so heavily, but I didn’t care. Pull over all you want- less traffic for me to worry about.

I didn’t consciously have a destination in mind, but apparently my brain had some sort of idea because five minutes later I ended up at my parents’ door. My mother’s garden looked the same- it was nice to see it was still intact and at least someone had been watering it. I hesitated, then I slowly rose my fist up to the door and knocked.

When my father answered the door, I was holding my side like I needed an appendectomy. When was the last time I’d seen him? I couldn’t remember, but he looked significantly older- his hair was almost completely white, his beard was full this time. His forehead had many lines, like notepad paper.

I opened my mouth to confess to him about my car accident, and to tell him I love him and I realized life is short and all of that sappy stuff, but my dad took me off guard.

His eyes welled up with tears and he said, “your mother is dead.”

***

Dad invited me inside for a coffee after we stood in silence for what seemed to be a long, long time. I didn’t know what to say, or what to feel. I stared at him though, for a good long time. I couldn’t understand why he would choose not to tell me, why he would wait until I stood on his porch in the pouring rain with a fractured pelvis. Was I really that insignificant to him? To Mom?

I did step inside, and Dad went into the kitchen to start up the coffee maker. I looked around the living room, and I picked up the potted plant off of the coffee table. I was in so much pain, the plant felt heavy in my hands and I wanted to scream. There was nothing fine about the condition of my body or my mind. Absolutely nothing.

I raised the pot well above my head, despite my body begging me not to. Then I threw it on the ground, watching it shatter into hundreds of tiny little pieces.

By the time my dad came back to find out what all the noise was, I was gone.

***

At that point I had no idea where to drive to. In the past, I’d go on some sort of insane road trip across the country and crash at a rundown motel, inviting some random local to have a beer with me at the small pub next door. I liked that life- living always on the run, having that constant sense of adventure. But it came with a price, and that price was that I could never share any significant connections with anyone. Victoria hadn’t been one for road trips; I didn’t have many friends; my family was scattered and broken; and Charlotte had moved on with her life.

I used to drive all my cars into the ground, exploring every inch of a city before moving onto the next. In the early days of our relationship, Victoria would join me. But after a while, it grew old and she wanted to have some sense of stability.

As I’ve said before, when I first got my license at sixteen I was excitedly driving around everywhere, eager to explore the road. My mother would always shake her head and say, “when are you going to settle down, Elliott?”

Maybe now was the time.

I didn’t want to, but I didn’t want to pay the price of being alone either. I soared down the highway at a reckless pace, apparently learning nothing from my recent accident. The rain had finally ceased, and people weren’t scared anymore of the weather so they came out of their shells to join the traffic. Cars built up until we were stuck in a jam. I was at a complete stop. I sighed and played with the radio for a while. I had put a new radio system into this one, complete with BlueTooth. I thought maybe now would be a good time to connect it with my phone and listen to some of my library. After all, I had a lot of time to kill. I couldn’t exit off the highway now even if I wanted to- I was trapped, sandwiched between two vehicles.

I decided to listen through Watsky’s album, titled x Infinity. It was hip-hop, rap kind of music. The artist did a lot of slam poetry as well, so the lyrics were always clever and thoughtful, the kind that I liked. It wasn’t the kind of rap where they rambled on about drugs and sex and slutty women, it was the kind that actually talked a lot about real, raw feelings and problems in life.

The song that came on first was titled “Conversations”. I listened carefully to the words, trying to take it all in and really feel the song. I think Charlotte would really like it- it’s the kind of thing she would write about in her stories.

Don’t lie, what happens when we die?

The artist sang about a boy who asked his father the “bigger” questions in life- where do we go, what do we do when we die? And the boy was insistent. I was quite intrigued by the storytelling- I turned the volume up.

We paint our story from A to Z then dip out

R.I.P. rip out, we tear out the pages

Tear up the stage and take a seat

Making a vacancy

Famous or not, we fade from the plot

The lyrics resonated with me. It was haunting to think that maybe none of this even matters- the fact that I’m stuck in traffic or all I do is work or Victoria and I have been doomed from the start or I have no idea what I’m going to do next. Maybe it’s all irrelevant, because we’re all going to disappear eventually anyways, and we will be replaced with the next person so that they can live their lives, and so on and so forth. A vicious cycle.

