#hello to any of my followers who happen to be fellow canadians

[phoenix--flying]

I like to think that I am funny

[nicohischierz]

connor bedard a devil: devs!player

tagging: @ivy-34, @francesfarhadi, @hzstry8, @cixrosie, @itsnotgray, @estapa94, @trevs-swiftie, @heartz4hischif you want to join the taglist let me know!!

you were in california and jamie had asked you over for dinner with trevor and jack and one of their new teammates. a rookie.

during the dinner, jamie introduced you to mason, a fellow canadian who had just been drafted by the ducks in the 2021 nhl draft.

the three of you spent the dinner tormenting the poor american.

“it was really nice meeting you mason. remember to text me whenever you want and i’ll be there,” you told the young boy, giving him a hug.

and true to the word, mason texted you whenever he needed help, especially as he moved up and down the roster.

by the time world juniors came around, you and mason were best friends on snapchat and had a sixty day streak.

you congratulated him when he was named captain and constructed a regular facetime schedule for mason to gain advice and to rant.

during on of your facetime sessions, you happened to notice a little head walking past ever so often.

“who’s behind you mase?” you asked.

mason turned around and spotted connor giving him a sheepish smile. “that’s just bedsy,” he replied, nonchalantly.

“bedsy?”

“connor bedard,”

you nodded your head in realisation. “hi connor, it’s nice to meet you,” you called to the boy.

connor popped around and said hello. the boy then started animatedly talking about how he looked up to you as an idol. the way you went against all odds and became the first women to get drafted to the nhl.

from that day onwards, whenever you spoke to mason, connor would also be in the room and chime in whenever he felt like it.

but as the competition got cancelled due to covid, you wished the boys luck and gave connor your number with the order to reach out whenever he felt like it.

and he did just that.

as soon as he got back to regina, connor spent any moment he could asking you for advice on how to cope with all the watching eyes.

he’d spoken to mason and kent as well about the advice you’d given them and decided that suffering in silence wasn’t the best option.

summer worlds

when it came to summer worlds, connor had asked if you were willing to come watch. and so you dragged nico with you to meet the bedard boy.

kent saw you first and gave you a hug before calling connor over. the young boy ran to you, lifting you up in your hug.

“hi connor,” you mused.

“hi. thank you for coming,” he whispered.

you squeezed him before stepping back. “of course! neeks and i didn’t have anything planned for this time so we thought why not,” you replied.

throughout the tournament, you spent time with the canadian team, especially connor, the boy followed you and nico to dinner sometimes and had a long standing dinner invitation for when he gets drafted.

nhl draft

connor was nervous.

everyone had hyped him up to go first overall but he saw what happened with shane.

after the draft lottery, you had called him immediately. you asked how he felt about potentially going to chicago and he answered that he was fairly uncertain.

nico had been the one to push against the hawks getting a draft pick that high. but gary bettman didn’t listen.

during the awards, connor came up to you and nico with a shaky breathe.

“i’m kind of scared to go to chicago,” he answered truthfully.

nico put a hand on his shoulder and brought him in for a small hug before handing him off to you. connor wrapped his arms around you first.

“if you want, i can come with you to rookie camp and help you get settled in, but im sure your mum will be there too,” you assured him.

upon thinking of hehe you knew in the organisation, you realised frank and kevin would be at rookie camp. so you informed connor of them and gave him a little advice “everyone’s going to be a little scared so take it and make friends. one of the toughest things for me was i never spoke to anyone during my rookie camp. jack spoke to me a bit but that was all,”

when he heard his name called, he was relieved that he was going to the nhl. he stood up and hugged his family before walking down to find you.

connor pulled you in for a hug and whispered in your ear “thank you for everything,” before walking to wear his jersey.

first game

you made a call to sid.

“y/n, i can’t tell my teammates to stop their defence and let him score,” the older man whined.

“sidney it’s hi first game and he’s nervous!” you emphasised.

sid shook his head. beside him tanger and geno were wearing enormous grins upon hearing your request.

you huffed before thinking of another plan. “well then can you at least be nice to him and let him win a face off?” you asked.

sid chuckled and turned to his two teammates “we will make sure sid let’s him win a face off,” they promised.

majority of the devils team piled in to yours and nico’s living room in order to watch the first game of the season with you.

and they all vowed not to hurt the poor boy. which brendan smith broke

[gstqaobc]

CBC THE ROYAL FASCINATOR

Friday, April 09, 2021

Hello, royal watchers and all those intrigued by what’s going on inside the House of Windsor. This is your biweekly dose of royal news and analysis. Reading this online? Sign up here to get this delivered to your inbox.

Janet DavisonRoyal Expert

Prince Philip’s life of duty

(Adrian Dennis/Getty Images)

For so many years, Prince Philip was at Queen Elizabeth’s side — or walking just behind — deeply devoted in his duty as consort to the woman who is now the longest-reigning monarch in British history.

But the Duke of Edinburgh, who died this morning aged 99 at Windsor Castle, was seen by many as having his own role in helping an institution steeped in tradition try to find its way toward the future.

Much of that began nearly 70 years ago, after the former sailor who gave up a successful naval career saw his wife ascend the throne.

“What Prince Philip did was help modernize the monarchy in the 1950s,” Michael Jackson, president of the Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada, said in an interview this morning.

“It was still a very tradition-bound institution…. We can credit Prince Philip, with the Queen’s full support, of course, with modernizing [its] finances, protocols, how Buckingham Palace was run … its outreach to the Commonwealth.”

Philip pushed to have Elizabeth’s coronation televised in 1953, an idea she did not wholeheartedly welcome at first.

“He was the modern person,” John Fraser, author of The Secret of the Crown: Canada’s Affair with Royalty, said in an interview this morning. “He was in touch with real people, non-royal people, and so he always had the instinct to reach out. He understood both the dark side of the media presence as well as the necessity of it.”

Fraser credits Philip’s profoundly unsettled early years, after he was “born in poverty and insecurity,” with how he looked toward the future of the Royal Family, and the monarchy.

“I do think those early years were the single biggest factor in his life and how he approached life,” said Fraser. “I think he never assumed things would last forever because he didn’t make any assumptions like that, and I think he certainly assumed the monarchy wouldn’t survive if it didn’t reach out more to the constituency that it had to serve.”

Fraser met Philip, and recalled him as a man who would revel in asking questions and challenging others.

“He was — charming is not the word I would use — but he was an invigorating person to speak to.”

Jackson, who was Saskatchewan’s chief of protocol from 1980 until 2005, met Philip during four visits to the province — three with the Queen and one on his own — and remembered a man with “a great sense of humour.”

“Sometimes people found him a bit abrasive, a bit abrupt, but that’s the way he was,” said Jackson.

“He was a straight shooter and he complemented the Queen beautifully because the Queen is a very soft-spoken, more laid-back person. Prince Philip really spoke his mind and occasionally made jokes and … put everyone at ease. I found him very refreshing, good to work with.”

With Philip’s death, there is an inevitable sadness for the Queen, and inevitable concern for how she will cope with the passing of her husband of more than 73 years.

Both Fraser and Jackson say the Queen will carry on, with Jackson noting “That’s the way she is. She’s a very strong person” with a deep religious faith that will sustain her.

“She’ll do her duty,” said Fraser. “And I think that’s the big lesson of him. He did his duty.”

For a full obituary of Prince Philip, click here.

For photos from Prince Philip's royal career, click here.

Family dysfunction

When Philip Mountbatten married Princess Elizabeth in 1947, the family he was joining was in marked contrast to the fractured one he had known in his youth. His parents' marriage broke down and offered him nothing like the nuclear family arrangement (mom, dad and two kids) that Elizabeth had known throughout her childhood. "In marrying the Queen, [Philip] gained that sort of stable home life that he didn't have when he was younger," royal author and historian Carolyn Harris has said in an interview. Philip's parents were Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Alice of Battenberg, a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Philip was born a prince of both Greece and Denmark on June 10, 1921, on the dining room table at Mon Repos, a villa that was the summer home for the Greek royals on the island of Corfu. He was the last of five children — his four older siblings were all girls. At the time, he was sixth in line to the Greek throne. But life in Greece didn't last long. His father, a professional soldier, was exiled from Greece in 1922 as his uncle, King Constantine I, was forced to abdicate. Philip's family fled, with the story being that Philip was nestled into an orange box as the family was evacuated from Greece on a Royal Navy ship. They eventually made their way to Paris. Philip's childhood took a "dysfunctional turn," author Sally Bedell Smith wrote in her book, Elizabeth The Queen, when he was sent by his parents at the age of eight to England for boarding school. The family eventually broke down. Philip's mother, who was born deaf, was ill periodically, diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent time in a sanitarium in Switzerland. His father went off with his mistress to Monte Carlo, where he died in 1944. Philip was left to be brought up in the U.K. by his mother's family, shuffled among various relatives and boarding schools throughout his youth. He didn't see or have any word from his mother between the summer of 1932 and the spring of 1937. "It's simply what happened," Philip said matter-of-factly in an excerpt from a book by Philip Eade, Young Prince Philip, Turbulent Early Years, published in the Telegraph. "The family broke up. My mother was ill, my sisters were married, my father was in the south of France. I just had to get on with it. You do. One does." As life went on, there really was no father to guide, consult or do anything else a father can do for his child. Several other close relatives died in his early years, including his favourite sister, Cecile, and her family in a plane crash in 1937. The following year, the 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven, his uncle and guardian, died of bone cancer. That left the marquess's younger brother, Louis Mountbatten, to bring up Philip. His family ties also extended into Germany. Three of his sisters were married to German princes involved in the Nazi party. Cecile and her husband, Don, had just joined the Nazi party before they died. Those family alliances had a visible repercussion when Philip and Elizabeth were married in 1947. "His sisters were not invited to the wedding as they were married to German princes who had been involved in the Nazi party during World War Two," Harris said. Philip's mother, Princess Alice, however, was at the wedding, and in her later years, came to live at Buckingham Palace. Alice had her own moment in the cultural conscience in 2019, as an episode during the third season of the Netflix drama, The Crown, focused on her. "She's just the most extraordinary character," Crown creator Peter Morgan told Vanity Fair. She set up charities for Greek refugees and later established a nursing order of Greek Orthodox nuns. During the Second World War, while her son was serving with the Royal Navy and her German sons-in-law fought for the Nazis, she was hiding Jews in Athens. As much as there was the distance between Philip and his mother in his younger years, there was a closeness later. Alice came to live at Buckingham Palace in 1967. Alice died at the palace in 1969 and was interred in the royal crypt at Windsor Castle. In 1988, her remains were transferred, as she had wished, to the church of St. Mary Magdalene in east Jerusalem. In a 1994 visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Philip planted a tree in his mother's honour and visited her gravesite. "I suspect that it never occurred to her that her action was in any way special," Philip said during his visit. "She was a person with deep religious faith and she would have considered it to be a totally human action to fellow human beings in distress."

