#Consecutive Cruisers

[inbabylontheywept]

Tactical Sulking

The human ship started the conversation by dumping all of its magazines into blackhole Kepler 92A. The PDC depleted their reserves within two minutes and the spinal mount took about twice as long. It would have been an impressive display of firepower if the Attali didn’t know for a fact that even a direct hit from any of the rounds would fail to punch through their hull. 

So instead of worrying they watched with the kind of morbid fascination that adults get while watching a child have a tantrum in public. They watched the ship light up, shitting ton after ton of tungsten coated iron into the corpse of a dead star until at last they ran out of ammo. Then and only then did the Attali send a second message over:

Are you quite finished? 

The response came back immediately. 

Gimme a moment, I’m just finishing a little math problem. But yeah, if it’s urgent, I can talk to you. What’s up big man? 

The Attali barely spent a second parsing over the message. They’d seen human bravado before. 

We sent you a request to surrender, acknowledging that none of your weapons are strong enough to pierce our hull. You opened fire on a blackhole for about five consecutive minutes. Tantrums and sulking do not impress us. 

The human ship took a moment to respond. 

Well, that’s a pity. The two things I’m best at are tantrums and sulking. The third is juggling, but in zero-g that’s… well. Easy. We could host a little talent show here though, if that would impress you. 

Are you going to discuss your terms of surrender, or are we going to have to kill you?

There was a longer pause before the ship replied back.

You know, a minute or two ago, that would’ve been a very scary threat, but you’ve got about ten seconds before shooting us becomes a mutual suicide. We’d strongly discourage that route. 

The Attali commander actually rolled his eyes. 

It’ll take a minute to charge our capacitors. I can promise it won’t be painful. Your bullshitting is a credit to

The message was cut off as a swarm of something ripped through the lower quadrant of the ship. The targeting sensors lost their minds - the projectiles were coming out of the blackhole. 

What the fuck. 

Main thruster was down, as were the nav lines. He had enough presence of mind to direct the side PDC, using recoil to push out of the line just in time to avoid the brunt of another burst of fire. A standard human ferroslug was caught by the lidar, but it was moving so close to C that instrument error was putting it at superluminal.

A second burst of mini rounds blew past the ship. They didn’t catch the brunt like they did the first time, but the stragglers in the burst tore through what remained of engineering. Casualty estimates in that quadrant went past 60% as the capacitor bank blew out, shorting out the main power conduit to their weapon systems. 

Without even PDC recoil to steer, they’d have been trapped, forced to take barrage after barrage of mysterious black hole bullets, if the human ship hadn’t taken the time to intervene. 

It rammed their craft. 

It was not a combat ram. It was a 15 mph collision that gradually turned up the gas. The little human ship chugged along, nudging the Attali cruiser out of the way, avoiding the next barrage by a mere 500 meter gap. 

It shouldn’t have been possible for a ship to look smug, but it did. 

The Attali sent the first message over. Telecom still worked. Life support was running on fumes, but of course the luxury systems were fine. 

What the hell was that? 

Gravity assisted munitions, the human ship replied immediately. The Attali captain had the damndest sense that they’d typed that in minutes ago and were just waiting to hit the send command. 

He took a moment to parse that.

The bullets weren’t being fired into the blackhole. They were being fired very, very close to it. Enough to slingshot around with stolen momentum. 

It was a stupid, stupid trick. And yet. 

What now? he asked. 

Well, the human ship replied. It was awful nice of you to not just kill us on sight. I suppose we could return the favor. Feel like surrendering today? 

There was a long, long pause from the Attali ship as the captain attempted to swallow his pride. The task was not made easier when, a few seconds later, another message came in. 

Chop chop. Tantrums and sulking do not win wars. *Exceptions may apply.*

[mapsontheweb]

Pearl Harbor Attack, December 7, 1941.

« L’Histoire » n°490, décembre 2021

by cartesdhistoire

3,500 km from Los Angeles and 6,500 from Tokyo, Pearl Harbor is home to the largest naval base and headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

Approved on November 5, 1941 by Emperor Hiro-Hito, the daring Japanese attack plan aims to annihilate the American fleet forcing the United States to leave Hawaii and to deploy all its naval forces on the California coast. Between late summer and December 6, 1941, Nippon engineers develop the Type 91 torpedo, equipped with stabilizing flares and equipped with a powerful explosive capable of penetrating the thickest hulls of ships.

The chosen date is Sunday, December 7, the only day of the week when the U.S. fleet is not on maneuvers and many sailors, out of a staff of 25,000 men, are on leave. Operation "Z" stops the idea of a large-scale and lightning surprise attack of the Japanese hunt in two consecutive very close waves.

After ten days of navigation, taking a very northern route with little traffic, the Japanese fleet imposed absolute radio silence. On the night of December 6 to 7, they anchored on the high seas 200 nautical miles (350 km) from Pearl Harbor.

At 6 a.m., while the day has not yet risen, the first wave of the six aircraft carriers takes off. At 7:53, 183 aircraft fly over Pearl Harbor in attack formation and pounding their targets for an hour in a deafening noise. Blooming from the Pacific Fleet, Arizona and Oklahoma battleships transformed into metal torch lighten up, bringing nearly 1,500 sailors in the bottom. At 8:50 a.m., the second wave consisting of 176 aircraft enters the stage.

In two hours of strikes, the American naval aviation lost practically all of its aviation (217 planes), almost half of its fleet sank (4 destroyers, 3 cruisers, 8 battleships, 1 mine layer, 1 workshop ship, 1 seaplane carrier) and 2,403 Americans died.

[duckapus]

Mario & Sonic Party part 3

(Part 1) (Part 2)

Okay, now we're doing Minigame Mode

So the framing device for the Minigame Mode menu as a whole as well as the Free Play menu is that Peach's Castle ended up in Spagonia and the Submode Selection and Minigame Selection uses magic portal paintings like in Super Mario 64, with Toadsworth and Professor Pickle curating the gallery. If a submode or minigame is still locked, the painting will be obscured by abstract blobs of color.

Fishing Battle

That one mode in nearly every Mario Party where you pick a minigame category (4-Player, 2-vs-2 and 1-vs-3) and whether you need 3, 5, or 7 victories to win. In this case, it's represented by the Players' characters fishing with Big and a Lakitu, and when you win a minigame you catch a fish.

Duel Simulator

Professor E. Gadd and Eggman Nega's laboratories got fused together in such a way that the doors are missing, and they've decided to make the most of it and simulate the playable characters going head-to-head in Duel Minigame Tournaments. We've got the two duels in round 1, then the 3rd-4th playoff, then the final round, as you'd expect. The Players can decide who squares off with who in the first round.

Extreme Racing

The single player Minigame Endurance mode. The Player must compete in 100 consecutive Minigames of any type (except Item and Boss Minigames) and can only lose 3 times before getting a game over. The host duo and racecourse aesthetic are different depending on the difficulty level. On Easy, you race against Storm and the Spooky Speedster through ancient ruins, with elaborate depictions of both Ancient Babylonians and Thwomps carved into the walls. On Normal, you race against Wave and Koopa the Quick through a tunnel that appears to be part of an Eggman base, with a window on one side that reveals the tunnel is hanging over a lava lake near one of Bowser's Castles. On Hard, you race against Jet and Il Piantissimo on a path made of clouds and vines high in the sky, with Sky Babylon visible in the distance. On Master, you race against Metal Sonic 3.0 and a Cosmic Mario on a mechanical version of Rainbow Road, with both the Comet Observatory and a not-blown-up Death Egg visible in the distance. On Super, you're on a comically long wooden pier being chased by the Sonic Adventure Orca. It gives up and swims away at the halfway point, only to immediately be replaced by a giant Cheep-Cheep.