Some would say it mattered right now, in the present day. Shouldn’t that be enough to keep going, and to keep trying? I could argue back and forth with them all day, though. I would say we are going to die at the end of all of this, so what’s the use?

And I could hear Watsky in the background over the noise of traffic and my even noisier mind:

But that isn’t for a long, long time

That isn’t for a long, long time

That isn’t for a long, long time

That isn’t for a long, long, long, long time

[starrfait]

Dig: Chapter 7/?

Relationship: Bughead Summary: Betty Cooper attempts to put her life back together after moving out of Riverdale. Easier said than done.

Rating: M

Warnings: Mentions of self-harm, eventual smut Past Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 Read on AO3

Gladys had ended up boarding herself up in her bedroom for the rest of the night. Betty made true to her promise, and Jughead found himself back at his sister’s door. The music from earlier had been replaced with something much softer.

He rapped against the door gently, but received no response. Of course not. Betty turned to him, giving him a nod of reassurance.

“JB? I know I’m the last person you want to talk to right now, but please-”

“Go away!” A muffled voice answered. “Can’t you just leave me alone?”

He pushed the hurt caused by her words to the back of his mind, staying resilient. “Yeah, I’ll go. But you’ve got to listen to me, JB. I never once did those things that she said. You say you don’t know me anymore, but I’m the same as I’ve always been.”

The music suddenly dissipated. Jughead let out a sigh. At least she was listening.

“I’m still the big brother that protected you from schoolyard bullies. The same big brother who shared ghost stories with you until we were too scared to sleep. The same big brother who carried you to the hospital when you twisted your ankle.” Without realizing it, he had been raising his voice. “So you can go on believing what Mom tells you, or we can work through this. Together. It’s your choice.”

Jughead let out a deep sigh, stepping away from the door. The house was silent, aside from the sound of the rain hitting them windows. Turning around, he wondered if he had been too harsh.

There was a tug on his sleeve. When he turned around, Betty was motioning at the now open door. Jellybean stood in the doorway, a pained expression on her face.

“I’m sorry, Juggie…” The young girl sniffled, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

Maybe he had gone too far. Jughead pulled his sister into an embrace, rubbing her back gently. “Don’t be sorry, kiddo….none of this was your fault. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” How many opportunities to comfort his sister had he missed in all of these years? “I know it’ll take time, but just believe in me, alright?”

She looked up at him and nodded.

“Good! Now, why don’t you show me some of the albums you’ve been into recently?” He motioned back to her bedroom. When he turned around to Betty, he found an empty hallway before him. His stomach soured, expecting the worst.

“Give me a second, okay?” Jughead told his sister, fishing out his cellphone from his pocket. He dialed Betty’s number and put the phone to his ear. She picked up almost immediately.

“Betty, where are you?” His voice came out in a loud whisper, more harsh than he had intended.

“I’m sitting in the car, Jug.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s not a big deal!” Her voice sounded tired and hoarse. “I just know how much this means to you. So, I thought I’d give you some privacy. It’s not my place to interfere.”

Betty…was she still feeling guilty about what had happened between her and his mother? “Betty, you’re not interfering!”

He heard the girl laugh softly. The image sprung to his mind; the way her eyes crinkled, the way she bit her lip to stifle it.

“It’s alright, Jug. I’ll be down here when you’re ready. Take your time.” The phone hung up with a small beep. What was that all about? He put his phone back in his pocket with a sigh. It had been a tiring day for everyone, surely.

He continued into Jellybean’s room. The wall was covered from floor to ceiling in band posters. Pink Floyd, Nirvana, The Beatles…too many for him to name. A record player was tucked into the corner of the room, a string of lights hanging above painting it in golden hues.

“Isn’t it cool? Grandpa let me move it in here from the parlor.”

Jughead remembered back to the summer days when his grandfather would put on Frank Sinatra records while the family relaxed after dinner. Precious memories.

“It’s awesome, JB. I’m glad to see that you’ve found your passion so early.”

The girl laughed, idly shuffling through the her vinyl collection.

“Did you see grandma and grandpa yet?”

