#and she was telling us funny stories and apparently it’s just a bunch of forensic path ppl getting drunk and presenting weird af cases

[hampdencollege]

everyone humor me and let me rave abt my pathology talk today

[uswe]

Fic: Superman

Apparently I go here again. FML.

3k of outsider POV roommate shenanigans, now on AO3.

Josh has been emailing his roommate off and on over the summer, since they got their assignments, and he’s got a good feeling about this. Stiles seems like a good dude, and they’ve already got a pact to be running buddies so they don’t put on the Freshman 15. Even better, Stiles is bringing both the microwave and the mini fridge, so Josh doesn’t have to ship that stuff all the way from Wisconsin.

Josh arrives at the dorm first, probably because his flight had left Chicago at a truly grotesque hour of the morning. It was a good thing, though, because all of them had been too tired and cranky to cry at him leaving. He’s not sure how they’re gonna set up the beds - loft one? loft both? bunks? - so he just puts down his duffle bags and starts unpacking his clothes to put in one of the closets. He’s not normally super neat, but this is a brand new start and stuff, so here he can, like, not have a floor covered in dirty sweats.

By the time his roommate shows up, Josh has his laptop set up to automatically connect to campus wifi and he’s found the closest spot for lunch.

Stiles bursts in with a duffle bag strapped across his chest and a microwave in his arms. “Dude!”

“Hey, man,” Josh says, rising to offer to help. But in behind Stiles comes a Latino dude with a tattoo on his arm and two boxes of stuff, and behind him are two girls carrying a mini fridge in a box. Stiles obviously has everything well in hand.

“Oh, hey, you haven’t done anything with your bed yet. Are you planning to loft it? Because I’m totally lofting mine for the futon to go under it, but if we did yours too we could put the bean bag chair and the fridge under that and have, like, an actual living room for when people come over.”

“I wanted to see what you wanted to do,” Josh says, and sort of waves awkwardly to the other people crowding into their room. “Uh, hi.”

“Hey,” says the other guy, balancing the boxes against his chest so he has a free hand to extend to shake. “I’m Scott, and these are Malia and Kira.”

Stiles takes the boxes and sticks them on his desk. “Right, I’ll grab the lofting stuff, if you wanna grab the futon from Malia’s truck, Scott. I’ll help with getting the frame when I get back.” Stiles emphasizes ‘help’ like he thinks Kira and Malia will try to bring it in and hurt themselves.

Malia rolls her eyes.

Josh takes the opportunity to volunteer, “I can go get the stuff, since you’re providing, like, everything else, dude.”

“Awesome,” Stiles says. “We’re gonna have everything kickass before anyone else has even unpacked.”

“Think you’re behind the curve - Jae-yoon and Julio at the end of the hall both had their moms here most of the morning getting their room set up. I think they have Glade plugins in every outlet.”

Stiles makes an impressed face. “Fair enough. Guess I know where I’m gonna go when our room smells like dirty socks and Cheetos.”

They get everything in their room in a few huge chaotic piles, but once Malia’s truck is empty, Stiles’ friends look around and seem to wipe their hands of it. “I don’t want to help with any of this,” Malia says, and Josh kind of admires her bluntness.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Stiles, and opens his arms for a hug. He gets a hug and a kiss on the cheek from both girls and a really tight hug from Scott while Josh stands around awkwardly.

They finish their goodbyes and troop out, leaving the room feeling even emptier than it had been before Stiles arrived with all of his stuff. Stiles rubs his hands together and says, “Okay, let’s get started.”

Setting up the room doesn’t take that long, but by the end of it Josh is feeling kind of inadequate. He ran cross country, okay? He’s pretty in shape. But his roommate has to be way more into upper body stuff or something, because he pretty much effortlessly holds the beds in place while Josh gets the lofting bits in place, and they’re really not that light.

Their RA taps on the door while Josh is finishing up putting together the futon frame and Stiles is stocking the fridge with Red Bull. “Hey, guys, floor meeting at 7, okay?”

“Yeah.” Stiles looks at his watch. “We should grab dinner first, then. You said you knew the dudes down the hall?”