Tile Trial

It's basically just MP5's Mini-Game Wars with a bigger grid, because it's my favorite of the Colored Tile Minigame Submodes. Sticks and Orbulon are the Hosts because I think they'd play off each other well, and there's now a 2-vs-2 version called "Badgers Versus Aliens."

Chaothlon

The usual Minigame Decathlon framed as a Chao Race. It's hosted by Toad and Omochao, and every character uses a Chao that looks like them...with a few exceptions.

Cream obviously uses Cheese.

Ashley's Chao is clearly just Red under the effect of a transformation spell of some sort.

Petey Piranha uses a Nipper Plant

Bowser Jr. uses a Hero Chao wearing a Bandana identical to his.

Metal Sonic and Omega both use modified Omochao Because Robots.

Boss Rush

Kamek and Sage challenge 1 or 2 players to play every Boss Minigame back-to-back. The order is random, with the exception of Dimensional Collision Zone's boss, which is always last. This is the only way for Blaze, Ashley, Junior and Metal to fight the bosses, and it's probably a bit awkward for Junior and Metal because they are the boss fight for BowsEgg Battle Cruiser.

That's it for Minigame Mode, but this post ain't over yet!

Bonus Mode

The Dream World and Maginaryworld got fused just like everything else, but because they're both just Dreams it isn't that big a deal. So, Prince Dreambert and Illumina collaborated on three special dreams that house Bonus Games for the playable characters to enjoy.

MicroDream Mayhem

A single player bonus game hosted by Lumina. It's literally a WarioWare stage with "Mario + Sonic" as the theme. There's about 30 mirogames (which I will not be coming up with. nor will I be coming up with the Minigames. That Way Lies Madness.)

Dream Ralley

Four players race through a platforming course created by Dreambert, because of course you'd put platforming challenges into a crossover between two of the most famous platformer series of all time. Each difficulty level has three courses to choose from (Dreambert has a lot of free time).

Nightmare Shuffle

Void has created a few small, simple boards that use the mechanics of Sonic Shuffle instead of Mario Party. I bet you thought I forgot about Sonic Shuffle, didn't you?

Extras Mode

Hosted by Starlow and Shahra, this Mode houses the Star Bank and has some extra content that didn't quite fit in the other modes. Namely:

Unlockable figurines like the ones in MPDS.

3 special single-player Minigames.

Unlockable artwork of the characters, usually involving the various counterparts interacting.

The soundtrack, available for your perusal and listening pleasure.

Options Mode

Exactly what you expect. Hosted by a Goomba and an Egg Pawn.

[rita]

being perceived goes harder than 15 consecutive guava cruisers no water

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 7.16 (1900-1960)

1909 – Persian Constitutional Revolution: Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar is forced out as Shah of Persia and is replaced by his son Ahmad Shah Qajar. 1910 – John Robertson Duigan makes the first flight of the Duigan pusher biplane, the first aircraft built in Australia. 1915 – Henry James becomes a British citizen to highlight his commitment to Britain during the first World War. 1915 – At Treasure Island on the Delaware River in the United States, the First Order of the Arrow ceremony takes place and the Order of the Arrow is founded to honor American Boy Scouts who best exemplify the Scout Oath and Law. 1927 – Augusto César Sandino leads a raid on U.S. Marines and Nicaraguan Guardia Nacional that had been sent to apprehend him in the village of Ocotal, but is repulsed by one of the first dive-bombing attacks in history. 1931 – Emperor Haile Selassie signs the first constitution of Ethiopia. 1935 – The world's first parking meter is installed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. 1941 – Joe DiMaggio hits safely for the 56th consecutive game, a streak that still stands as an MLB record. 1942 – Holocaust: Vel' d'Hiv Roundup (Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv): The government of Vichy France orders the mass arrest of 13,152 Jews who are held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver in Paris before deportation to Auschwitz. 1945 – Manhattan Project: The Atomic Age begins when the United States successfully detonates a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon near Alamogordo, New Mexico. 1945 – World War II: The heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis leaves San Francisco with parts for the atomic bomb "Little Boy" bound for Tinian Island. 1948 – Following token resistance, the city of Nazareth, revered by Christians as the hometown of Jesus, capitulates to Israeli troops during Operation Dekel in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. 1948 – The storming of the cockpit of the Miss Macao passenger seaplane, operated by a subsidiary of the Cathay Pacific Airways, marks the first aircraft hijacking of a commercial plane. 1950 – Chaplain–Medic massacre: American POWs are massacred by North Korean Army. 1951 – King Leopold III of Belgium abdicates in favor of his son, Baudouin I of Belgium. 1951 – J. D. Salinger publishes his popular yet controversial novel, The Catcher in the Rye. 1956 – Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus closes its last "Big Tent" show in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; due to changing economics, all subsequent circus shows will be held in arenas. 1957 – KLM Flight 844 crashes off the Schouten Islands in present day Indonesia (then Netherlands New Guinea), killing 58 people.

[boredgamesgracieosborne]

Battleships

Battleship is a strategy type guessing game for two players. It is played on ruled grids (paper or board) on which each player's fleet of warships are marked. The locations of the fleets are concealed from the other player. Players alternate turns calling "shots" at the other player's ships, and the objective of the game is to destroy the opposing player's fleet.

Battleship is known worldwide as a pencil and paper game which dates from World War I. It was published by various companies as a pad-and-pencil game in the 1930s and was released as a plastic board game by Milton Bradley in 1967. The game has developed into electronic versions, video games, smart device apps and a film.

The game is played on four grids, two for each player. The grids are typically square – usually 10×10 – and the individual squares in the grid are identified by letter and number. On one grid the player arranges ships and records the shots by the opponent. On the other grid, the player records their own shots.

Before play begins, each player secretly arranges their ships on their primary grid. Each ship occupies a number of consecutive squares on the grid, arranged either horizontally or vertically. The number of squares for each ship is determined by the type of ship. The ships cannot overlap. The types and numbers of ships allowed are the same for each player. These may vary depending on the rules. The ships should be hidden from players sight. After the ships have been positioned, the game proceeds in a series of rounds. In each round, each player takes a turn to announce a target square in the opponent's grid which is to be shot at. The opponent announces whether or not the square is occupied by a ship. If it is a "hit", the player who is hit marks this on their own grid , and announces what ship is hit.

The attacking player marks the hit or miss on their own "tracking" or "target" grid with a pencil marking in the paper version of the game, or the appropriate color peg in the pegboard version (red for "hit", white for "miss"), in order to build up a picture of the opponent's fleet.

When all of the squares of a ship have been hit, the ship's owner announces the sinking of the Carrier, Submarine, Cruiser/Destroyer/Patrol Boat, or the Battleship. If all of a player's ships have been sunk, the game is over and their opponent wins.

I think the game was primarily aimed at boys and men due to the Naval aspect of the game as a male dominated profession at the time. Also boys and men like blowing things up!

The 2012 film Battleship was loosely based on the game because of it's strategic nature but that's about it, the warships take on a fleet of Aliens instead and the introduction of a female naval officer (Rhianna) modernises the Naval profession as it is today. The film reaches all ages and gender more than the board game ever reached.

[cyberbenb]

Defense Ministry: Vessels heading to Russia-controlled Black Sea ports to be considered military targets

The Defense Ministry said on July 20 that from midnight of July 21, all vessels on the Black Sea heading toward Russian or Russia-occupied ports will be treated as carrying military cargo "with all associated risks."

"The Russian Federation has once again brutally violated the universal right to free navigation for the whole world and is deliberately undermining food security, condemning millions of people to starvation," the statement said.