No stranger to Canada

(Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press)

Prince Philip's last visit to Canada was a short one in 2013 — on his own, without the Queen — to present a ceremonial flag to the Royal Canadian Regiment's 3rd Battalion. It came as something of a surprise. Philip had experienced a few health scares in the 18 months prior. So overseas travel was not necessarily a given for the Duke of Edinburgh at the time. But given Philip's feisty personality, dedication to his role and some of the interests he showed over the years, his return to Canada — he made more than 70 visits or stopovers between 1950 and 2013 — may not really have been a complete surprise. The 2013 trip was billed as a private working visit and was only a few days long. But while he was here, he was finally able to pick up the insignias he had been awarded as companion of the Order of Canada and commander of the Order of Military Merit from David Johnston, then Canada's governor general.

To read more about Philip’s time in Canada, click here.

Royally quotable

“He is someone who doesn't take easily to compliments but he has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years, and I, and his whole family, and this and many other countries, owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim, or we shall ever know.”

— Queen Elizabeth, publicly acknowledging Prince Philip’s importance to her during a speech on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary in 1997.

To read more on what Philip meant to the Queen, click here.

Remembering Prince Philip

Royal Fascinator readers are welcome to share their thoughts on the passing of Prince Philip, and any memories they may have of meeting him over the years. We’ll include some in the next edition of the newsletter.

I’m always happy to hear from you. Send your ideas, comments, feedback and notes to

royalfascinator@cbc.ca

. Problems with the newsletter? Please let me know about any typos, errors or glitches.

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦🇬🇧🇦🇺🇳🇿

[heck-damn-so-i-draw]

Evan Fong, the leading investigator of these ghost hunts, stands in front of the cameraman in the group and says the intro they hope to be famous someday to fellow ghost extremists. “Some people believe in ghosts, SOme don’t. There are things in this world we will never fully understand. We want answers. My friends, Brian, Marcel, and Tyler.” He turns to introduce his team. Brian Hanby, an Irish ‘ex’-subway worker, Marcel Cummingham, a video influencer and ghost hunter hype man, and  Tyler Wine, the team cameraman who along with Marcel, keeps their tech and equipment working and up to par. 

“Are here to help me find answers. Today!” Evan continues to the camera after Tyler is done introducing everyone, “We are here in Wake, North Carolina. Investigating paranormal activity in an old farmhouse. According to the owner of the property, this used to be the sight of a cult group called Onyx Toonz. Strange name for a cult, I know~" The Asian Canadian winked at the camera. 

He knew he was the heartthrob of their fans, so he often talked to the camera like a friend he was trying to include. 

"Just remember, we find these ghosts to try and help them, free them. I can talk to ghosts. And they talk to me. Brian here can see ghosts, so along with our tech men, we use our gifts to help them once we find them. Alright! Let's get this party rocking." 

Evan grinned at the camera until Tyler said cut and put it down. Then his grin fell and he looked to the house they were going to investigate tonight. 

The house wasn’t very big, and it was incredibly old. There were places where the roof looked like it wouldn’t last another rainfall. As Evan continued to look at the building, he shivered. He was good at putting on a show. Great at hiding the fact that he was terrified, for the camera. His buddies knew better.

Brian looked at the house, his blue eyes slightly visible glowing in the sunset behind the house. Just because he had a gift like this, doesn’t mean he’s much different from anyone else. His eyes don’t glow like they’re magic, he doesn’t have any special origin- he’s normal! Besides being able to see the dead and all. As they all looked towards the house, Brian’s breath hitched as he could already feel the anxiety swell up in him. Whatever is in there, knew they were coming in. The Irishman sighed once he knew the camera was off. “Are you sure we should be investigating here-? There’s something… Wrong.”

Marcel put his arm around the man and shook him lightly, an excited grin on his face. “C’mon, you heard the owner! He wants to tear the house down anyway. Don’t chicken out on us now, man. I’m sure there’s nothing in that house we can’t handle- Why did you see something bad already?” His tone got excited instead of scared as it should be. “No, no wait. Save it for the camera- We gotta get your real reaction.”

Brian went quiet and just shook his head. Marcel was always excited about the prospect of an adventure, they all were really, but Marcel was always leaping for one. An adrenaline junky.

He was still careful, but not always. 

The most careful of the group all in all was probably Tyler, who enforced a lot of the rules they set up the show with.

“Hang on, hang on. I’m getting the camera ready- We need to do a perimeter check to make sure..”

Evan already started to seem distracted. He was hearing a soft ringing in his ears that he couldn’t quite explain. Maybe it was the high altitude of the town? They had just got here yesterday. 

He turned to the group. “First we have to set up our base of operations. I don’t think I’m comfortable putting it in that house.” He looked at Brian as if to affirm his bad feeling, and Brian nodded subtly back.

SO the gang set up their base with a tent and Marcel and Tyler quickly got all of the laptops and equipment set up. Though, as they go inside they’ll have to set up the motion cameras and other things to try and record what they find.

While the tech boys got everything they needed ready, Evan and Brian sat looking towards the house, joking about what would happen tonight or talking about a few things that already seemed off about the place. They didn’t discuss much, saving it for the camera as per normal. 

“Alright, it’s all set!” Tyler called as he exited the tent. Marcel followed quickly behind. The two tech men were ready to start the show... Brian and Evan weren’t so ready. Before Evan could say anything, they all heard a thunk! And looked to the house. A kid had thrown a small chunk of cinder block at the door and was running home. Brian’s eyes widened a bit as he saw something he didn’t want to tell the group just yet, and Evan stood up, making Brian stand up too. Tyler shook his head. “Stupid fuckin’ kids. We should talk to his parents-” Before Tyler could finish his thought, Evan nodded. “Already way ahead of you,” Then he started out down the hill towards the house that the child ran off to.

When they got to the front door, Evan knocked on it. 

The door opened about 5 seconds later, to a mother with curly brown hair. “Can I help you, gentlemen?” She asked softly, to which Evan put on a smile. “Yes Ma’am, actually, we were hired to investigate the home next door to yours, and we think we saw your son throw something at the door. Can we-” As if on cue, a little boy with brown hair that resembled his mother came out from behind her skirt. “Lui-” The mother started quickly, but her young boy interrupted her, clinging on tight to his monkey stuffie. “You guys shouldn’t go in there. There’s death in there.”

Evan and brian looked at each other with concern in their eyes, and the mother tugged her son back behind her and started shutting the door, laughing nervously. “Oh, kids will say the darndest things~ Sorry boys but it’s Lui’s bedtime.” Then she promptly shut the door. Evan blinked for a minute or two and then turned around to face his team. “Well.. that was a nice little North Carolinian hello, wasn’t it?” Then he started to walk back off the porch and to their base. 

~STAY TUNED FOR PT. 2~

→ 

[garretschuelke]

Godan: Omega Wolf Blues, part 1

(As featured on Tuesday Serial)

The Amtrak came to a stop. It nudged a few times, making Gareth Manion, who was sleeping, fall against the window.

“Ow,” he muttered, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He watched until the aisle was clear, then got up, took down his backpack, and exited the train.

He walked into Union Station, looking over the architecture. Some said 'Excuse me,' but Gareth ignored them.

“EXCUSE,” the man said, bumping Gareth over, “ME!”

“Guess I'll have to excuse you then, dickhead,” Gareth replied.

The man stopped, turn around, and glared at Gareth, who did the same. The man's eyes widened.

“What?” Gareth asked.

The man scurried away. Gareth wondered what his deal was, and proceeded to walk through the hall.

The man looked back behind him to make sure that Gareth was not following him. He turned the corner, took out his phone, and thought it over one last time. Convinced that he was right, he dialed a number.

<Hello, Bo?> the person on the other end of the phone answered.

<This is,> Bo confirmed. <I saw something that might interest you.>

The person on the other end laughed. <Even when you're on vacation, you're working!>

<Actually, I was about to get on the train when this came up>

<Okay, what is going on?>

<I believe that Godan is back in town.>

Silence reigned over the other end of the line. Bo looked over to make sure that his train had not started boarding yet.