He felt a tug of guilt. There had been enough confrontation for one day. Who knows what his mother had told his grandparents about him.

“Actually, I wasn’t planning on it. I’m not sure I can face them after all that’s gone on today.” He scratched the back of his head. “Can you keep my visit a secret for now?”

“Jug…” Jellybean looking up from the records, her brow furrowed.

“I’ll come again soon. It’ll be a more positive experience, I promise.” He held out his pinky, begging her.

She hesitated for a moment before leaning forward and linking fingers. “Fine, I guess I owe you one.” The girl smirked. “Introduce me to your lady friend next time.”

The siblings stayed up for another hour or so, reminiscing. They laughed until their stomachs hurt. Jughead was sure to get her phone number. Turns out her grandmother had bought her one without Gladys’ permission, or knowledge. It was a relief to know he could contact her whenever he wanted.

Eventually, in the middle of one of Jughead’s long stories about weird customers he had encountered, Jellybean had dozed off on top of her covers. He laughed, shaking his head. It was like living with his father all over again.

He tucked her into her bed properly and turned off the lamp. Before leaving, he left a couple hundreds on her bedside table, along with a note.

Get Grandma to take you to the record store. Don’t tell Mom. Happy Birthday. -J

By the time he had made it back to the car, Betty was barely awake. She laid on her side in the backseat, snuggling into Hot Dog’s fur.

“How did it go?” She scooted over, making room for him.

“Things are better, that’s for sure. But Rome wasn’t built in a day.” He took a deep breath. “You didn’t have to leave, Betty. I wanted you to be there.”

The girl sat up, shaking her head.

“I’ve done enough damage for one day, don’t you think? I mean, she’s horrible, but she’s still your mother.”

Jughead remained silent. How was Betty able to keep so much faith in people she didn’t know? He felt her hand rubbing his leg gently.

“It was really touching, seeing you with your sister. I can tell how much you care about her. She’s lucky to have you.”

Her smile made his heart flutter, but there was a deep-seated sadness in her eyes. It was clear she was masking how exhausted she was. Jughead placed his hand over hers, giving it a squeeze.

“Why don’t you let me drive home? You should rest.”

Betty opened her mouth to say something, but gave up, nodding.

As soon as they had relocated to the front seat, Betty dozed off with her head against the window. Jughead laughed softly and turned on the engine. The windshield wipers squeaked as they swiped across the glass. He shivered at what he saw.

Gladys stood in her bedroom window, staring out through the rain. She was dressed in a ghostly white nightgown. Her expression was unreadable. Jughead reversed the car onto the street and made his way onto the highway, never once looking back.

Hours into the drive, Betty was still fast asleep beside him. She looked much more peaceful in her sleep. The trip had clearly taken a toll on her, and his heart hurt at the thought.

He couldn’t believe his eyes when he had seen Betty’s hands wrapped around his Gladys’ throat. He had never seen such fear in his mother’s eyes before.

However, the most shocking of all was the fact that he couldn’t bring himself to be upset by Betty’s actions. Not exactly.

Turning his hand, he spotted a circular burn scar. One of many that had been branded on his body since childhood. Luckily, they weren’t as visible as other scars, but they were painful reminders just the same.

If anything, the only negative feelings he harbored about the event was it’s effect on Betty. It was his fault that she had lost her temper. She was clearly still shaken up by her own actions. It was as if she had deflected her self-harm onto someone else in a momentary loss of control.

Was he hurting her unintentionally?

With a sigh, Jughead turned on the radio in an attempt to drown out his thoughts.

——-

Betty awoke to a soft bed in a dark room. Her own room. Her head was throbbing. Squinting, she grabbed for her phone to check the time. 9:16 PM. How many hours had she been out of it?

Rubbing her eyes, she opened her messages. There was only one, from Jughead.

“I returned the car. Thank you for everything.”

She managed a small smile. Ever the gentleman.

“No, thank YOU. I’m sorry about what happened. See you tomorrow?”

Hesitating for a second, she added a heart emoji at the end of the message. Phone in hand, it wasn’t long before she dozed off once more.

The next morning, Betty hurriedly prepared for class, pulling her hair into a tight ponytail. The events of the weekend lingered on her mind. Hopefully, getting back into her studies would take her mind off of it.