The ministry noted that the Kremlin has turned the Black Sea into a danger zone by threatening civilian vessels and trade routes and attacking civilian infrastructure in cities.

"In addition, navigation in the areas of the northeastern part of the Black Sea and the Kerch-Yenikale Strait of Ukraine is prohibited as dangerous since 5 a.m. on July 20, 2023," Ukrainian officials announced.

Shortly after withdrawing from the Black Sea Grain Initiative on July 17, Russia declared that as of July 20, all vessels sailing to Ukrainian ports will be considered "potential carriers of military cargo" and therefore legitimate targets.

Black Sea grain deal collapses as Russia pulls from agreement

Russia announced on July 17 that it is pulling out of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, critical for ensuring global food security, effectively collapsing the deal.

The Kyiv IndependentMartin Fornusek

According to the U.K. Defense Ministry, the Russian Black Sea Fleet will likely be imposing the blockade, but at the risk of attacks by Ukrainian surface drones and cruise missiles.

"The fate of the cruiser Moskva proves that the Defense Forces of Ukraine have the necessary means to repel Russian aggression at sea," Ukraine's defense ministry noted.

According to the White House, the Kremlin is considering attacking civilian vessels on the Black Sea and then putting the blame on Ukraine. U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Adam Hodge said that Russian forces laid additional sea mines in approaches toward Ukrainian ports.

Russia's withdrawal from the grain deal sparked international condemnation and fears of rising food prices.  The agreement, brokered by Turkey and the U.N. in July 2022, allowed Ukraine to export its agricultural products during the ongoing full-scale Russian invasion.

Following the termination of the agreement, Russia launched three consecutive strikes over the past three days against Odesa, damaging the port infrastructure and destroying 60,000 tons of grain.

Ukraine war latest: Zelensky says Russia deliberately targets grain infrastructure in Odesa Oblast

Key developments on July 19: * Russia’s overnight attack targets Ukraine’s grain infrastructure in Odesa Oblast, injures at least 10 * US to provide 4 NASAMS systems to Ukraine under new $1.3 billion military aid package * Russia threatens that all ships sailing to Ukrainian ports will be consid…

The Kyiv IndependentDaria Shulzhenko

[pazifik-querung]

@Apia, Upolu, Western Samoa:

Um 07h00 weckt uns ein starkes Vibrieren und Rütteln des Schiffes. Der Kapitän und der ortskundige Lotse auf der Brücke haben mit dem fast einstündigen Landungsmanöver zwischen Riff und Hafenkante begonnen. Um 08h00 hat die Seabourn Odyssey angelegt. Zur Begrüssung spielt eine Tanzgruppe auf.

Katholische Kathedrale Mulivai

Villa Vailima

Museum of Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson (* 13. November 1850 in Edinburgh; † 3. Dezember 1894 in Vailima nahe Apia, Samoa) war ein schottischer Schriftsteller des viktorianischen Zeitalters. Obwohl er an Tuberkulose erkrankt war und nur 44 Jahre alt wurde, hinterliess er ein umfangreiches Werk von Reiseerzählungen, Abenteuerliteratur und historischen Romanen, aber auch Lyrik und Essays. Bekannt geworden ist er vor allem durch den Jugendbuchklassiker Die Schatzinsel

While leaving the port of Apia we were cordially invited by Hotel Director Marco De Oliveira to join fellow guests (see Bob & Gil in the middle of the photo with us) and team members (crew) for a special get-together, honoring Seabourn Odyssey’s consecutive cruisers.

[raspberryspace]

Motor cycle class day two

6:30am right into some obstacle clearance riding, we just ran over wooden planks… but ‘‘twas fun standing on the pegs to really let the suspension and your legs take the impact. It’s eerie how similar it all feels to riding a bike, yes the motorcycles heavier but it’s also just as nimble. With speed balance becomes easier due to the rotating wheels. Squeezing yourself around the tank also adds stability, something you can’t really do on a bike. but yeah drills - we had a braking while in a corner drill, and now this isn’t anything tricky it’s just maybe a little bit more accident prone due to the nature of trying to stop yourself at 18mph with front hydraulic brakes… so unfortunately one of my peers did in-fact lock the front while turning and dropped his bike, an old orange tanked Suzuki. Luckily he wants hurt or anything it was rather low speed but still kinda humbled everyone in class. One thing though is that the instructors didn’t use it as a teaching moment, to demo what to do when a bike falls or checking for damage. Would have been insightful. We kept on though and the guy who fell ( the Russian dude ) sat out for the rest of that drill while writing up paperwork that he was uninjured and etc for liability rip. The fun one today was the consecutive corners and speed management drill. Big long S turns and a constant rate turn made for a nice 2nd gear zoom. The first lap around was rather risk adverse there was a lot of loose gravel around some of the corner bits but I built confidence in the bike. Couple times i definitely tried to apex the corners even though we were supposed to stay in the middle throughout… drop a knee and LEAN. It was quite fun. The slalom and swerving drills were also quite a leaning experience. At first I was kinda just sitting upright and maintaining my body perpendicular to the bike entering the leans and turning, but what I found out ( without any real help from the instructors ) was that you really want to pivot with your hips. Keep your upper body level and move around your butt to balance! The first swerve from 23mph felt very natural and the bike moved exactly where I wanted it to, I was quite impressed. Low speed slalom too before moving around my hips felt very turn - drive - lean - turn - drive - lean whereas with hip movement it ends up being more of a dance TurnLean-drive LeanTurn-Drive it felt rhythmic and dynamic. Definitely enjoyed that learning process. Lastly the test! It consists of an emergency braking within a box, U Turn within a box, swerving, low speed control and slalom, cornering at speed / speed management and that’s it! Pretty straightforward. It was all drills we had done previously just now we couldn’t “practice” it’s a one shot you’re done kinda deal. Ok let’s also preface this with one of the things that will auto DQ you from the test is if you drop the bike. It was so unfortunate to see the oldest gentleman really commit to the emergency braking and sent it a little too fast before locking up the front brake to make the box braking zone. His bike fell, thankfully he was uninjured but definitely looked dejected. We all gave him a thumbs up and nods to reassure, but I’m sure he was feeling down regardless. He’s going to end up having to take the final riding evaluation again another day. One dude who kinda just lacked the refinement and listening skills too tbh.. ( ran through stops and didn’t line up places ) was looking rather worried through the final evaluation because he stalled it twice and put a foot down during low speed maneuvers. But he passed no harm done. That’s really all of it. I did get to ride on one of the older Honda cruiser bikes during a break, and boy… it really felt like a substantial little vehicle. The seating position was comfortable maybe a little low and the foot pegs were so far out ahead. Changed the center of gravity and how to balance it, not to mention longer forks with more rake to them changed turning radius and technique! But man did it feel like a proper - I’m a biker - it definitely cruises.

We got a little ziplock baggie with discount cards and promos, our endorsement of the course of to the races we go. Pretty just handshake and congratulation little tips like practice with your own bike in a parking lot etc. but yeah we all said our thanks and headed off! Now the dmv… takes two days to process it all so guess who has to now stay an extra two days in Florida to make sure this class doesn’t go to waste. This idiot. hell yeah. Thankfully I ended up getting a better direct flight back. What da text block limiter… tumblr what is this I’m trying to save some memories here…

Overall I’m happy, itch scratched. Am I going to ditch my car and bike only everywhere no… but definitely something I want to explore more and hopefully enjoy safely and responsibly! Off to the next rating to be added to my pilots license.

[ot3]

what’s the story behind your hot wheels pt cruiser (RIP 🕊🙏🏻😔)?

we spent $3000 within a single week, replacing the entire cooling system, only for it to overheat and cause irreparable damage anyway.