< Are you serious?> the person on the other end asked.

< Very much, ma'am>

< Where are you again?>

<Union Station, I was just about to board my train when I saw him.>

<Just how do you know it's him? Did he have gray hair?>

Bo scratched his arm nervously. <Well, he dresses just like the Gray Wolf, and he has a similar hair style—>

<The Gray Wolf looks like any other bum out on the streets!>

Bo was now regretting making the call. <You are right, but please listen.>

<What do you think I have been doing this past minute?!>

Bo sighed. <The man that I think is Godan was standing in my way. I had to bump him aside to get through. We nearly came to blows, but in that time, besides his looks, there was just something about his attitude, and his voice, that reminded me of all the times we have interacted with him.>

Silence again.

<I apologize for bothering you like this, ma'am. I should not have been so hasty.>

<It is all right, thank you. Enjoy your vacation—you earned it.>

The person on the other line hung up. Bo sighed, and looked around the corner. His train was beginning to board. He put away his phone and walked over to the line.

Above the skies of Chicago, the android known as Upton was on patrol. His sensor went off. He stopped and hovered, attempting to lock onto the energy signature. He finally did so, and flew towards it.

Godan hopped onto the top of a bus. He put his hands on his hips and took in the sights of downtown Chicago.

“CHI-TOWN,” he yelled, stretching his arms out, I'M FINALLY HOME!”

He heard someone shout out 'GRAY WOLF!' He looked over and saw pedestrians waving at him, some taking pictures. He waved back, and they cheered.  Godan rode for a bit longer, and hopped off the bus and sped down the street.

Upton caught sight of Godan. He followed overhead, and began streaming what he was seeing to his master's feed.

An alert came up on Mysta Avon's laptop. Mysta rolled her chair over to her other desk and clicked on it. The feed popped up, showing Godan running down the street, sidestepping cars.

“Well, well,” Mysta said, putting on her headset. “The Gray Wolf of Chicago has returned to the Windy City. He came back sooner that I thought he would.”

Godan caught a whiff of a familiar scent. He became filled with dread, and looked around rapidly.

Mysta figured what was about to happen. “Upton, return to the lab before he spots you!”

Upton nodded, and flew off in the opposite direction. Godan looked up, and saw an airplane. The scent disappeared. He shrugged, and continued towards his destination.

***

Nang Tu stopped in front of a bench. She bent down and stretched, letting herself stay in this position as she caught her breath. She felt her phone vibrate. Her heart began to skip. She stood up straight and took out her phone, showing an email unrelated to the matter that she was thinking about.

“Shoot,” she said, sitting down. She put the phone down next to her, and tightened her running shoes.

Why would he take an Amtrak back here when he said that he prefers to either hop trains or hitchhike, Nang thought. She leaned back and looked over Lake Michigan.

“Stop asking yourself stupid questions,” she said aloud. She went on her phone again and checked her Facebook. She searched 'godan', and posts featuring pictures of the Gray Wolf riding on the top of a downtown bus from nearly thirty minutes ago showed up in the results.

Warmth spread throughout Nang's chest. “Bo, I owe you a lunch when you return,” she said.

Nang stood up, put away her phone, and resumed her jog.

***

Godan landed in an alley. He depowered, took off his mask, and walked out onto the street. He looked around and properly took in the sights and sounds of Bridgeport.

Yep, it's just as beautiful as when I left it, Gareth thought as he began walking. The wind blew some leaves past him. He thought about all that had happened to him while he was on his quest in Michigan:

Taking down Lycaon the werewolf that was terrorizing his hometown—and from whom he believed he got his powers from.

Enduring the pain and heartbreak that Lycaon's daughter, Dia, put him through.

Defeating the vengeful vampire Lord Ruthven alongside Canadian superhero—and possible relative—Wolf Savage.

Gareth looked around, and realized that he had walked past the street that his house was on. He shook off his memories, turned back around, and ran towards his street, grinning.

He did not see Salt Chunk Mary's car anywhere on the street. He stopped in front of his house, and stared at it. Comfort and nostalgia washed over him. He sighed, and dug out his keys.

Huh, maybe I should knock first, Gareth thought. As he went up the steps. Yeah, that'll get a better reaction out of them.

Gareth rang the door bell. He started sniffing, instantly picking up the scent he was hoping for. The person cracked the door and peaked through. Gareth smiled and waved.

The door flew open. A thick woman, her dreadlocks coming down past her shoulders, wearing a floral shirt, stood there , eyes wide.

“Hey, Lana!” Gareth said. “I'm—” Gareth hesitated. “Yeah, I'm back! How have you been?”

Lana blinked.

“Is Mary around? I could really go for one of her sweet, sweet, salted pork meals—even if it does give me the shits.”

“Holy shit�� Lana exclaimed, “you're still alive!”

Gareth was taken aback. “Well, yeah, why wouldn't I not be alive?” Gareth then remembered that the last time he emailed Lana was over a month ago when he returned to Alpena. “Oh, shit!” He laughed. “I'm sorry for not writing. It's been one—”

Lana wrapped her arms around Gareth's neck, pressing her face into his chest.

“It's been a long trip,” Gareth said, returning the hug, feeling relieved.

A breeze swept over them, blowing both of their hair sideways. Perfect life moment, Gareth thought.

“You had me worried nearly to tears!” Lana pulled away and took a hold of Gareth's hand. “You can make it up by telling me everything that happened.”

Gareth grimaced. “I'm not sure if I wanna do that.”

“Well, you should have written more often then,” she said, pulling him inside.

***

Officer Brett Hannigan sat down in his lawn chair after he finished cleaning out his garden. He took of his gloves and let them drop onto the grass. He took out his phone saw that one of his fellow officers in the Chicago Police Department had texted him while he was working:

Godan is apparently back in town. Check the hashtags.

Hannigan instantly became angry. He went onto Facebook and looked up the #godan and #chicagograywolf hashtags. Pictures and video of Godan appearing downtown earlier came up. He scrolled down, his rage growing. A gif of Godan grinning and nodding made him throw his phone across the lawn.

“You little punk,” Hannigan growled, breathing heavily as he gripped the chairs arm rests. The veins in his face popped up, and his teeth became jagged. “You should have never come back!”

He crushed the arm rests as his fingernails grew into claws.

***

“AH, FUCK!” Godan yelled, gripping Lana's legs.

“Yeah, baby!” Lana moaned. Her eyes suddenly shot open. “Claws! Claws!”

Godan realized that his claws were piercing Lana's skin. “My bad,” he said, releasing his grip, breathing heavily. “It's been awhile since I did it while transformed.”

“No kidding,” Lana sat up and kissed Godan, pulling him on top of her. “Don't leave me for that long next time, all right? You won't forget then.”

“The mission's been accomplished,” Godan kissed her neck. “I'm here to stay.”

Lana hummed, and they continued making love. Godan's phone rang.

“That's the third time it's gone off,” Lana said.

“Really?” Godan nuzzled Lana's breasts. “I didn't hear anything.”

“Hey!” Lana pulled Godan back by his hair. “Just go answer it already.”

The phone continued ringing. Godan rolled his eyes, sighed loudly, and got out of bed. He picked up the phone, cleared his throat, and answered it. “Yo.”

“YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!” the person on the other end yelled. Godan held the phone away from his ear. “WHY HAVEN'T YOU PICKED UP?!” “Holy shit!” Godan cautiously put the phone near his ear. “Stop fucking yelling at me, Nang!”

“I've called and texted you over ten goddamn times already! Why haven't you picked up?!”

“My phone's a wreck—I didn't hear you until now!”

“HORSESHIT!” Godan heard Nang tell someone that he was a 'fucking dickhead'. “Are you back in Chicago?”

“Yeah, I just got back a short time ago. What's up?”

“Get over to the Man-Eating Spider right now—we have a MAJOR problem that only you can deal with.”

“Is that so?” Godan rubbed his face. “What is it?”

“Just get your ass down here,” Nang said, hanging up.

“Nice talking to you too,” Godan muttered. He looked at his phone and saw all the notifications. “Well, shit.”

“What?” Lana asked.

“She really did call and text me more than ten time,” Godan replied, scrolling through his phone.

“You should have picked it up earlier.”

“Yeah, but I didn't hear anything before I came back here cause my phone's trashed.”

“Lemme see.”

Godan handed her the phone. She looked it over.

“Wow, your phone really is garbage.”

“I'm surprised its last this long,” Godan began getting dressed, “considering all the times I've brought it into battle.”

“Where are you off too now?”

Godan zipped up his sweatshirt. “To the Temple. Nang says she needs my help with something, ASAP.”

“So,” Lana tossed Godan his phone. “you need to save the day again already?”

Godan caught it and put it in his pocket. “Yeppers,” he said, putting his mask on.

“God, you never get a break.”

“Maybe I'll get lucky and it'll just involve me knocking out some rando that's annoying her.” Godan opened the bedroom door and saluted Lana. “I'll be back!”

Lana returned the salute. “Go hard, Gray Wolf of Chicago!”

Godan peaked out the entrance door window, and saw that his street was destitute. He went outside and locked the door. A car passed by him. Godan waited until the car turned the corner, and he sped down the street.

Godan entered the Chinatown neighborhood. As he raced towards his destination, he tried again to imagine what Nang was so anxious to see him about. After exhausting all possibilities, his thoughts drifted to a fantasy he had always had about his fellow superhuman: Nang naked, laying on a giant spiders web, grinning as she motioned him to come closer with her long, sleek claws.