They pick up Jae-Yoon and Julio, and Julio stares at Stiles in what Josh can’t tell is lust or envy. Josh doesn’t have very good gaydar, and Stiles is built enough that it could be either. The group of them hits up the dining hall, and they end up swapping high school stories as they eat. Jae-Yoon had done Forensics and a whole bunch of theatre and music stuff, and Julio was apparently his class president as well as a member of the Debate club and on the baseball team. Josh would feel kind of inadequate with just his cross country and working at the florist, but he’s mostly impressed by having scored cool friends, and Stiles is in the same boat, since he’d done lacrosse and cross country and that was it. He reaffirms that Stiles will be his running buddy, but then it’s way more interesting to talk to Jae-Yoon. Stiles is funny and all, but his life is kind of boring.

-

Running with Stiles makes Josh feel ruffled and out of shape, because the dude’s fast, and he doesn’t get tired, and he doesn’t seem to care if he’s working so hard he’s sweating buckets by the end. He makes Josh feel inadequate, which is ridiculous. Josh has medals for 5k runs.

“Dude,” he says the first Friday, “can we go slower? I am not nearly awake enough for this.”

Stiles immediately slows to a more manageable pace. “Sorry.”

Josh just nods, still getting his breath back. “‘s all good.”

When they get back to the dorms, Stiles hits the shower immediately. Josh drinks water and lets himself cool down, though, which is why he’s the only one there when Julio pops in. “Hey! I got invited to a house party tonight, she said I could bring people. Wanna come?”

“Sure! What time? Should I bring Stiles?”

“Like ten? And sure!” Julio pops back out.

Josh grabs his stuff and heads to the shower, takes extra time so that he’s sure to smell nice. It’s gonna be his first college party, which is really cool.

-

Stiles may actually be the most awkward person in the room, which is kind of embarrassing. He’s got a drink in his hand and his back to a corner wall and just keeps staring twitchily at everyone. Josh turns with the girl he’s talking to so he doesn’t have to watch his roommate. He feels kind of bad, because you’re supposed to look out for your roommate or something, but it’s Josh’s first college party as much as it’s Stiles’, and he doesn’t want to get a reputation for being weird. He drinks, maybe too much, but Stiles makes sure he gets home okay, and then makes him drink two bottles of water, which is mean. Josh tells him that. “You’re mean.”

“Shut up,” Stiles says, but he doesn’t sound mad. He’s on his laptop, talking to people. People back home, probably. Josh talks to people back home, but not as much as Stiles. “I have to go out again. You gonna be okay on your own?”

Josh flops his head back to stare at the bottom of his bed. “Lofts are hard.”

Stiles sighs. “C’mon, buddy, let’s get you into bed.”

Josh kicks his shoes off, which is really hard, and manages to stand on the first try, which is because he is coordinated and not at all because he can grab the bedframe. Stiles shoves him into his bed with way less difficulty or help than Josh would expect, and Josh wants to make some kind of comment on how strong Stiles is, but his pillow is comfy.

-

In the morning, a red-headed goddess of wrath is scraping a nail file directly across his brain. Josh peels his eyes open and determines that only a small portion of that is metaphor. He whimpers a little. The goddess doesn’t look up from where she’s sitting cross-legged in Stiles’ bed, wrapped in his comforter like a tent even though it’s plenty warm. “There’s a water bottle propped on the step.”

Josh fumbles for it and drinks two thirds of it before he comes up for air. “I’m Josh.”

“I know.”

That’s not how things are supposed to go. Why does Stiles have to have people who are as weird as he is? “What’s your name?”

Stiles comes back in, obviously fresh from the shower and with an almost equally fresh bruise on his face. Josh blinks at him, because he hadn’t had that last night. The goddess sticks her nail file back in her purse and stretches her arms demandingly towards Stiles. “I’m not climbing down from here.”

“Yeah, sorry, Lydia,” he says, and how is he this much less twitchy than usual in front of a girl like this? If Josh had the option to trade in being okay with the population at large and super flustered with really hot people for the opposite like Stiles apparently has, he’d totally do it. Stiles takes Lydia’s arms and swings her out of his bed in some kind of smooth move that doesn’t even end up with his comforter on the floor, and Lydia’s just wearing what looks like one of Stiles’ T-shirts and an Ace bandage on her ankle. Josh sticks his face back in his pillow. Everything is too much. She’s so pretty.

“Good to see your roommate adventures are going better than mine,” she says dryly, and he thinks it’s some sort of dig, maybe, but can’t bring himself to be offended. If he’s offended it’s just more stuff in him that he’ll probably puke up soon. “Josh, if you can be showered and dressed in half an hour, you can come to breakfast with us.”

The idea of a shower involves way too many steps, and he turns his face away from the light. “Is breakfast aspirin and a swift death?” he asks his pillow.