:( she is being scrapped tomorrow morning and i am very very very very sad about it

[lonestarbattleship]

"USS WAINWRIGHT (DD-419) fires on Luftwaffe He 111 Torpedo Bombers attacking Arctic Convoy PQ-17 on July 4, 1942.

Originally part of the Cruiser Covering Force, on the afternoon of July 4th, WAINWRIGHT joined the convoy to refuel from the tanker Aldersdale. Before starting the refueling, Luftwaffe He 111s attacked and Wainwright assisted the convoy in repulsing two consecutive attacks by the torpedo bombers. During an ensuing dive-bombing attack, she evaded an attack by Ju 88s with the nearest bomb landing at least 150 yards away.

After the dive-bombing attack, a two-hour lull in the action allowed Wainwright to resume refueling, but the Luftwaffe returned around 1820hrs with 25 He 111s. The Heinkels divided themselves into two groups for the attack, WAINWRIGHT's fire on one of the two groups proved so effective that only one managed to penetrate her defenses to make the torpedo drop between WAINWRIGHT and the convoy. The other He 111s in that group dropped their torpedoes from further out that resulted in excessive torpedo runs to the convoy that the ships in the convoy easily evaded.

Torpedos from the 2nd group of He 111s hit two ships in the Convoy; William Hooper and Azerbaidjan.

Afterwards, when Convoy PQ-17 was ordered to scatter due to a supposed German surface ship threat that included the Battleship TIRPITZ, the convoy lost 24 of its 35 merchant ships to combined German aircraft and U-Boat attacks."

Photographed by Frank Scherschel for LIFE Magazine. Identified by Peter DeForest.

LIFE Magazine Archives: 115781364, 115781365, 115781377, 115781380, 115781378, 115781389, 115781390, 115781391, 115781379

[whumpster-fire]

Recent Titles I Have Acquired

Honorary Alumnus of the University of Phoenix

International Man of Memes

Knight of the Clown Table

Ordained Minister of the Universal Life Church

Most Likely to be Personally and Specifically Condemned by the UN Security Council (as voted by my high school senior class by unheard of margins)

Employee of the Month (later revoked due to that motherfucker Jerry)

Second-Chair Air Violinist of the Wyola, Montana Philharmonic Orchestra

"Worst Pirate I’ve Ever Heard of” (awarded by Special Agent Hugh Cox of the Federal Bureau of Investigations’s Really Cool Crimes Division shortly after foiling my plot to illegally download the USS Constitution off of Limewire and use it to perform shore bombardment of Salt Lake City by making Great Salt Lake so shallow that I ran aground near Molly’s Nipple. Those Mormon landlubbers never would’ve seen it coming)

Honorary Alumnus of Subway Sandwich University

Warrior-Poet

Guinness World of Record, “Most consecutive clown egg designs rejected by the Clown Egg Registry”

Supreme Ruler of Danbury, Ct (disputed)

Senior Secretary to the Deputy Vice President of the “Received A Lifetime Ban From An Applebee’s In All 48 Contiguous States And the District Of Columbia” Club

Fresh Prince of Bel Aire (title inherited following previous holder’s disgrace and abdication)

Guinness World Record Holder, “Most Bones Broken During A Single Trampoline Stunt” (later revoked due to rules revision requiring that all bones broken belong to record holder)

Guinness World Record Holder, “Most Casualties and Collateral Damage Caused By A Single Trampoline Stunt” (record subsequently discontinued due to “encouraging poor moral character”)

"Best Pirate I’ve Ever Seen” (awarded by Special Agent Hugh Cox of the Federal Bureau of Investigations’s Really Cool Crimes Division shortly after successful shore bombardment of Milwaukee, Wisconsin using illegally downloaded armored cruiser USS Olympia)

President of Hell’s Angels Cedar Rapids, Iowa Chapter (title gained through single combat, subsequently abdicated after instituting rule limiting engine displacement to 50cc so that I can get some peace and goddamn quiet)

Cryptid “Some maniacally giggling vaguely humanoid being in Groucho Glasses,” last seen in Stroudsburg, PA, 2019

The Scourge of Syracuse

Guinness World Record Holder, “Noise Complaints Caused in Most Cities Within a 1-Hour Timespan” (record actually set during my famous 1973 “Carbon-Phenolic Ablative Ball Run” from St. Augustine to San Diego with a time of 1:57:23, but only recently officially recognized after previous record holder was retroactively disqualified for use of atomic weaponry. Record discontinued 2 weeks later at urging of Texas and Arizona state patrols for fear that future attempts would be made using same route). The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum has once again denied my application to display the record setting vehicle “SuckMyFuckingBallsCops Geraldine” unless they are granted permission to paint over and censor the name and the “obscene” (sic) nose art, which I will not stand for as it is a violation of my 1st Amendment rights.

Guinness World Record Holder, “Most Casualties from Single Errant Golf Shot,” set on August 28th, 2021 at the Sunnyside Country Club Golf Course in Fresno, CA, using a 5-iron from the tee box at the 13th Hole. Number of casualties was 45 at the time of Guinness discontinuing the record to discourage future attempts, but has since increased to 61 and may continue to increase as more victims are discovered.

Guinness World Record Holder, “Holder of Most Discontinued World Records”

The Defiler of Barstow (I am currently disputing this title with the National Barbarian Pillaging Association as city was already in defiled state long before my arrival)

Personally and Specifically Condemned by the UN Security Council for willdly successful shore bombardment of Puno, Peru and Copacabana, Bolivia using illegally downloaded HMS Trincomalee

Personally responsible for Copacabana, Bolivia now holding Guinness World Record for Highest Altitude City To Be Bombarded By Pirate Ship, unseating previous record holder of Tahoe City, California although city has so far not answered my requests to have statue erected next to commemorative plaque

Gold Member of my local public radio station. I have the thank you coffee mug to prove it.

[ccohanlon]

sealand

The first foreign yachts turn up in the Pittwater, north of Sydney, Australia, around the end of September, just as the warm nor’easterly breezes set in and coastal dwellers are reassured that the winter has ended. Most have made the long passage non-stop south from Queensland harbours, standing well off the rock-strewn New South Wales coast to take advantage of the fast, south-flowing East Australian Current. Some have sailed further — from the Solomon Islands or Vanuatu or Fiji – and have had to beat a couple of thousand nautical miles to windward against brisk south-easterly trade winds to get out of tropical latitudes before the cyclone season begins.

It’s easy to recognise the long-distance cruisers. They have a rugged, purposeful aspect, with short, sturdy, over-rigged masts and wide decks to which are lashed anchors, boat hooks, small dinghies, surfboards, gas bottles and rows of plastic jerry cans. Their cockpits are shaded by wide sun-awnings, their hatches by weather-worn, folding canvas dodgers that look like old-fashioned pram hoods. Above their transoms, makeshift stainless steel structures support angled arrays of solar cells and propeller-driven wind generators, as well as radar reflectors, and radar, radio and GPS antennae. Faded ensigns flutter from backstays or short flagstaves to signal the vessels’, if not always the crews’, nationalities.

Foreign yachts tend to congregate, three or four at a time, on the western side of the wide, sheltered bay, where there are a few anchorages and fewer moorings designated by the state’s Maritime Services as suitable for ‘live-aboard’ visitors – as long as they don’t over-stay their welcome. Even if the authorities turn a blind eye, and they do, sometimes, the welcome is unlikely to last long. Crews are allowed to live aboard for just two weeks consecutively in the same anchorage. The half dozen suburbs that surround the Pittwater are some of Sydney’s wealthiest, and their ratepayers, especially those with high-value waterfront properties, are loathe to share their views (or anything else) for too long with scruffy interlopers who don’t pay utility bills, let alone local rates and taxes.