Yeah, right, Godan thought, grinning as he stopped in front of his destination. Someday, I'll convince her to do that for me.

The Gray Wolf stood in front of The Temple of the Man-Eating Spider, Chinatown's hottest nightclub, and the secret headquarters of The All Seeing Eye, Chinatown's most powerful gang. Godan went to knock on the currently-closed clubs door, but stopped himself. I should probably let Nang know I'm here, he thought. He got out his phone, and began texting her.

The door suddenly opened. Godan jumped back. The All Seeing Eye member gave him a confused look.

“Oh, hey dude,” Godan said, putting away his phone. “Nang's expecting me.”

“Yeah, we know,” the gangbanger held the door open. “Come in.”

Godan entered, and saw the main floor and bar area occupied by various members hanging about.

“Yo, Eye Guys!” Godan waved. “How y'all been?”

Some of the members responded warmly to Godan's greeting, and went up to shake his hand and talk to him. Others remained silent and glared at him. The door man told Godan to wait where he was while he informed Nang of his presence.

Godan relaxed, putting his hands in his sweatshirt pocket. He asking if anything new and exciting had happened in Chinatown recently. One of the members began telling him about a festival that was coming up.

“GAReth!” yelled a strained voice that echoed throughout the club.

Godan froze up. The gangbanger who was telling him about the festival stopped as well.

“Did you hear that?” Godan asked.

“Hear what?” the gangbanger asked.

Godan let out a sigh. “Never mind. Is there gonna be a charge to get into this festival?”

“garETH!” the strained voice yelled again, followed by the sounds of clashing metal.

Godan looked over to where the sound was coming from. Hidden in the corner next to the bar was a small cage that was shaking about. Two of the gangbangers went up to it and told whatever was inside to shut up.

“Hey, Eye Guys,” Godan walked up towards the cage. “Whatcha got in there? Is this what Nang wanted me to come here for?”

A face pressed itself against the cage and screeched. The gangbangers jumped back, cursed, and kicked at the cage.

Godan recognized immediately who was inside.

“CALLISTO!” Godan yelled as the other daughter of Lycaon curled into herself. He got into a battle stance. “Let her go,” He bared his fangs, “NOW!”

One of the gangbangers shook his head. “We need to have Nang's permission to do that. Let's hold on—”

Godan appeared in front of the gangbanger and punched him, sending him flying into the nearby wall. The other one ran off. The Gray Wolf ripped the door off the cage and pulled Callisto out. She was groggy, and wrapped in chains.

Godan glared at the group. “Your boss has ALOT of explaining to do,” he said, setting Callisto on the floor and standing up. Every member of the All-Seeing Eye had their guns drawn. Godan flexed his claws. “I hope you assholes have had your funeral plans hashed out.”

Nang jumped at the sounds of gunfire emitting from her nightclub, smearing her lipstick.

“What the fuck?!” she yelled, turning around.

The gangbanger who informed her of Godan's arrival came into her office. “The Gray Wolf discovered the dog girl and began attacking everyone!”

“Are you kidding me?!” She wiped the lipstick off her cheek. “I didn't order them to bring her out yet!”

Screams from her men, now accompanied by sporadic gunfire, came from downstairs.

“Shit!” she said, brushing off her navy blue dress. She slapped on her domino mask, and put on her blue crown. “Find out who decided it was a good idea to bring her out in the open like that,” she said as she walked out of the office, “so that I can kill them myself if Godan hasn't done so already!”

Nang looked over the railing as Godan swiped at the remaining gangbangers who were firing on him. She yelled at him, but her voice was drowned out by gunfire. She cursed, and jumped over the railing.

Godan held up the last gangbanger by his shirt, fist wound back. He pleaded with Godan to stop.

“Sorry, but I don't tend to show mercy to trash who lock up my friends,” Godan replied.

“ENOUGH!” Nang yelled as she slashed Godan's back with her claws.

Godan screamed. He released the gangbanger, who scrambled away.

“Just what the hell do you think you're doing?!” Nang yelled, putting her hands on her hips.

Godan growled. “What am I doing?!” he said, turning around into a battle stance. “What are YOU doing holding one of my friends hostage?!”

Nang bent down in order to get into Godan's face. “First of all, I didn't order them to bring her out yet.” The gangbangers around them began to recover. “Second, I didn't know your 'friend' was ever your fucking friend!”

“She knows my name!” Godan put his finger in Nang's face. “You could have contacted me!”

Nang shook with rage. “I've been trying to contact you,” she glared, baring her two long, slick fangs, “FOR AN ENITIRE FUCKING MONTH NOW! I'VE CALLED—”

“I HAVEN'T HEARD SHIT FROM YOU!”

“AND EMAILED YOU!”

Godan calmed down. “Oh, shit, I haven't checked my email in awhile.”

Nang breathed deeply. “Didn't you get any of my calls? Texts?”

“I got all the ones you sent today.”

“What? That doesn't make sense.”

Godan hummed. “Well, my phones gone to shit.” He took out his phone and gave it to her. “See?”

“Wow,” Nang said, running her claws over the busted screen, “you're not kidding.”

Most of the gangbangers were up now. One of them cursed at Godan, and aimed his gun at him.

“I SAID ENOUGH!” Nang yelled. She aimed her open palm at the gangbanger and shot a web, hitting him in the face. She looked around at the recovered members of her gang. “Any one else feel like defying me tonight?”

The gangbangers collectively shook their heads. Nang looked back at Godan. “Let's discuss this in my office.”

Godan nodded. “Okay, but free Callisto first.”

They looked over, and saw that Callisto was sleeping.

“She'll be fine.” Nang looked over the All Seeing Eye members. “Don't ANY of you morons touch her, got it?”

The gangbangers nodded. “Let's go,” Nang said. She and Godan jumped up onto the second floor and entered the office.

“All right,” Godan clasped his hands together and activated his healing factor, “why are you keeping Callisto prisoner?”

“We're not keeping her 'prisoner',” Nang leaned against her desk, “we've been detaining her.”

Godan rolled his eyes. “You have her chained up in a fucking dog kennel!”

Nang snorted. “Well, she wasn't going to stay up in my room! She got a mat, three meals a day, and we were even nice enough to give her a television for her to watch!”

“Gee, how very generous of you,” Godan said as the slashes Nang inflicted on his back began to close up.

“We would have treated her with more hospitality if she actually cooperated with us.”

“How did you guys even come across her? She's from my hometown, all the way up in northern Michigan.”

“Nearly a month ago, my men came across her scavenging through our dumpster. They thought she was you at first, since your both wolf-like, and since you like to eat out of dumpsters.”

“Ew, no!” Godan scrunched his face. “I haven't done that in over a year!”

“Whatever,” Nang mumbled. “She attacked my men, and if I wasn't around to restrain her, they probably would have wasted her.”

“Again, how very generous of you.”

“Gareth, please, I don't want to argue anymore. How do you two even know each other?”

Godan summarized to Nang who Callisto was, along with his adventures traveling through Michigan.

“So, despite looking like a person, she really is a wild animal?” Nang asked.

Godan glared. “No more wild than I am.”

“Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean it like that.” Nang took a deep breath. “I'm sorry—we should have treated her better. I take full responsibility.”

“Okay,” Godan scratched his head. “I'm sorry for attacking your men.”

They stared into each others eyes. Godan looked her over and noticed that she was wearing black lipstick—something that he's never seen her do.

“Damn,” Godan grinned.

Nang smiled back. “What?”

“Nice lipstick,” he moved closer to her, “it goes pretty well with your fangs.”

“Only 'pretty well'?” Nang took hold of Godan's hand. “And what're you going on about with my fangs?”

“I've always thought they were hot,” he replied, flashing his own fangs.

Nang rubbed her legs against Godan. “You and your strange fetishes.”

Godan put his hand onto Nang's face. “That's what I wanted to hear.”

Godan and Nang locked lips. Nang hopped onto her desk and pulled Godan into her.

The All Seeing Eye members, some of whom were still woozy from their battle with Godan, discussed how they going to 'get back' at him. Others questioned Nang's leadership.

“OH, FUCK!” Nang screamed.

The gangbangers stood still, trying to decided how they should react. They heard more banging and moaning.

<I'm not going up there,> one of the gangbangers said. The others agreed, and went up to the bar to get drinks.

Godan and Nang stopped moving. They held each other close, breathing heavily. Godan pulled down his mask and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“I think your mask is hot,” Nang said, taking off her own mask as she laid down on the desk.

“And you claim that I have 'strange fetishes',” he said, pulling out. Godan heard a scratching sound above him. His adrenaline went into overdrive. He looked up, claws ready.

Nang panted. “Calm down, lover—it's just Agor.”

The large yellow and red, googly-eyed spider hung from its web in the corner of room, scratching its leg.

“He watched us the entire time?” Godan asked.

“It wouldn't be first time,” Nang replied.

“I can't believe I didn't notice him when I first walked in.”

Godan then realized what she said, and cringed.

Nang whistled. Agor lowered himself down and rubbed its goofy head against the Gray Wolf.

“It's good to see you again too, pal,” Godan said, patting his head. “Have you guys gotten any further with your 'bonding' training?”

“No, I've been too busy with organizational duties to concentrate on that.” Nang slid off the desk, bent down, and pulled up her panties. “Are you back in Chicago for good?”

“Yep, my quest is over.” Godan pulled up his boxers and pants. “I should get Callisto out of here. You're men probably aren't too happy about me still being here either.”

“I'll straighten them out. What're you going to do with the girl?”