On her way out, she stopped by Jughead’s apartment. She gave the door a few loud knocks, to no avail. When she tried again, she heard the sound of Hot Dog barking and sniffing. The door never opened.

That’s strange, she thought. He usually didn’t start work until afternoon. She could usually hear the sound of some obscure film playing from within.

With a shrug, Betty continued on her way. She checked the time. There was a still a bit of time before class started.

When she arrived at the video store, she pressed her face to the glass, peeking inside. The only staff visible was a middle-age balding man with a seemingly permanent scowl.

Betty’s shoulders dropped, finally making her way to university. She opened her messages. The message she had sent last night was marked “Read”, but no reply had come.

“Jughead, are you okay? I wanted to talk with you.”

She sent the message and slipped her phone back into her bag with a sigh. Their relationship had progressed quickly over the course of the last few days. There was a trust and an understanding between them. Jughead had even called her his girlfriend to his mother.

Betty had had crushes in the past. One in particular had been so overpowering that she had wasted most of highschool pursuing it. When the boy, her longtime best friend, had let up and started to date her, she ended up realizing it wasn’t what she thought it would be. They broke up not long after.

With Jughead, it was different. Their connection was so natural, so effortless. Something about him made Betty want to fight to the ends of the earth to make him smile. She believed in her heart that he felt the same way.

He had seen the very worst part of her, there was no turning back. Had he really accepted it?

Betty put on the best smile she could as she walked into the school.

—- The sun was just setting when Betty started off on her way back home. Her heart dropped at the lack of messages on her phone. There was no hiding that something was wrong.

Despite her best efforts, Betty’s curiosity got the best of her. She began running as fast as her legs would allow her. Her book bag was heavy against her side, awkwardly hitting her hip as she ran.

Before she knew it, she was back at the video store’s window, now illuminated in neon. The store seemed empty at first, until she spotted a familiar beanie at the far corner of the store. The man from earlier stood in front of him.

Betty ducked down as to not be seen. Jughead’s head was lowered, his face not visible. The older man’s face was red, and he repeatedly pointed his finger at the boy. Jughead, eventually made eye contact with the man, his face void of emotions.

There was a brief moment of confusion before a wave of realization washed over her. Had it been the sudden vacation they had taken? Come to think of it, how many workers did the store even have?

Betty thought about bursting inside to confront the man before she felt an itch of hesitation. Jughead didn’t need her to fight his battles for him. At least, that’s what she told herself as she tore herself away from the window.

That night, she ended up sending him one more message:

“I know why you aren’t answering. You’re too nice to say it, but I fucked everything up. I don’t blame you. But please, Jug. Can you at least tell me that yourself?”

Her eyes stung as she hit ‘send’. There she went again, crying when she was the one at fault.

A message reading 'Jughead is typing’ popped up on the screen. Every few seconds it would disappear before reappearing again. Nearly two minutes later, her phone vibrated.

“I need some time, Betty. Don’t blame yourself. It’s for the best.”

Betty closed her eyes, feeling tears run down her cheeks. She left the message on “Read”, pulling her blanket close around her.

[umichenginabroad]

GHDI Presents: Health and Home

May 10, 2019 at 8:00 PM

Afia’s Guesthouse, Kumasi

It’s been a whirlwind these past couple days. Last time I wrote I was staying at a guesthouse in Accra, and one thing that hasn’t changed is I’m still staying at a guesthouse, this time with a family in Kumasi. The GHDI program has connections and history all over Ghana and Afia and her family are one of those! It’s certainly been fun talking with her (eating her amazing food) and her kids and getting a sense of what Ghanaian family life is like. She lives kind of far from the hospital where we work during the day, which means a taxi ride each way (15 Cedi, or about $3) so we’re hoping to move into the medical student hostel next week where it’s closer (read: has WiFi) It requires a lot of permissions and graces because (surprise?) we aren’t actually medical students so it was recommended that we spend about a week with Afia to set it up when we’re on the ground. Below is a picture of the inside of her gated home and some of the food!