It’s a sentiment — and, increasingly, a set of by-laws — they share with shore-dwellers around Sydney Harbour, Port Hacking, Port Melbourne and along the Swan and Brisbane Rivers.

The petty squabble between urban shore dweller and visiting seafarer in Australia’s coastal suburbs is really just a recasting of the bitter, millennia-old conflict between settler and nomad, a social, economic and spiritual rift that in other parts of the world see-saws between bloody skirmish and nervous stand-off.

The nomad isn’t an indiscriminate traveller. Although the name is derived from the Greek word nomos (pasture) and the Latin nomas (those who wander in search of pasture), the nomad doesn’t wander, but rather follows a well-established, cyclical route to a series of temporary campsites next to pastures or water sources that can support a small tribe and its animals for all or part of a season. As the late Bruce Chatwin observed in his untidy essay, Nomad Invasions, in the collection What am I doing here? (Penguin, 1990), "Nomadism is born of wide expanses, ground too barren for the farmer to cultivate economically – savannah, steppe, desert and tundra, all of which will support an animal population providing it moves."

Later he notes, "a nomad’s territory is the path linking his seasonal pastures." But the very notion of territory is born of settlement. It is necessarily somewhere defined not just by boundaries but by claims of ownership. When nomads’ traditional routes intersect anywhere claimed (by settlers) as territory – whether it’s the fenced perimeters of private property or an invisible state or national border – it is interpreted as trespass or, worse, invasion. The nomad’s innate disregard for territory is almost incomprehensible to the settler, whose first instinct is to restrict or refuse access. The nomad is characterised by a stubborn insistence on wide-ranging movement with few encumbrances and little desire for prolonged occupation, let alone possession, of any one place. Such lack of containment is almost spiritually troubling to the settler for whom the acquisition, development and protection of land and goods are intrinsic to his sense of self, security and belonging.

Long-distance seafarers are, and always were, a type of nomad too. The safety of their voyages, especially under sail, is dependent on seasonal shifts in monsoonal wind directions or the strength of trade winds, the intensity of temperate latitude depressions, the locations of permanent anti-cyclones with their persistent calms and fog, and the risk of cyclones, typhoons or hurricanes. Except for large, engine-powered, commercial ships — their movements determined only by trade and the efficient, economic transport of heavy cargoes regardless of season — the ideal timing and routes for ocean passages have been the same for more than two thousand years.

Hundreds of generations of seafarers have recorded their observations of the sea surface, wind and sky, as well as the arc of stars and planets along these routes. They’ve passed them on in narratives — Polynesian mele, Icelandic sagas, Arabic instructional rahmanis — or as notations in log books and on charts, even as diagrams constructed from intricately bound sticks and shells. For example, in a passage from a rahmani known as Fa’ida of the Kitab al-Fawa’id, near the end of a section titled 'Seasons for leaving the Arabian coast', the renowned fifteenth century Arab mu’allim (navigator) and poet Ahmad Bin Majid warned of the intensity of the South-West Monsoon during summer in the Arabian Gulf:  "Intelligent men never make this journey during the three months when the Dahur is at full strength for then it is a gamble … For these ninety days the sea is closed and he who would cross it deserves to be unhappy. From the agony of loneliness and remorse, so much anxiety and suffering."

Today, the routing charts, tidal atlases and sailing directions published by various governments’ hydrographic offices are simply the ongoing refinement of knowledge gathered and shared over several centuries by navigators around the world. This sharing is probably the oldest, maybe the only, ongoing tradition upheld by every nation with maritime interests. Part of the reason it endures is that the seafarer’s ‘territory’, the vast, refuge-less oceans beyond national territorial waters (and other, more arbitrary demarcations), doesn’t really belong to anyone.

Men first took to the sea in prehistoric times, but they learned to navigate – and so became seafarers – between four and five thousand years ago. Since then, man has headed out into deep waters to fish, trade, explore, migrate, invade, plunder, colonise, compete, conduct research and look for adventure. However, it wasn’t until the twentieth century that living on the sea was explored as an alternative to land-based urban or rural settlement. A word for it, ‘seasteading’, was coined in the 1970s to evoke the spirit of nineteenth-century pioneers who first settled the wide, open plains of the central and mid-western United States under the land grants of the Homestead Act.

Water-borne communities, both fixed and mobile, aren’t a new idea. They have existed on inlets, estuaries, canals and other sheltered waterways around the world for longer than men have sailed offshore. However, those which survive today – the river people of the Mekong, the Hoklo and Tanka junk communities in Hong Kong, the Uros who weave the floating tortora reed islands of Lake Titicaca, even the bargees who ply the canals and rivers of northern Europe – rely on proximity and inextricable social and economic connections to shore-bound communities.

Seasteading is about living alone or in small groups or communities with little dependence on shore-bound resources, mainly on the open sea but also off isolated reefs, islands or coastlines. How this is actually accomplished lies at the heart of an ongoing argument between two fundamentally divergent traditions: seafaring and sea-settling.

"The model of seastead I suggest is based upon a sailboat that has been built or modified to provide an individual or family a home on the sea,’ writes the American author and former ‘live-aboard’, Jerome FitzGerald, in his book, Seasteading: A Life of Hope and Freedom on the Last Viable Frontier (Universe, 2006). As he points out, "The oceans are truly vast. Hundreds of thousands of miles of coastline remain uninhabited because the skills have not been acquired to live within this sometimes harsh environment. Thousands of islands as well remain empty due to lack of infrastructure and modern conveniences … Properly and thoughtfully equipped, a modest sailboat can be a very nearly self-sufficient entity suitable as a life-support platform for exploring these areas.”

James Wharram, a renowned English designer of sailing catamarans inspired by traditional Polynesian designs and techniques, and the first man to sail a multi-hull across the Atlantic, agrees with Fitzgerald. Thirty years ago, in an essay entitled The Sailing Community, he proposed a nomadic, 20th century tribe of ‘sea people’: handfuls of individuals and families living on their own catamarans to avoid, as he put it, "proximity difficulties which can lead to social stress", with a much larger ‘mother ship’ owned by all the families as its hub. The mother ship would be regarded as shared space or ‘territory’, not as an extension of each family’s ‘home’. Manned by a crew made up of members of each family, he suggested it would carry additional victuals, fuel, tools and spares, as well as accommodate communal spaces, an office and workshop for use at anchor.

The sea-settler’s preoccupation with ‘freedom’ is less easily understood by the seafarer.

"Seasteading means to create permanent dwellings on the ocean," Patri Friedman, one of the participants in the San Francisco-based Seasteading Project, argues. The project aims "to build sovereign, self-sufficient floating platforms, thus creating new territory on the oceans" – in other words, to colonise what is still referred to in inter-governmental legal terminology as ‘the high seas’, the wide tracts of ocean over which no nation has sovereignty. To seafarers, the Seasteading Project and others like it that propose purpose-built permanent or fixed structures on the sea’s surface or beneath it – civilian and military researchers have been living and working for extended periods in underwater ‘habitats’ since the 1960s, mainly inshore, at depths above fifty metres – are simply an expression of an archetypal shore-bound ‘settler’ mentality. Comparatively spacious, stable emulations of an island, they’re designed for a few to live on at first and then, following a pattern of scalability apparent in nineteenth-century North American home-steading communities, to expand with additional components, platforms and population to become a fully fledged sea-borne colony supported by what Friedman dubs (a little too cutely) a ‘seaconomy’. Inherent in the creation of such a colony is the ambition to proclaim it an independent ocean state, or what James H. Lee refers to in his paper Castles in the Sea: A Survey of Artificial Islands and Floating Utopias, as a ‘microtopia’ – in some ways, a virtual concept: a self-governing micro-nation founded atop a man-made, geographically non-specific fixed or floating space.