Godan hummed. “Good question. I guess I'll bring her back home and go from there.”

Nang took a hold of Godan's face, and kissed him deeply. “Let me know if there's anything I can do.”

“Yeah, I think you did enough.”

“I'm serious—I'll do anything I can to make up for this mess.”

“I'm kidding, I'm kidding.” Godan put on his mask and began walking towards the door. “We're good, Nang. Just make sure your men don't try to blast me on the way out.”

Nang nodded. “Will do.”

Godan and Nang exited the office. Godan nodded, jumped over the rail, and landed in the middle of the dance floor. The gangbangers immediately drew their guns.

<BACK OFF!> Nang yelled. <HE IS TAKING THE GIRL OUT OF HERE. LET HIM BE!>

Godan walked over to Callisto and bent down. “Yo, Callisto, wake up,” he said, shaking her shoulder. Callisto kept on snoring. She's still out of it, he thought. Godan broke the lock, unwrapped Callisto from her chains, and picked her up.

“I'll call you later!” Nang yelled.

“You better let me call you first,” Godan replied, walking to the door. “I gotta get a new phone, remember?”

“Good idea,” Nang blew him a kiss.

Godan walked out the door. He heard a thud behind him, followed by the door slamming. He then heard Nang yelling at her men.

“Sucks to be them,” he muttered, looking at the sleeping werewolf he was holding in his arms. “Lana's sure gonna love you.”

Godan sped off towards Bridgeport. On a nearby rooftop, a figure stood up and relaxed as she watched Godan run off.

That saves me the trouble of having to rescue her, the figure thought.

[nobodyn01]

Viewpoints of EVERYONE on the 2020 riots

Average People: George Floyd was a normal man like you and me, and he was killed by a man that thought he could get away with murder just because he was a member of the law. We all made sure he got what he deserved, and made an example across the nation that we would not simply let go of what happened and to strike fear into anyone else who would think their power would keep them safe from the consequences of their actions!

Police: this is why we can't put our knees on peoples necks anymore. So if you're trying to arrest someone trying to hurt you whatever you do you must make sure they do not get hurt or die as we are mere servents of the people.

Rich People: a poor person tried to cheat an honest business and got what they deserved.

Chinese Government: an American tried to cheat their own government and got what they deserved. Just like what's coming for you Hong Kong! Gonna make you all disappear, won't even be in history books!

American Government: people think they have the power to try and scare us into rewriting some rules but if we pay some people enough we can get them to fight off the other people for us so we can continue living off their taxes moneys.

Statistics: most of the arrested rioters were black and believed that it was their natural born right to steal to survive. As being born in a free market economy where white males are more frequently hired into high paying jobs often thanks to their connections of friends in high places and rich supervisor daddy's giving them cakewalk jobs they didn't work for.

Religions: God sent us a sign in the form of George Floyd to help us see the errors of our ways and to test our faith in the almighty God! We will forever hold him as a martyr for he died for our sins. We look forward to whatever trials God lays down afore us in the future to further fuck us in the ass because we like it just like fucking all of your children in the ass as we ask you for generous donations to the local charities of us!

Refugees still in Mexico: *looks at smoke and fire over border* guess America wasn't all that better.

Canadians:*looks over border at America on fire* those Americans sure do love their Barbeque eh?

Minimum Wage Worker: we don't get paid enough to care who lives or dies, we don't even really care if one of our Coworkers goes missing, he was still a recovering drug addict but he had it coming anyway. Atleast I make just enough to buy my drugs and alcohol.

ANTIFA and Sovereign Citizens: this is why all governments need to fuck off!!!

Actual Racists: our race is obviously superior and there will not be any world Peace until we have killed off all the other races and the world belongs to a race of one color!

All lives matter people: there's no such thing as minorities! what happens to you is your own fault, I follow the laws like a normal law abiding citizen and I am completely satisfied with my life and privileges, all of you are just opportunists trying to take as much advantage of this thing as you can to do whatever you want and put lives in danger! I don't understand why being black makes you so special.

Disney World: no one died within the walls of Disney Land and no one can prove it and so it has nothing to do with us at all.

Celebrities: Remember we are all in this together! *eats diamond encrusted sandwich surrounded by body guards*

Liberals: George Floyd was an average man that wouldn't have needed to use a fake $20 for food if the oppression of school and job systems didn't make him a victim of poverty and student loans are to blame!

Democrats: Welfare Willy got the Billy.

Republicans(old white conservatives): if the police actually did their job to kill off all the useless people living off our taxes the world would be a better place.

Porn Community: we love black people as we work with them everyday and some of our husbands are black and they are very caring when our fathers were not. They can never be racist since they are already black, sometimes they worry about us and don't want us to work with our fellow black co-workers as they are afraid to lose us but I am my own woman and that's why I'm still going on a date with Daquan tonight and smoke all of his weed.

Feminists: we just gotta wait til all the men kill each other off and then we can move in and steal their girlfriends and wives.

Thanos: I used the people to kill off half the people.

NEWS: THERE IS FIRE EVERYWHERE! EVERYONE IS DYING! EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE! EVERYONE IS SHAKING THEIR ASSES AT EACHOTHER! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!

Jesus Like Being: none of this would be happening if you actually took the time to get to know one another and talk about your life problems and came to an understanding how someone can help you or you help yourself. If you feel afraid to talk to others and feel like you can't trust them and use any social anxiety excuse you have why you shouldn't talk to them, think about how that makes them feel, everyone inside tells themselves "they don't want to pay attention to me, fine ignore me" when really they'd like you to say hello too. Learn more about yourself, learn about the others around you, understand your place, take a step back to look at it all and realize being alive in this world is a privilege and it's all on you to make the most of it without hurting others. That being said with what precious time you have left here don't waste it praying or going to church and following dead end beliefs none of it matters in the end. As a human living in this world you can do whatever you want, believe whatever you want to find yourself. just remember it's natural for us to make societies and instead of fighting this nature we'll have to find a way to work around it til we find peace.

[englishchinesetranslations]

Critical Race Theory is a Victimization Cult 

JUNE 29, 2020 ART KELLER

It is not a particularly unique observation to notice that the Critical Social Justice movement, particularly the part that embraces Critical Race Theory, bears tremendous resemblance to a secular religion. When asked about that similarity, sociologist Bradley Campbell, author of The Rise of Victimhood Culture, explained, I think it’s similar to a lot of utopian political movements in having similarities to religion. Those at the forefront of the movement, who wholeheartedly embrace an oppression/victimhood worldview derived from Critical Theory, and who see it as providing a basis for a call for repentance and change in their own lives and the lives of others, and as a call to restructure social institutions, seem to have embraced something very much like a religion. In my own work I’ve called it a “moral culture” rather than a religion, and I think that’s probably more accurate. We could call it “social justice culture,” or as Jason Manning and I called it, “victimhood culture,” but in any case, it’s a worldview that places a certain conception of social justice as the highest value. In this view oppression permeates social institutions and interactions, and social justice means fighting this oppression. 

Drawing from critical theory, those who embrace this moral culture tend to view various social identities as the most important thing about people, and they see those identities as oppressor or victim identities. To be white, male, Christian, or straight, for example is to have a privileged position in a system of oppression, and to be a person of color, female, non-Christian, or LGBT is to be disadvantaged. Those who embrace the new moral culture aren’t alone wanting to address oppression and injustice, but they tend to see it in a particular way and to interpret everything in these terms…interpreting everything in terms of oppression and in elevating those concerns above all others seems to have led many of the activists to disregard liberal values such as due process and free speech. 

 While there is much merit in Professor Campbell’s analysis, I wonder whether it goes far enough. Religion, when taken to extremes, tends no longer to promote love, acceptance, and a sense of community and fulfillment—the stated goals of most religions. Religious extremism promotes violence, intolerance, tribalism, and a deliberately confused mental state in its adherents. When that happens, when religion “goes to the dark side,” we stop using the term religion, and start using the word “cult.” As a former CIA officer, I know what that kind of cult looks like. I can’t write about my own counterterror operations, or any training I may have gotten from the CIA in persuasion and indoctrination without having to submit it for pre-publication review to the CIA. 

But nothing stops me from highlighting the work of others on the same topic, so we can see what the ideological conversion of a cult looks like up close and personal. Some of the best journalism on the terror group ISIS—a cult within a religion—was done by Rukmini Callimachi, whose Peabody-winning podcast, The Caliphate presents a grim journey into the heart of darkness. It is not for the faint of heart, as it includes detailed descriptions of beatings, gruesome executions, and religiously-justified systematic rape. The Caliphate follows a young Canadian whose nom de guerre is Abu Huzayfah. He starts as an ISIS fanboy watching videos of violence in the Syrian civil war, but when he shows up in online chat forums about the war, he gets engaged by lurking ISIS recruiters who use techniques explicitly designed to rob converts of the ability to think critically. Eventually he finds himself in Syria, operating as an ISIS policeman, flogging a man bloody for the crime of not forcing his wife into a niqab, and executing fellow Sunni Muslims (who ISIS claims to protect) for the crime of not surrendering abjectly to ISIS. And how does he justify murdering follow Sunni Muslims? It’s their fault, apparently. He had no agency in their deaths, even though he pulled the trigger. 