Water in Ghana isn’t safe to drink from the tap, as there’s a lot of pollution and waste, but bottled and bagged water is really cheap (each 500ml bag is 0.2 Cedi, which is 4 cents) and accessible so there’s not really an issue. If you’ve never had water out of a bag before (are you one of those ultralight hiker people?) it’s kind of a weird but fun experience. You have to bite the corner and then a weird combination of drinking and squeezing the bag. It took me a day or so to get it without spilling all over myself but now at the ripe age of 21 I would call myself an amateur water drinker.

Speaking of the bagged water, they’re sold everywhere. On every corner, in every store, in every restaurant, and by so many random vendors carrying a crate or basket of bagged water as they weave through traffic and sell to car drivers and passengers as they wait in rush hour. These street vendors that dance through the streets selling drinks and little crafts, and new windshield wipers are everywhere when you’re driving, it’s a weird site to see people walking so close to the car when you’re driving by them. Afia says this is because there are so few jobs that they’re trying to make a living any way they can. Other than selling water, the street corners are good places to buy mangos, or a weird non-alcoholic Guinness branded malt drink (really can’t describe it other than combine Guinness with coke but remove the alcohol and add malt flavoring), or antihistamine tablets, just to name a few of our purchases.

Ghanaian life is very different. It’s definitely been a little overwhelming, and it’s been tough missing hearth and home these past couple days. Sometimes when you come back to the home at 5pm, have dinner until 6, there’s not much for you to do for the rest of the night. I’m filling my time with reading old and new books (those that know me know I love to read) while Alex has been watching downloaded episodes of Friends to pass the time: take your pick. We like wandering around the roads near Afia’s place, giving lots of tootsie rolls to the kids (now when we walk down the street they scream TOFFEE and run at us begging us for more), and seeing what there is around. It seems like there’s a whole community around this one intersection and you wouldn’t need to go far for anything if you didn’t want to (or couldn’t ). People warned us about African time, or the slower pace of life, which I normally like, maybe it’s the living in the rural African villages that is the difficult part. That part could improve when we move into the hostel and are closer to city life. Stay tuned for that!

Since I spoke to you all last, we’ve started our work at the Hospital! I don’t know how much I explained in my last post (too lazy to check) what exactly we’re doing, but long description short, we’re observing really everything (people, processes, operations, equipment, etc) at the hospital to identify challenges they face within the Accident and Emergency Department. So during the morning we’re with the nurses and doctors on their morning rounds and business in the observation wards until the afternoon, where we condense and refine those observations into needs statements. Those needs statements help define potential design project topics we would work on in the fall! Before we leave here our goal is to have some guidelines (user requirements and engineering specifications) (what does success look like) for a few of those more critical needs statements. Think you got the long version even though I said short? I guarantee I can use more words to explain it but I don’t think it’ll help. Confused? We are too. It’s hard working through understanding exactly how to put theory to practice even as we’ve been talking about this experiences for a whole semester. We have a lot of help from people back at Michigan though (thank you!) so we’ll great.

The second day (today, Friday) was better after having a clear understanding of what to do, who to talk with (hint it’s everybody) and where to be (turns out the library has free WiFi!!!) We hope to get into a rhythm and built a routine that helps us as we get further in the process.

A few side things:

Definitely should have packed more plain T-shirts (and some polyester ones) because we are wearing scrubs all day (of which we have two pairs) and it’s more comfortable to lay and sweat and sleep in a quick-dry T-shirt than a cotton one. (Really hitting myself for this one; I have about a million and brought zero) The more you know...

We have one casualty to mosquito bites so far: Alex. Apparently there was one in his room last night and he was bit like 8 times (don’t worry we’re taking malaria meds) but luckily I had some hydrocortisone creme so it could be worse (read: it could be me).

I don’t know how regularly I plan on posting, depending on how interesting the day is I might talk a lot about the day-to-day or it might be more philosophical and cultural based. Who knows? But you have been awarded the opportunity (ha) to follow along anyway. Tomorrow is our first day off and we head into the big famous Kejetia Market in Kumasi so I’m sure they’ll be lots of things to tell you about from that!

Thanks for hanging with me,

Scott

—

Scott Vanden Heuvel

Mechanical Engineering

GHDI Immersion Experience, Kumasi, Ghana