Stiles pats his arm. “I’ll bring you back a Gatorade.”

-

Stiles is as good as his word, and even better, brings the redhead back with him. They sit on the futon under Stiles’ bed, and she’s basically in his lap. They look at something on his laptop together, and Josh is deeply envious: he’s only had a girl draped over him like that when both of them were already super drunk.

The redhead leaves later in the day, Stiles driving her back to wherever she came from. Josh guesses Stiles’ hometown: it’s only a couple hours away, and Stiles is way squirellier around all the people he’s met here. Josh is pretty sure he’s Stiles’ favorite, and Stiles still gets weird a lot of the time.

The autumn starts to wax red, though it does so slowly, and the temperature doesn’t change much. Josh is a little disconcerted. He’s still used to having real seasons, all four of Winter, Spring, Road Work and Oktoberfest. But he’s got classes, and then another couple parties the next weekend, which is an even better way to mark time than seasons. He and Stiles go out looking for a party on Thursday night, but then Julio lets them know about a cool one on Friday. Josh actually gets to touch a girl’s boob on Friday, which totally makes up for the fact that his roommate lurks in a corner at both parties like the most socially awkward DD. It’s not even like anyone drove.

It’s actually kind of a relief when Stiles disappears and Josh can pay attention to the stuff that’s actually fun.

When Josh wakes up, Stiles isn’t back, but he shows up later to join Josh on his sad, hungover run. At least he doesn’t give Josh any flak for being slow. He does drop him off back at the start of their loop with a pat on Josh’s sweaty shoulder. “I’m gonna do another loop, yeah?”

Josh groans. “Are you even human?”

Stiles’ mouth twists, then he smirks. “More than you, today. Little bit too much Jaeger?”

“Little bit, then a lot.” Josh shrugs, comfortable with his bad decisions, then goes in to shower.

Stiles continues to disappear at weird times, and Josh wouldn’t even notice, except, well: weird. It’s not like Josh is at home all the time. He’s got class, and a study group, and he’s joined the bowling club. But all his shit is, like, scheduled, and he never gets texts at 8am or 11pm that make him run out the door.

Josh doesn’t ask, but he does look up one time, and his face must be kind of interrogatory, because Stiles shrugs and says, “Some of the people from home are having separation anxiety.”

Josh nods. “I mean, like, feel free to bring the hot ones back here.”

Stiles laughs. “Sure thing, dude.”

Stiles only brings someone home once, and it’s the girl who helped him move in, the one with the truck: Malia. Stiles ends up sitting with his head in her lap as all three of them watch Brooklynn 99 on Josh’s laptop. She looks at him with such obvious affection that Josh kind of wonders whether Stiles is dating Malia or Lydia or both of them, or was. But Stiles says he’s single, so Josh can’t, like, ask if that’s single-as-in-single or single-as-in-sleeping-with-everyone-but-casually. It seems super rude to ask.

Midterms are basically hell - way tougher than high school. Josh feels kind of like shit, but Stiles looks it, too, and Josh is strangely cheered by that. Plus in the one class he shares with Stiles, the intro art history they’re both taking for GenEd credits, Josh hasn’t been reduced to cornering their TA. Like, their TA is strange and pale and doesn’t look like he’s seen sunlight in approximately fifty years, but he also doesn’t seem like enough of a pushover to let Stiles out of the paper they have to turn in.

Josh teases him about it, but Stiles looks at him blankly. “Oh! No, uh, I actually handed that in already. It’s other stuff that’s kicking my ass. No, Mark and I just, uh, know some people in common, and I wanted to talk to him about it today after class.”

“More stuff from home?” Josh is pretty used to that by now, and is kind of torn. On the one hand, he kind of wishes he was closer to, like, anyone, and not reduced to facetime like once a week. On the other hand, it makes him feel kind of adult that he’s moving on and making new friends. Not supernaturally hot friends, but new ones. Which is what college is for, right? Plus Josh has gotten even more in shape, running with Stiles, so he’s adulting successfully or something.

Stiles shrugs. “Yeah. ‘S chill, though. It’s not gonna be a thing. Anyway, see you later.”

“Later,” Josh says, and turns his attention back to his own paper.

It’s almost Halloween by the time midterms are well and truly over, which means even more parties. Josh feels kind of bad ditching Stiles for some of them, but, like, Jae-Yoon basically told him not to invite Stiles, and then it was easier to just, like, go with Jae-Yoon sometimes. It wasn’t like Stiles ever had fun at parties anyway. And Stiles seemed all strung out even after midterms, so, like, he probably needed to focus on whatever.