None of this is of much interest to seafarers. They have long known how to work around governmental strictures and retain a large measure of freedom. For example, the seafarer’s ‘floating space’ is required by international law to be ‘flagged’ – registered in the country in which its majority owner is either a citizen or resident. In practice, this is subverted by ‘flags of convenience’: the legal owners of many vessels, including yachts, are corporations set up in countries where taxes are lower or government maritime regulations less strict. As a result, a vessel can sail under the sovereignty of Panama, the Channel Islands, Mauritius or Thailand, for example, without ever having visited the home port inscribed on its transom. Moreover, its captain and crew will probably be a mix of nationalities, none  the same as the vessel’s. Their certificates of competency, the seafarer’s equivalent of operating licences, might be issued by yet other nations.

Even a seafarer’s tax status can be moot. Although a tax domicile (the country to which one reports and pays taxes) is not normally something workers get to negotiate, seafarers who rarely set foot in their own countries – and have no property or other holdings there – and whose income is derived entirely from foreign or ‘offshore’ sources (especially those in opaque tax havens), are deemed by many nations to be ‘residents of the high seas’ and legally untaxable.

The sea-settler’s apparent preoccupation with ‘freedom’ is less easily understood by the seafarer. The rural nomad’s migration is, as Chatwin describes it, "a ritual performance, a 'religious' catharsis, revolutionary in the strictest sense in that each pitching and breaking of camp represents a new beginning". The pelagic nomad’s succession of voyages – during which, according to tradition, a course is never set ‘to’ a particular port but rather, less precisely, ‘towards’ it – are an actual and spiritual disconnection from the enervating sameness of settled life. The disciplined, ceaseless routine of working a vessel at sea can be hard and dull, but there is always a jittery awareness of possibility, of change, just beyond the horizon. At sea, nothing remains the same for very long – and every landfall is another opportunity.

The current British Admiralty chart, Singapore to Song Sai Gon and the Gulf of Thailand, is one of the few still published that uses fathoms and feet rather than metres, although it is modern enough to have surrendered soundings inside the ten-fathom line to an insipid pale blue – preferred by a generation of mariners who find older, more detailed and beautiful, monochromatic engravings hard to read. The chart is commonly used by vessels en route between the world’s two busiest ports, Hong Kong and Singapore, and two of its most congested sea passages, the Singapore Straits and the pirate-infested Malaccan Straits. A large-scale survey of 1:500,000, it covers nearly three thousand square nautical miles of sea.

A cursory look at this chart underscores the stark difference between seafarer and sea-settler. Sea-settlers are looking to the sea for room to establish new physical, social and political structures. Seafarers are just looking for sea-room, uncrowded, easily navigable open water with only the vagaries of the weather and sea-state to worry them. For the seafarer, sea-room – not a fixed structure, not the shore – is where safety, rest and freedom are found. And yet within this one relatively small, enclosed area of sea, which is similar to many others, such as the Mediterranean or North Seas, the Persian Gulf, or the Gulf coasts of Texas or Louisiana, real sea-room is hard to find, even without the hundreds of islands, drying reefs, sandbanks, isolated rocks and shallows that are natural hazards to navigation. More than seventy nautical miles offshore, on a line extending north-west for nearly five hundred nautical miles along the east coasts of Malaysia and Thailand, there are more than a dozen gas and oil fields. Associated with each of them are scores of production and pipeline platforms, tanker moorings and storage tankers, as well as uncharted exploration rigs. Inshore are marine farms and fishing stakes, few of them charted and none of them lit, all frequented by motor-driven, undecked canoes and outriggers – as well as a score of military exercise areas and firing ranges. Even the relatively shallow sea bottom is encumbered with wrecks, pipelines, telecommunication cables, submarine exercise areas and explosive dumping grounds.

At night, in these tropical waters, there are so many tankers, cargo-carriers, warships, trawlers and long-liners, pilot boats, tugs (many with barges under tow), ferries and pleasure boats that the diffused glow of their navigation lights resembles a city sprawling across the seaward horizon.

The last thing any seafarer wants is another structure, permanent or mobile, impeding a safe passage offshore. Yet the sea-settler, whose understanding of the sea is less practical and probably more romantic, dreams of man-made islands. These would more closely resemble an oil rig – if only because the complex engineering required to anchor a large, liveable structure in deep water and protect and its occupants – rather than the Disney-like artificial atoll developed as retreats for the rich off the coast of Dubai. Such structures, however they look, will be regarded by seafarers as an unwelcome hazard, interfering with safe navigation to and from adjacent coasts, fouling fishing grounds and probably requiring vessels – as vulnerable offshore oil and gas platforms do – to stand at least half a kilometre clear of them.

The piratical tradition appears to be what inspires the most passion in modern sea-settlers.

If the plethora of seasteading documents to be found online is any indication, sea-settlers are a lot less taken with the stolid quotidian routine of living and working on the sea than they are with the idea of reconfiguring the autonomous island state as an anarchic, or at least extra-national, social, political and economic experiment, akin to the ‘pirate utopias’ described by the cultish American political writer Peter Lamborn Wilson in his 1995 book, Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs and European Renegadoes (Autonomedia, 1996). Wilson, who is also known as Hakim Bey, envisaged, "Remote hideouts where ships could be watered and provisioned … some of these islands supported  'intentional communities', whole mini-societies living consciously outside the law and determined to keep it up, even if only for a short but merry life." One seventeenth-century enclave, the tiny, self-proclaimed Pirate Republic of Salé in Morrocco, was so successful as a safe haven for Muslim corsairs – the so-called ‘Barbary pirates’ – it became a sea power in its own right and negotiated treaties and mercenary alliances with various Mediterranean powers. This piratical tradition appears to be what inspires the most passion in modern sea-settlers. In Seasteading: The Second to Last Frontier, an article published three years ago in The Yale Free Press, Ben Darrington wrote: "Seasteading would provide an easier way for people who do not like their governments to set up new countries at sea where they could make new rules. Mobile ocean settlements would allow these new states to locate in more useful or less contested waters. This means more experimentation and innovation with different social, political, and economic systems and more competition to create efficient government. Certain businesses are perfectly suited to platforms: material industries such as oil and aquaculture can be self-governed and tax-free, and service industries such as casinos, offshore banking, and data havens avoid some of the existing domestic problems with vice laws, copyright restrictions, and government intrusion or revenue-seeking. Just as pariah individuals and groups seek the freedom of the frontier, pariah industries can ply their trade there, taking the benefits as well as the consequences upon themselves." Unfortunately, Darrington ignores the almost insurmountable legal intricacies of establishing a legitimate micro-nation offshore today. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea Treaty (LoST) rejects claims of territory or special economic standing by private owners of extra-national human-made islands or structures. Even before the ratification of LoST in 1982, the few ill-advised and makeshift attempts to create offshore micro-nations all ended in failure. REM Island was a floating platform built in Northern Ireland and towed to the North Sea off the coast of the Netherlands, in 1964 – the same year that the infamous ‘pirate’ Radio Caroline began broadcasting from a ship anchored in international waters off the English east coast port of Felixstowe. REM housed a ‘pirate’ broadcaster, Radio and TV Noordzee, for four months until the Royal Dutch Navy shut it down. The Republic of Rose, established in 1967 by an Italian engineer, Giorgio Rosa, on a four hundred square metre platform he erected in the Adriatic Sea off the coast of Rimini, was destroyed within a year by Italian Navy sappers after Rosa was arrested for tax evasion. In 1972, a wealthy Las Vegas-based real estate developer, Michael Oliver, tried to raise foreign investment to turn Minerva Reefs, a group of semi-submerged coral reefs 260 miles south-west of the Pacific kingdom of Tonga, into a two and half thousand hectare atoll and micro-nation, the Republic of Minerva. A luckless Australian contractor had managed to dredge enough coral, shell and sand to create a couple of hectares of barren cay above the high-water mark when a Tongan prison labour gang, dispatched by King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, landed on it and claimed it as Tongan sovereign territory. In the aftermath of these episodes, the Administrative Court of Cologne in West Germany held that "a man-made artificial platform … cannot be called either 'a part of the earth’s surface' or 'land territory' and only structures which make use of a specific piece of the earth’s surface can be recognised as 'State territory' within the meaning of international law." The court referred to the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States which outlined four very broad criteria for statehood: a permanent population; defined territory; government; and capacity to enter into relations with other states.