By not turning their town over to ISIS the instant ISIS appeared, “They killed themselves,” he stated. He finishes his direct involvement by fleeing ISIS territory after his second murder on their behalf, disillusioned, but no less full of willful blindness about the harm caused by his radical views, as well as convenient self-justifications for why he doesn’t need to confess his murders to the Canadian police. This story, though far more brutal and gruesome, contains elucidating parallels to the rapid rise of Critical Race Theory in contemporary Western culture. Though there are many obvious differences, given our present context, it’s worth examining how ISIS and Al Qaeda lure in recruits in some detail. From Chapter 2 of The Caliphate: The speakers in this lengthy snippet of conversation are Callimachi, Abu Huzayfah, and Jesse Morton, an Al Qaeda recruiter who reveals exactly how he manipulated recruits into embracing Al Qaeda’s murderous ideology. 

 Huzayfah: I actually just started talking to them. You know, like, “Hello, how are you?” 

 Callimachi: And if you’re searching for an identity, and you don’t necessarily have a community that you really fit into —— 

 Huzayfah: Oh, it felt like, you know, wow. These guys — it’s easier to talk to them. Like, they’re more accepting of you. 

 Callimachi: This becomes your community. 

 Huzayfah: And I started asking questions about jihad and everything, what their viewpoint was, and how does — how is jihad, like, right? I would even put out things that I thought were wrong with jihad, like how is killing accepted? How is suicide bombings accepted? And they’d always give religious justifications.

 Callimachi: What were the techniques that you, yourself, used to draw people in?

 Morton: So you do that through the ideology. That’s the framework. At the same time, this individual is wide-eyed and asking you questions, like are suicide, uh, martyrdom operations permissible in Islam? 

 Callimachi: Can you give me examples of people that you recruited and explain to me how you did it? 

 Morton: Well, essentially, once you have an audience, once a person expresses an interest by email, or once you see that they are logging consistently into your conversation room —— What you have to do is you have to frame their personal grievance (emphasis added) in a way that is making them think that they can contribute to a broader cause. And we utilize three primary principles that are part of the jihadi or the Salafi jihadi, as they really call it, worldview. 

 Callimachi: And Jesse explained to me that there are actual steps that the recruiters are taught. Essentially, three steps. Three concepts, he called it. Morton: They are based upon interpretations of the Quran, and they are based upon references in Hadith. 

 Callimachi: Some of them are concepts that every Muslim, you know, believes in. But what they do is they sharpen them, and then eliminate any other understanding of these concepts (emphasis added) to the point where the person now believes that the only choice they have is to join an armed jihad.

 Morton: The first principle to teach is what you call tawheed al-hakkimiya.

 Callimachi: Tawheed al-hakkimiya, which is also sometimes called tawheed al-hakkimiya 

 Callimachi: The concept of tawheed means monotheism, a single God. But what the jihadists have done is they take tawheed, they take monotheism, to this completely other level. 

 Morton: Which is basically the belief in Allah requires belief that Allah is the lawgiver, the legislator, the one who developed the Shariah. 

 Callimachi: The only form of governance that the jihadists believe is acceptable is governance according to Shariah law, which they believe is divine law. This is the corpus of Islamic jurisprudence that was written down and shaped after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century.

 Morton: And what you do with that is you teach people that unless you have this belief, which most of the Muslims in the world don’t, you’re not a Muslim, really. You don’t understand your religion.

 Callimachi: So you living in Canada and paying your taxes or voting in an election or abiding by the laws of that society negates your belief in God as the legislator, because that is not Shariah law, right? And your participation in that makes you an infidel. It basically expels you from the fold of Islam. It’s that radical. 

 Callimachi: Concept number two. Morton: What you do is you take it to the next principle, which we call kufr bi taghut. 

 Huzayfah: Once you’re declaring that there is one God only, one God, then you have kufr bi taghut. Morton: Which is a rejection of the false gods. Really, it means idols. 

 Callimachi: You’re supposed to rebel against false idols. It’s one thing to say, O.K., I live in Canada, I believe in Shariah law, so therefore, I’m not gonna vote, I’m not gonna pay my taxes, I’m not going to, you know, take part in municipal elections, I’m not gonna take part in any of that. That’s not enough. 

 Callimachi: They say that during the life of the Prophet Muhammad, there was an incident where he comes back to Mecca, and he goes to the Kaaba, which is that black cube structure. It’s considered the first mosque in Islam. And he apparently entered it, and he found it full of idols, and immediately he goes and smashes them. He destroys them. 

 Callimachi: So what did the jihadists do with this? If you have accepted that God is the lawgiver, right? Then the idol is anything that takes away from that idea. 

Callimachi: So the democratically elected president of your country? That is an idol. The ballot box? That is an idol. The act of voting? That is an idol. And if you are a good Muslim, you don’t just let an idol sit around, right? You destroy it (emphasis added). 

 Morton: The third principle is al wala wal bara. Morton: Which means that your allegiance is to the Muslims only. 

 Callimachi: In Arabic, it means loyalty and disavowal or loyalty and rejection. I’ve heard ISIS members translate it as loyalty and hatred. 

 Huzayfah: Al wala wal bara, because if you’re believing there is one God, you’ll have to hate and love everything that God loves and hates. So that’s al wala wal bara. 

 Callimachi: It’s basically the concept of us versus them (emphasis added), which just kind of seals it. Morton: To reject contact and support for everyone else outside of the jihadi movement, including other Muslims, and you must sacrifice in the way of Islam for the sake of the global Muslim population. 

Callimachi: So that means you don’t just reject the society that you’re in. You don’t just reject its leaders. You also reject your Christian friends. You also reject your Muslim parents, if your mother is not a practicing Muslim and is properly covered up, or if your father is forbidding you from joining the Islamic State, which is the only lawful form of government that there is. 

 Huzayfah: It says in the Quran, you have to enter the religion in totality. You can’t just cherry-pick. 

 Callimachi: And Jesse talks about how when you get them to that third stage —— 

 Morton: Once they’re indoctrinated to a certain degree-you could essentially do anything you wanted with them (emphasis added). Perhaps needless to say, any group that wants to move adherents into a state where it can do anything it wants with them has gone well past whatever beneficial aspects major religions purport to deliver and moved firmly into destructive-cult territory. Steven Hassan, an expert on cults, was himself once lured into the “Moonie” cult before figuring out, with the aid of his family, that a deluded fat Korean billionaire that owned a factory that was churning out AR-15 assault rifles was probably not, in fact, the Messiah. In Hassan’s book, Combating Cult Mind Control, he outlines what he calls the “BITE model” of cult manipulation. Not every cult follows every aspect of the BITE model, but every cult does some or most of the BITE techniques. These techniques begin lightly and get increasingly severe as cult recruitment progresses from initiation to indoctrination into reprogramming. These techniques are relevant in all cult contexts. 

They are also clearly evidenced in the moral panic sweeping the country, which operates through the ideology of Critical Race Theory. [James Lindsay: For the last several weeks, my Twitter DMs, private messages, and email are bombarded daily by messages from scared and upset people reporting the sinister instances of CRT in action in their own lives—from their workplaces to their institutions to their social lives and to their romantic relationships—the phrases and actions in brackets following each BITE bullet point are examples of how CRT is showing up in real life. Each echoes a commonplace sentiment in the CRT research and popular literature and its related social activism.] 

The B in BITE is Behavior Control. It includes Instill dependence and obedience [“Do better”] Modify behavior with rewards and punishments [“This apology leaves a lot out and is still very racist”] Dictate where and with whom you live [This is most nearly applicable in schools and various “spaces” that are to be “desegregated,” by which is meant excluding white and white-adjacent people in the name of inclusion; easily extends to living arrangements] Restrict or control your sexuality [more prominent in queer and trans activism than CRT, but characterizing lack of attraction to certain features as racism and attraction to them as exoticization and fetishization] Control your clothing and hairstyle [cultural appropriation, decolonizing hair and fashion] Exploit you financially [“…here’s my cashapp for all this emotional labor,” make sure you donate to the cause in these approved ways and we’re compiling a list (through contribution matching, say) of people who do and don’t] Restrict your leisure time activities [demands to use leisure time in “critical self-reflection” and reading anti-racist materials or be accused of racism] 

Require you to seek permission for major decisions [cultural appropriation, can get far worse (recall college president George Bridges at The Evergreen State College asking to go to the bathroom and being told to hold it by student activists)] Require you to spend major time on group indoctrination and rituals, including self-indoctrination on the internet [“do the work,” post the hashtag, black out your image, read these resources, share these articles, retweet these accounts] The I is Information Control Deliberately withhold and distort information [decolonize the curriculum, remove “white” sources from the canon and education, characterize disagreement as “privilege-preserving” or “race-traitorous”] Forbid you from communicating with ex members and critics [cancel culture, conservatives and liberals are Nazis] 

Restrict access to non-cult sources of information [Those resources are written from a racist position in order to uphold white supremacy] Compartmentalize information to insider vs outsider doctrine [Same as above] Use information gained in confession sessions against you [Confess that you complicit in racism, then use this against the person by saying they’re a “known” or “confessed racist”] 

Gaslight to make you doubt your own memory [Black Lives Matter is just about the fact that the lives of black people matter too, these protests are peaceful and the riots just the voice of the silenced finding room to breathe] Require you to report your thoughts and feelings to superiors [forced confessions of complicity in racism or else one suffers white fragility] Encourage you to spy and report on others’ misconduct [cancel and dox culture] 

Use “Big Brother” surveillance methods [everyone has a camera in their pocket and will load any racist behavior they can find onto the internet in a heartbeat] The T is Thought Control Teach you to internalize to internalize group doctrine as “Truth” (a la Robert Lifton’s “sacred science”) [Lived experience is the best arbiter of “lived realities”; 