Halloween itself is a Wednesday, but Stiles was gone all the night before. Josh doesn’t blame him, because he skips class to start the day at a costume party and then just kind of goes from party to party with a big and ever-more-trashed group. He’d gone to Madison for Freakfest his senior year, but actually being in college is way cooler. He went to his Thursday morning class still kind of drunk, then stumbled back to the dorm to sleep it off. Stiles was there when he got there, passed out shirtless on the futon. He’s got a giant bruise on his ribs, but Josh doesn’t have the - the brain? brain to think about it. He chugs a bottle of water and leaves his jeans on the floor and crawls into bed.

Later that night, Stiles actually shows up at a party without Josh even hinting about anything. Josh is kind of, like, proud of him, especially since the first time he sees Stiles is when Stiles is doing a keg stand, not lurking in a corner making everyone uncomfortable.

Later, Stiles even comes up and throws an arm over his shoulder. “Josh! My man! We survived another Halloween. Isn’t it great?”

Josh claps Stiles on the back. “Yeah, totally. My hangover was pretty epic, but hair of the dog is, like, one hundred percent the thing.”

Stiles basically cackles at that, which - Josh isn’t that funny, but whatever makes Stiles happy is a good thing probably. Stiles wanders off, but finds Josh at the end of the night, and they stumble back to the dorm together. Stiles, Josh thinks, can be a pretty cool roommate.

[ramrodd]

Calibrate your Pucker Factor with the Holy Spirit

Neil, for various reasons, my vocation seems to be to introduce people I meet to the Holy Spirit on their own terms, safely and in a timely manner. It is written that the Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. One of my favorite line from psalms is 19:9.The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. There is more to that particular verse, but, in terms of the Holy Spirit, that's a useful point of departure.

The first step, in my mind, is to calibrate your pucker factor. One of the factors fueling the daily suicide rate of combat veterans at 22 is the fact that they come out of their military with highly calibrated pucker factors as the norm and enter a milieu where a calibrated pucker factor is based on high likability as the essential leadership trait.

I just signed a consent decree with a tenant who complained I assaulted him. The issue was around a key to a lock he had installed contrary to the terms of the lease he signed: I needed a duplicate for our common safety and security and he refused to give me one. His motivation for filing the petition for a restraining order is that he managed to trigger a fight-flight response in me that released my inner DI a la Full Metal Jacket and I blew him away. I scared him to death. He had never seen anything like that in real life and his statement is a monument to the hysteria our encounter created in him.

Now, one of the things he threw into the mix was the fact that I had a military background and was highly trained and my hands were weapons, which frightened him.

Well, all those things are true, but I haven't killed anybody in hand and hand since 1971, before I came home from Vietnam. The only kill I regret is a wounded prisoner I killed after a fair and legal capture. We had blown his legs sideways at the knees and there wasn't anything I could do to fix him or even ease him pain but to end it.

It was my first combat patrol. I was the platoon leader, but the patrol leader was Staff Sergeant Charley Funk. We were playing Ranger School for my benefit and the FNG (The Funny New Guy. Sir.). I am an Army brat and fitting with the local team is something I do like breathing. Anyway, Charley was in charge and I was just another grunt with a couple hours guard duty at night. I learned a huge amont from him before we contact, including how to set up a booby trap we called "Vampire": a claymore with a trip wire.

This is what this male nurse ran into. It turns out from the field intelligence we recoverd from this ecounter that we were in the middle of an NVA hospital center, all under ground. We worked on the other side of it in a subsequent patrol, moved by slick, just to survey its size. It was that kind of war. The Vampire went off, a guy started to scream and I was the first one to the kill zone, where I enounterd another individual. I couldn't see if he was armed, but it didn't matter. I killed him and my piece of shit M-16 jammed and I fell on my back and began to clear the jam when our Sergeant sniper, on his second tour, ran up to cover me and finished off my kill and then his M-14 blew up at the breech: it was his own hand made round for snipering. So, now, here we are, the leading edge of the spear and we don't even have our bayonets fixed. He looks at me as says, "Pretty exciting, huh, L.T.?". I got up and ran across the kill zone to secure the other side, where I continued to clear the jam. I couldn't shoot but I could shout a warning and let them cover me if I needed to withdraw.

So, on the way across the kill zone, I saw the guy Vampire had chewed up,noticed his legs: he was lying on his back with his knees flat against the ground and his legs going out sideways to the left.