They emerged from a russet haze at twilight, just five nautical miles from the coast of Suffolk — a pair of grimy cement towers spanned by a rust-flecked steel tabletop. A fast, flooding tide churned the cold, mud-brown North Sea around them, and low waves edged with wind-blown spume spilled away like the wake of a ship. In the dying light, the persistent impression was that the whole structure was moving.

We were aboard a thirty-eight-foot, schooner-rigged catamaran on a passage ‘down Channel’ from Lowestoft, running fast before an easy nor’easterly that we prayed we might carry as far as the Scilly Isles and out into the Atlantic.

All afternoon, the low coastline to leeward of us had been a thin, grey-brown smudge, pierced here and there by a sliver of church spire or chimney. As much to relieve our boredom as to satisfy a mild curiosity, we plotted a course inshore towards a tiny symbol on the chart marked ‘fort’. This was all that indicated the existence of Sealand, the only surviving, man-made microtopia, a pioneering seastead that had somehow clung to independence and crypto-sovereignty for over forty years.

We caught a whiff of something dank and fishy on the wind.

Paddy Bates, an entrepreneurial pirate radio broadcaster, took over what was then a decommissioned World War II gun emplacement and fortified barracks in 1967. HM Fort Roughs had been built above the Rough Sands bank off Harwich to deter the Germans from mining the approaches to this strategically important port. Renamed Sealand by Bates, who renamed himself ‘Prince Roy’, its history since then has been colourful – armed stand-offs with the British Navy, court challenges to its self-proclaimed sovereignty, armed invasion by German and Dutch civilians and the kidnap of Prince Roy’s son, indirect links to passport scams and other crimes, failed business ventures and even fires. A decade or so ago, Sealand finally established a modest ‘national’ economy when a data-hosting company, HavenCo, set up its servers within the fort and turned it into a discreet, secure, offshore data haven. Tourists are rarely welcome. There was plenty of water beneath our shallow keels so we circled the fort at a distance of a cable or so before rounding up down-tide of it. We let the boat fore-reach slowly into the flood for a few minutes as we took a closer look. A squat, flat-roofed bungalow straddled the tabletop. The shadowy lip of a helicopter pad hung out over the sea. Tendrils of green-black marine vegetation and crusty barnacles clung to the mottled cement and we caught a whiff of something dank and fishy on the wind. It was drear and foreboding, with scant evidence of any human presence. I tried to imagine how grim an urban dystopia would have to be to compel me to take refuge in this outpost, even for a day. It was more like a prison than a version of paradise. We put the helm a-lee and let the catamaran drift astern before turning away from the wind. Slack sheets rattled in their blocks as the sails filled again. The hulls lifted and the wide decks flexed a little as the catamaran began to make way. Sealand fell away astern. For a moment, it felt as if we were fleeing for our lives.

First published in Griffith Review, Australia, 2006.

[darkpoisonouslove]

Disaster trio + Hollywood AU

So this got angsty and long again. Less shenanigans and more crushing reality (even when it’s fake) but the bond is still there. I hope this doesn’t deviate too much from anything you had in mind with this AU.

1. Griffin acts like her life depends on it. Because it does. Her roles are the only thing that allows her to pay for her mother’s treatment and she can’t allow herself to stop no matter how much she hates the whole lifestyle, the way she has to do it over and over again, put her entire emotional range on display for people’s enjoyment and be a fake every time she smiles at one of her costars she can’t stand but has to kiss for months anyway. She can’t lose her mother, too, after her father’s death crushed them both. It will be the end of her. Even when the roles are all that’s left of her and she clings insistently to them because at least they have lives. They have problems that get resolved in the end or they die. Either way, they have a better fate than the one she has to suffer and she plunges herself into them, researching and wearing the face of her characters like it is her own because she can’t stand looking at the mirror when the only thing she sees is a hollow where there used to be a smile.

2. Ediltrude is by her side, stepping in front of her the moment a storm approaches in the form of a pretentious director or a supporting actress that wants to tear her long hair out so maybe she’ll be cast in the leading role instead. She protects her from everyone that’s trying to make her horrible life worse and Griffin is more than grateful. It means so much. Not any less than when Ediltrude will do her nails and makeup, and her hair, and won’t let anyone come near her and touch her when they’re already taking her life’s energy. And she’ll make her laugh with her teases that can be downright offensive but are still a breath of fresh air when she knows they’re real. The only real thing among the flood of pretense around her. Just like Ediltrude’s aggression is when someone upsets her and the measures she takes to lift her spirits can be called violent in the literal sense since she’s gotten into a fight with a stylist or a production assistant on several occasions, some of them on a physical level. But strangely, bailing her out of the arrest is less of a headache than listening to people droning on and on about things she’s perfectly capable of pretending to care about - she’s one of the best actresses after all - but she simply doesn’t want to. She much prefers driving after a police cruiser to get her friend out of jail before heading home where Ediltrude has a few bottles of expensive alcohol stashed away so that they can celebrate bursting the bubble of whatever asshole has been giving them trouble that day.

3. From a professional point of view Zarathustra’s role in her career is unclear. She knows to get Griffin tea when she gets coffee for herself and her sister - and still huffs when she sees Ediltrude spicing her own drink with some liquor even though Griffin is more than used to the sight now and she only met them in college - and manages to order takeout that even Griffin finds not simply acceptable but delicious even if she would still prefer one of the home cooked meals her mother taught her how to prepare. And to be fair, Zarathustra would prefer them, too, but they spend about 16 hours at work every day and there is rarely time for her to cook, nor can she find the energy. But besides that, Zara is the person having her back. She is her emotional anchor in a way Ediltrude can’t allow herself to be because she’s afraid she’ll fall apart instead of help keep Griffin whole and Griffin can’t help but understand that. The twins lost their own mother when they were quite young - and that strained their relationship with their father - so talking about Emalyn and her condition will only bring up memories that Ediltrude prefers to keep buried under lots of makeup and a glass of whiskey in her hand that’s stuck there as often as the fake smile is on her face. But Zara is there for her, as tired and restless as she’s always been, but she listens when the burden threatens to shatter Griffin to pieces and she hugs her, the two of them soaking up the silent comfort they can exchange while Ediltrude’s laughter is heard somewhere in the distance, her fear of the silence echoing loudly in it but neither of them minds because they understand and besides, Ediltrude is their only reason to laugh truly nowadays. So they let her have her pretense when they now she hasn’t lost herself under the layers and layers of fakeness. Hollywood’s a place for escape fantasies anyway and they all went there willingly.