Critical Race Theory is sociology, race research, or even “science,” real science suffers white biases and isn’t to be trusted, Critical Race Theory uses emotion and stories and thus is authentic, disagreement with Critical Race Theory is always ideologically and politically motivated by white supremacy; you need to forward black and brown voices; believe black (women); disagreement is false consciousness/internalized racism/willful or white ignorance] 

Instill Black vs. White, Us vs Them, and Good vs. Evil thinking [racist versus anti-racist; there is no not-racist; choosing not to be anti-racist is choosing racism; there is no neutral; brown complicity is a form of anti-blackness that is pushed upon brown people by white supremacy and upholds it] 

Change your identity, possibly even your name [Ibram X. Kendi’s real name is Ibram Henry Rogers, for example, but the demand to change the victims’ names is not yet prominent in CRT; it does require adopting a Woke activist identity, such as “politically Black” or “queer” however] 

Use loaded language and clichés to stop critical/complex thought [all of the words “racist,” “antiracist,” “fascist,” “antifascist,” “Nazi,” “alt-right,” “sexist,” “misogynist,” “homophobe,” “transphobe,” “ableist,” “fatphobic,” and so on and endlessly so forth are clear examples; others include “white fragility”; “sounds about white”; “check your privilege”; “somebody’s triggered”] Teach thought-stopping techniques to prevent critical thinking and reality testing [“oh, look, another white man giving his opinion on Critical Race Theory”; disagreement is a means of “privilege-preserving epistemic pushback” just meant to maintain one’s privileged status] 

Reject rational analysis, critical thinking, and constructive criticisms [all engagement that isn’t critical engagement is inauthentic, supports racism, comes from false consciousness, internalized dominance, internalized racism, willful ignorance, white fragility, biased, privilege preserving] Use excessive meditation, singing, prayer, and chanting to block thoughts [“Antiracism is a commitment to a lifelong and ongoing process of self-reflection, self-criticism, and social activism”; protest chants] 

The E is Emotional Control Instill irrational fears of questioning/leaving group [cancel culture, dox culture; accusations of being branded a racist and shunned or fired; you won’t be part of “the community”] Make you feel elitist and special [“you’re on the right side of history”; “you’re in solidarity with the Truth”] 

Promote feelings of guilt, shame, and unworthy [“good white people”; “I define as a white progressive any white person who thinks they are not racist or less racist” and they are the worst for upholding white supremacy culture] Elicit extreme emotional highs and lows [“you’re on the right side of history”… “you did it wrong, centered yourself, you’re still racist”] Label some emotions as evil, worldly, sinful, or wrong [“white women’s tears are political and uphold white supremacy more than anything”; emotional outbursts show a lack of “racial stamina” and “racial humility” and are thus “white fragility”] 

Teach emotion stopping techniques to prevent anger or homesickness [Same as above, really, plus reminding that the white home is the place where white supremacy begins and takes root first] Threaten and harass your friends and family [cancel and dox culture; they’re racists] Shun you if you disobey or disbelieve [cancel and dox culture] Teach you there is no happiness or fulfillment outside the group [everyone else is complicit in racism and upholding the status quo; there is no neutral, only a choice between antiracism and racism] An additional trait of CRT that likens it to cult environments is the hyper-attentive focus on the central idea of the cult doctrine: systemic racism, which is believed to pervade everything, be “ordinary,” and is considered permanent. 

According to many CRT advocates, including the bestselling Robin DiAngelo, racism is present in and relevant to every interaction and circumstance. The question, she says, must move away from “did racism take place?” to “how did racism manifest in this situation?” For her, every situation and interaction contains racism, and the devotee of her program is to focus obsessively on finding it and calling it out. 

Moreover, CRT establishes an identity cult, as opposed to, say, a cult of personality around some charismatic figure. Under CRT, every Critical Race Theorist who is also a racial minority becomes his or her own cult personality. It therefore proceeds with an “identity first” model that says “I am Black,” for example, means something more and more important than “I am a person who happens to be black.” The capitalized B in “Black” here indicates the CRT-defined politically Black identity that is key to cult identification and cult participation. Under CRT, then, race is expected to be given ultimate social significance and racism is believed to pervade every possible occurrence and interaction. 

Thus, race and racism are always of central relevance to CRT thought, which dramatically increases and focuses the control-based elements of the BITE model. All behavior must be CRT-appropriate. So must the information one takes in and communicates, the thoughts one has, and the emotions one expresses because anything else signals racism that must be “interrogated” and “dismantled.” To care that racism is reduced in reality therefore necessarily means taking the fight against racism out of the hands of the Critical Race Theory advocates. Not only do they operate in bad faith—meaning from the Critical Theory approach—and do so using cult mind control language; they’re also deforming the institutions that are the foundations of our society. In attributing all differences between different racial groups to racism, they’re proposing univariate solutions to multivariate problems. This means not only is their project is doomed to fail and leave many black people stuck at the bottom of the socio economic ladder, it will do so only after wildly alienating the majority of the country. Moreover, “systemic racism” is intentionally vague enough to be quasi-spiritual in nature. 

It is, as James Lindsay has described it, “racism of the gaps” that can continually be appealed to as the cause of problems or disparities even when there is no evidence of discrimination or strong evidence against discrimination. To pick just one example of how CRT’s oversimplification provides incorrect diagnoses and solutions to what’s driving systemic inequality in the black community, consider a line from “Black Lives Matter’s” manifesto. We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable. Notice the word missing from that phrase? Fathers. Research on family structure is crystal clear: families with an active father in them have far better outcomes for children. Families without fathers produce children with less impulse control and more assertive/violent behavior. That’s not a formula for success in either school or life. 

Moreover, the concept of disruption of family structures can readily lead to the kind of psychological states and isolation necessary for cult indoctrination. In the black community in the US, 70% of children are currently being raised by single parents, almost all single moms, the highest single-parent proportion by far of any other group. If BLM gets its way, that number would be 100%, because the nuclear family needs to be “disrupted,” and active dads are an irrelevant variable in successful child raising. Except we know they’re not, and what is really needed in black America are more active dads, not fewer. Critical Race Theory is not a recipe for racial progress, but unmitigated strife and ultimate disaster for black America and the broader America of which it is a part. This is why we need to turn our backs on this cult.

[medieval-canadian]

Do you have any advice on creating a research proposal?

hello anon! sure, i could probably give you a couple pointers. keep in mind that a) im not an expert - im only an ma student! and b) the parameters of the research proposal you need to produce will affect what the process of creating it will look like. so, given that i am working in the humanities and have really only written actual research proposals for a canadian federal funding body, my experience is specific to those parameters and requirements. 

however. i think (theoretically, mind you, i have no practical knowledge to back this up) that some things remain constant across the board. so here’s my attempt to articulate those at my bedtime after a glass of wine and what feels like a long day (but it wasn’t really)

ONE - remember that this is a research proposal. therefore, you cannot in any feasible way have done the research yet. you are not expected to have read every source in your bibliography. however, please DO take advantage of the (seemingly hundreds) of book/article reviews you can find on any database. you know the ones that take up the first three pages of your database search before you realize that this database doesn’t actually have the text you’re looking for because you fall into this trap every damn time? okay maybe that’s just me but still. in this case these will actually be what you’re looking for ON PURPOSE! 

TWO - and related to one: though as ive mentioned you can’t have done the research yet, it is best to stick to a field for which you have at least a basic grasp of the current state of scholarship. you don’t want to have to do all the groundwork and/or miss any big glaring chunks of important field-specific history that would completely derail your argument

THREE - choose your strategy: pick something that truly interests you or pick something you know you can create good a proposal for. which one you choose will likely depend on the parameters of the required proposal. for the ones i’ve applied to, the proposal i write is not a contract; the funding body doesn’t care if i change my project once they’ve given me money. it’s about proving that i can think in a way that they deem “worthy” of funding. however, if you’re applying for a grant or something that funds specific projects, then you should probably make sure the project is interesting to you. otherwise your work life might suck for a while.

FOUR - my best piece of advice regarding the creation of a research proposal is………….. TEAMWORK! no for real. create a group of fellow proposal-writers and brainstorm everyone’s project together; exchange drafts, get thoughts, get feedback on what works and what doesn’t. it’s honestly even better if this group is field-diverse. for example, i wouldn’t want to write a research proposal about medieval lit and then exchange it with 3 other medievalists - we would get too bogged down in the details, in the “have you read this, have you considered that”s and in the “actually, i disagree”s. when i wrote my proposals, i was working with a modernist, a contemporary/video games person, a political scientist, and a narratologist. this, in my experience, much more accurately reflects the kind of selection committee that a discipline-non-specific research grant (like SSHRC) would put together. this way, your proposal can speak to scholars that are not experts in your particular area, which is important if they’re the ones deciding whether your ideas are worth money

FIVE - and i guess a bit trite. but remember: not everyone can be funded. if you dont get the award or scholarship or grant you’re applying to, it doesn’t mean your ideas are worthless or that you won’t be a great scholar or that you can’t succeed in the field. rejection is a huge part of academia, unfortunately - but you can’t let that stop you from thinking in interesting and innovative ways. 

i hope this helps! idk how relevant it is because, as i said, i’ve not applied to very many research grants. but if you have more questions, or want a follow up or clarification, let me know. and also, to anyone else who happens to read this beast, if you have input or something to add then please do!

xx

[gingervsblondie]

Blondie (1938)

9:09 PM, Friday, 20 September 2019

Hi. My name’s Euan. Maybe you know me from things. Maybe not. What I’ve just done is open a blank word processor file on my personal computer, and alongside it I’ve opened the 1938 film Blondie, the first in the 28-film-long movie franchise based on the newspaper comic strip, which I haven’t read to any significant extent. In yet another tab, I’ve opened the Wikipedia article for said film, in which I’ve just now learned that Blondie refers to the female lead of the series, something which I was not previously aware of. Every Blondie strip I’ve ever read focused on Dagwood, so I guess I assumed Dagwood was Blondie. I knew that Dagwood was a character but I guessed that he was some wacky side character that I might see if I took a deep dive into the Blondie mythos. WHICH I SUPPOSE IS WHAT I’M DOING NOW, ISN’T IT? Because today I start my journey to watch every Blondie movie ever produced, 28 movies between 1938 and 1950. This... is Ginger vs. Blondie. A minute ago, I didn’t know who Blondie was. Let’s get stuck in, shall we?