Sergeant Funk came up and got the rest of the patrol busy with after-action SOPs, intelligence gathering and what not. Get in, Get done, Get gone. At some point without saying a word, the status of the POW was the only thing left to be done. It was my call. They were telling me they would carry out any heroic measure I required in his disposition. but, apparently, we didn't even have morphine, it was getting dark, there wasn't a good extraction point close by nor one we could defend and, well, there was only 5 months of shopping day until Christmas,

This was after My Lai and Lt. Calley was in the middle of a court martial and, if anybody was going down for shooting prisoners, it was going to be me:

Mission, Men, Self

Self-Discipline. Instant obedience. The fushion of the Stoic and the Epicurian at the nexus of Duty, Honor Country.

It was a no-brainer. This soldier's death is the only one I dwell on because I wonder, if my mommy was there, who was an Army wife and a registered nurse, what would she have done. What if it had been me or one of my men?

The most painful thing he would have had to endure was putting splints on him, but, once they are in place and any bleeding contained, he won't be comfortable until we can get some juice in him, but it won't be unmitigated torture. He could have endured it and he would be enjoying his grandchildren now.

But, that's how the Holy Spirit works in my life. I play back that loop and we both consider what happens and it has become a comfort to me for that reason. I can't change what happened, but the persistence of my authentic humility in reconsideration is another element in the calibration of my Pucker Factor.

And that's what this guy triggered, but his fear of a far more lethal response is totally unfounded. You see, the trigger for that sort of response is protected by the Holy Spirit. There have been times when that particular response was triggered and I did amazing things, elegant in their efficiency and efficacy. The thing is. I didn' know it was triggered until the enviromental challenge had been resoved and I was the last person standing. In Vietnam, it happened alot, which is what makes combat so fun, but it has happened in other context, particularly playing rugby, where it never involved slugging anybody. It was always something clever, like wiley Odysseus. That's the reason people love rugby and football: those moments of glory when you realized there was a burning of the heart and a gospel was born: Tidings of Joy:Victory is Ours. Tetelestai!

That final inhibition has never been removed by the Holy Spirit, the one when your Lock and Load become Rock and Roll and you spend the rest of your light replaying those loops, first, to wring out the lessons learned and observed intelligence, and, then. over the years, as part of that photo album you keep on Rolledex in your unconscious that plays back videos you can conjure with a favorite song from back in the day.

So, anyway, I didn't really discover the operation of the Holy Spirit until 1990, when I was teaching Sunday School at St Albams when Frank Wade was Rector and Caroline Pyle was an Associate Rector and Sunday School Warden. She said something that got me reading commentary as part of my due diligence as the SME for Young Adults. 16 - 18. my daugher's age at the time. And I stumbled across the line in Mark 3:29 "But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of eternal sin.” And a bunch of stuff fell into place that changed my perspective on the purpose of the Bible as epistemological: how to know The One as described in Revelation 4:2 and share as a covenant partner in the Kingdom of Heaven as defined by N.T. Wright. The here and now. What Terry Collins brings into the lives of his soccer players.

Anyway, I became aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit in real time in various ways. It has been a fascinating relationship and it is the missing element in all Protestant doctrine, so far as I can tell. Justication is a foundation of the American Evangelical business model because it depends upon "forensic justification", which basically transforms the Gospels into a legal argument as allegory. And the purpose is to control meaning to maximize the monetization of Jesus. And, in so doing, it denies the Holy Spirit. One result is the Trump Tax Reforms and another is the Prison Industrial Complex. The Evangelical business model is based on the love of money, which is to say, idolatry.

From a perspective informed by the Holy Spirit, Reaganomics has a display in neon which says "Class Warfare" and "Vulture Capitalism".

I first intuited the absence of the Holy Spirit in Campus Crusade for Christ. There is more to the story, but, my question after considering the 4 Spiritual Laws, was "Then What?" If you have already been born again or come to Jesus completely, how do you employ this new spiritual plateau to live in Christian Stewardship as a career soldier.

The answer is The Holy Spirit but it wasn't even suggested in Bill Bright's theology or doctrine. Or in the current drivel being force-fed into Trump's brain in basically the same re-programing process Evangelicals use to "cure" gays. They are basically reversing the process Jesus used to flush Legion out of the Gadarene Demoniac and into the swine. They are turning his mind into pig shit.

But my interest is in promoting the Holy Spirit as a guide to the epistemology of the Bible. And the first step for rookies is to Calibrate your pucker factor.