4. Griffin watches the twins fighting over the last pizza slice like they always do on a Saturday night when they manage to get home before midnight. Finally, they both concede and leave the piece to her and she takes it even if she’s not hungry anymore. She can’t remember when was the last time she had appetite just like she can’t remember when was the last time she felt the desire to get out of bed and didn’t have to force herself to do so and get ready for yet another day of her life that she’ll hate. It makes it hard not to hate the entirety of her life or at least the emptiness that is left in the place of what once made her bubbling with curiosity to explore what a new morning could bring her. She used to wake up way before dawn, impatient to get everything the world could offer. She still wakes up at dark but it’s because the alarm clock won’t leave her to sleep in no matter how much she’ll curse it in her mind or out loud, or even if she’ll break it by hurling it at the wall across from her. There’ll be another ring from an assistant when she’s late and then from a director when they threaten to fire her and she needs to get herself out of bed in some way, the picture of her mother on her nightstand the only thing helping her do it and not choose to lay under the blankets until she rots away while the picture of herself that appears on TV caught by some paparazzi makes her want to throw up what little of the breakfast Zara got for them she’s managed to choke down that morning. Yes, she hates mornings now. But she still stays up at night. She’ll be tired anyway but the magic of Hollywood is right there to help hide the fact that she’s half dead and she’ll make it through another day of being the ghost of a fictional character that has more life in her than her real life persona. So she takes her time at night and goes out on the roof of that big empty mansion she has that she can’t hope to ever fill when she’s so hollow herself but at least she gets a nice view of the stars. They keep shining even when she can no longer do that and she settles for housing the little happiness she can get from the sight of them before she heads back inside to get at least a little sleep so that she can scratch another day off her calendar and not make it stretch into an eternity that threatens to swallow her. Even Zara’s fallen asleep by the time she comes back in but their schedule is capable of causing even that despite Zara having a record in pulling consecutive all-nighters back when they were students with only coffee and food to get her through them. And Griffin knows it is time to go to bed and let the tiredness set in when it becomes clear even sleep can’t chase it away.

5. She can’t tell if the days when she gets to sleep longer are better or worse. She hates the idea of getting her “beauty sleep” when she has to look good for a premiere and she hates the fact that even more sleep can’t make her feel at least a bit better but at least she doesn’t have to deal with the world quite so early. That’s something. She supposes. And she gets to spend the rest of the day with Ediltrude and Zarathustra. Getting ready for the big event in question, of course. As if that isn’t a redundant phrasing when there are no small events in her life anymore, nothing to remind her she’s a person, just her job and the lack of personality she’s developed to keep her career floating when no one wants a beautiful woman with opinions and strength of character. Luckily, she doesn’t have any of that anymore. Just a few remains of the spirit that she once had tucked away where no one can reach them, not even she herself. But they come out sometimes, most unexpectedly, to brighten her night when she can’t see the stars from all the spotlights and there are flashlights blinding her as they capture the lack of light in her once bright golden eyes. Even when her sight has been hurt by someone’s selfishness as they thought they had the right to take a photo of her just because she was put on display like she’d never wanted to be, her heart can keep beating, even accelerate to keep up with the excited screams that come from the crowd, and specifically from the young girls that follow the social media accounts she never wanted. And it makes her grateful for that of all things because she can see they’re real. The excitement in their eyes, and the loud screeching as she does her best to give them a genuine smile. They’re buying the hoax she’s made to sell but at the same time they’re not. Not with how unapologetically authentic they are in their joy even if it is over the glamorous cover of the hellhole she’s stuck in. It’s still something genuine and she can only hope they won’t let their spirit die crushed by the frightening empire running on falsity that Hollywood is. She can only hope they’ll be her stars that refuse to flicker out and die no matter how much darkness their light draws to them. She can only hope that they’ll keep her own hope alive when she’s not strong enough to do that any longer.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 7.16 (after 1900)

1909 – Persian Constitutional Revolution: Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar is forced out as Shah of Persia and is replaced by his son Ahmad Shah Qajar. 1910 – John Robertson Duigan makes the first flight of the Duigan pusher biplane, the first aircraft built in Australia. 1915 – Henry James becomes a British citizen to highlight his commitment to Britain during the first World War. 1915 – At Treasure Island on the Delaware River in the United States, the First Order of the Arrow ceremony takes place and the Order of the Arrow is founded to honor American Boy Scouts who best exemplify the Scout Oath and Law. 1931 – Emperor Haile Selassie signs the first constitution of Ethiopia. 1935 – The world's first parking meter is installed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. 1941 – Joe DiMaggio hits safely for the 56th consecutive game, a streak that still stands as an MLB record. 1945 – Manhattan Project: The Atomic Age begins when the United States successfully detonates a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon near Alamogordo, New Mexico. 1945 – World War II: The heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis leaves San Francisco with parts for the atomic bomb "Little Boy" bound for Tinian Island. 1948 – Following token resistance, the city of Nazareth, revered by Christians as the hometown of Jesus, capitulates to Israeli troops during Operation Dekel in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. 1948 – The storming of the cockpit of the Miss Macao passenger seaplane, operated by a subsidiary of the Cathay Pacific Airways, marks the first aircraft hijacking of a commercial plane. 1950 – Chaplain–Medic massacre: American POWs are massacred by North Korean Army. 1951 – King Leopold III of Belgium abdicates in favor of his son, Baudouin I of Belgium. 1951 – J. D. Salinger publishes his popular yet controversial novel, The Catcher in the Rye. 1956 – Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus closes its last "Big Tent" show in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; due to changing economics, all subsequent circus shows will be held in arenas. 1957 – KLM Flight 844 crashes off the Schouten Islands in present day Indonesia (then Netherlands New Guinea), killing 58 people. 1965 – The Mont Blanc Tunnel linking France and Italy opens. 1965 – South Vietnamese Colonel Phạm Ngọc Thảo, a formerly undetected communist spy and double agent, is hunted down and killed by unknown individuals after being sentenced to death in absentia for a February 1965 coup attempt against Nguyễn Khánh. 1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 11, the first mission to land astronauts on the Moon, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center. 1979 – Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr resigns and is replaced by Saddam Hussein. 1990 – The Parliament of the Ukrainian SSR declares state sovereignty over the territory of the Ukrainian SSR. 1994 – The comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 is destroyed in a head-on collision with Jupiter. 1999 – John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, die when the aircraft he is piloting crashes into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. 2004 – Millennium Park, considered Chicago's first and most ambitious early 21st-century architectural project, is opened to the public by Mayor Richard M. Daley. 2007 – An earthquake of magnitude 6.8 and 6.6 aftershock occurs off the Niigata coast of Japan killing eight people, injuring at least 800 and damaging a nuclear power plant. 2009 – Teoh Beng Hock, an aide to a politician in Malaysia is found dead on the rooftop of a building adjacent to the offices of the Anti-Corruption Commission, sparking an inquest that gains nationwide attention. 2013 – As many as 27 children die and 25 others are hospitalized after eating lunch served at their school in eastern India. 2013 – Syrian civil war: The Battle of Ras al-Ayn resumes between the People's Protection Units (YPG) and Islamist forces, beginning the Rojava–Islamist conflict. 2015 – Four U.S. Marines and one gunman die in a shooting spree targeting military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

[disneycruiselineblog]

Castaway Cay Named Best Cruise Line Private Island in Cruise Critics Cruisers’ Choice Destination Awards for 3rd Consecutive Year

Castaway Cay Named Best Cruise Line Private Island in Cruise Critics Cruisers’ Choice Destination Awards for 3rd Consecutive Year

Cruise Critic announced the winners of its third annual Cruisers’ Choice Destination Awards, naming the world’s most popular cruise destinations, based entirely on consumer ratings submitted with reviews on Cruise Critic. The awards name the top cruise destinations across 18 regions worldwide. Disney’s Castaway Cay in the Bahamas was recognized as the Top-Rated Cruise Line Private Island for the…