9:10 PM

I’ve made a terrible mistake.

9:16

Went to get movie snacks and when I came back and hit play, I accidentally started playing Bombing California St., the third track from the soundtrack for The Last Black Man in San Francisco, on Spotify. It had an interesting effect, adding a dissonant ominous vibe to the cheerful intro, as well as reminding me that good movies exist and I’m gonna watch all the Blondies instead.

9:19

Arthur Lake does look like Dagwood. At this junction I don’t know if there will be different regenerations of Dagwood, but I feel if I’m taking on this endeavour I should get to know the actors’ names.

9:23

“Blondie, oh look! One of my blue socks is green!” -Dagwood, in a black and white movie, based on a black and white comic strip.

9:29

I’m impressed by Larry Simms’ performance as Baby Dumpling (who I will henceforth call Alexander because Baby Dumpling is a demeaning name for a human being) if only because he looks way too young to be able to repeat these lines on cue, as he’s doing. Actually, he seems to have the best comedic timing of any of the actors so far. Lake’s Dagwood and Penny Singleton’s Blondie have delivered a few genuinely funny jokes in such a weirdly timed way that they fell flat. Like it took me a second longer to process them than it should have.

9:35

Just used an inflation calculator to translate a bit where Blondie spends $580 on furniture into modern currency. Then I converted it to Canadian dollars so I could relate to it. Turns out it’s about $14,000 CDN.

9:38

Alexander sits in the time-out chair.

Blondie: “What have you done?”

Alexander: “Nothing, yet.”

https://youtu.be/oCghUlTLKVA?t=178

9:45

There was just a scene where Dagwood asked for advice about being in debt, and someone told him to hang himself, followed immediately by Alexander drying dishes for his mother and saying “When I dry dishes, I hate myself.”

I’m a bit concerned about the screenwriter.

(Who in this case happens to be a man by the name of Richard Flournoy.)

9:51

There was a scene where Dagwood talked to a framed photo of Blondie and Alexander on his desk. It was actually really sweet. And ended with Dagwood saying “Huh? Oh, I thought you said something.” Which made me smile.

That was a good scene in the movie Blondie.

9:54

Alexander just went full Krazy Kat and hit his friend Alvin with a fucking brick. When I saw him hiding the brick behind his back I was QUITE DISTRESSED.

9:56

The movie just made me laugh. Dagwood finds a weight scale/fortune teller, which he puts a coin in, and it tells him he weighs 163 pounds, and that he is “a stupid fellow and not likely to succeed.” He spends another coin and it says the same thing. Another man comes in, gets his weight, and is told he’s about to consummate a successful business deal. Smiling, Dagwood takes out another coin to try again.

None of this was funny.

When he inserts the coin, the scale says “Save your money, sucker, I’ve told you twice already.” And then you hear the coin being returned. That got me.

10:07

Made me laugh a second time. The joke was Guy A asks Guy B-

Guy A: “Where did you leave it?” (It being a vacuum cleaner that’s gone missing.)

Guy B slowly turns his head to look in one direction. Guy A follows suit. Then Guy B points in a different direction than he’s looking.

Guy B: “Over there.”

Stupid joke. I should note that it’s in questionable stereotype area. Guy B is a black hotel worker who I guess is supposed to be a bit dim. But if we’re giving the movie the benefit of the doubt, maybe it’s completely unrelated to him being black and completely unrelated to the unfortunate history of ridiculing black people in early American comedy.

But I mean the black guy’s giving probably the funniest performance in the movie so I gotta give props to him as a comedy performer if not to the writer.

Looked him up, his name is Willie Best. He died at age 45. “In the 21st century, his work, like that of Stepin Fetchit, is sometimes reviled because he was often called upon to play stereotypically lazy, illiterate, and/or simple-minded characters in films.”

The article for Blackface is listed in his “See also.”

Can one appreciate the comedic work of a black man who was reinforcing harmful stereotypes against black men? I didn’t realize such questions would arise when I started the 1938 movie Blondie and indeed the rest of the franchise which I’ve apparently committed myself to.

10:11

Snort. Does a snort count? I snorted. Snort Watch 2019.

Guy: “Dagwood Bumstead. Now your last name, you can’t help that. But somebody is to blame for your first name.”

Dagwood: “That’s right.”

Guy: “Any middle name?”

Dagwood: “No.”

Guy: “Well, that’s a break.”

10:27

Jesus fucking Christ, Dagwood is absolutely traumatizing Alexander. He just told him that if he kept running away from home then maybe his family might stop loving him, and one day he’d come home and they’d be gone. THAat Is NoT HowW youU PARENT DAGWOOD

10:28

The dog is a good actor.

10:30

Snort watch 2019: “General manager? General nuisance.”

I never said I had a high bar for what makes me snort.

10:33

I ship Dagwood and Blondie tbh.

This movie is kind of carried by genuinely sweet moments here and there. Y’know, in between the racism and irresponsible parenting.

10:36

Dagwood Sandwich Watch 2019:

He put a coaster in it by mistake.

10:40

‘Nother sweet moment! Blondie and Dagwood each individually snuck out of the bedroom to go check on sleeping Alexander, meet each other in his room, say “Hello.” “Hello.” And then go over to his bedside.

10:53

Dagwood’s problems came to a head at a surprise reveal in his home, in front of visiting friends. Made me think of Bob’s Birthday, the pilot to Bob and Margaret.

https://youtu.be/k-58TB6-Sy0

10:57

A lot of the conflict right now is revolving around potential infidelity. Which I wouldn’t have predicted, at the very least not in the first movie.

11:13

Thus ends the first Blondie film. It had heart. Not too many jokes landed but it didn’t get boring.

My rating is: one Dagwood Sandwich containing corn chips and turkey.

Strap in folks, we’ve got 27 movies to go. Might watch one more tonight, but I do want to re-watch Bob’s Birthday first.

11:30 I did that. Made for an interesting contrast. Some parallels of marital devotion and infidelity. ALRIGHT HERE WE GO BLONDIE MEETS THE BOSS 1939 GET HYPED EVERYBODY

[jeremyhechtsblog-blog]

Powerful Week

Tuesday

It’s 1:47 pm. My phone rings. It’s a call from Burbank, California. I’m on the fourth floor of the library preparing some slides. I let it ring.

Then I decide to answer because I wasn’t being very productive anyways.

“Hello is this Jeremy?”

“Hi, yes it is!”

“This is Mckenzie from Power 106. I’m calling about the internship, do you have time to talk?”

I am pretty excited right now. But I’m also kind of nervous because I’m on the fourth floor of a library so people are probably looking at me like “who does this kid think he is? Someone shut him up!” I don’t blame them. I walk down to the elevator and do my mid-elevator and the rest of it outside the library. I black out for half of it but I think I still do a good job.

“We should be giving you a call tomorrow!”

I text my friend Jeremy Morantz telling him I got the call from Power and he is really excited for me. I remember over Winter break telling him that I applied for the internship. I told him it was the only internship I applied for this semester but I had a good feeling about it. He told me he thought I would get it even with the 150+ people who apply annually, but that either way I shouldn’t worry too much about it because it’ll all work out how it’s supposed to. He was right.

Wednesday

It’s 1:24 pm. My phone rings again. Burbank, California. This time, I am expecting a call.

“Hey Jeremy, it’s Mckenzie from Power 106. So we would love to have you on as a part of our team for The Cruz Show.”

Friday

An Uber pulls up to my place and an extremely familiar face walks out. My friend Griffin is in town for the weekend. This is a guy who has been as important an influence as anyone in my life. We talk about life, love, success and everything in between, and I can always count on him for life wisdom and support. We have both grown a lot together this year.

“What’s up Hechtar?”

Griff meets John and we all go to Roscoes for some fresh Chicken and Waffles (Chicken Counter – 1). It was delicious. Still the best thing I’ve ever tasted.

We go up to Santa Monica to meet my prof, Jeff Fellenzer, who has been one of the most influential people to me out here and who is one of my biggest mentors. This semester I am TAing for his Sports, and Media Technology class. Griff is a big sports fan so we talk about the NFL in LA, Jeff’s career path and how everything we want in life is really possible. Jeff was meeting with another student before me, Ben, who happens to be a fellow Canadian!

Griff and I go to California Pizza Kitchen for a salad.. but we also split a BBQ Chicken Pizza (Chicken Counter – 2)

We go to my friend Sophie’s for a bit, we wander downtown and then I show him a couple of bars that I like in Hollywood.

Saturday

I give Griff a tour of USC campus and we walk past a lunch celebrating the empowerment of women. I ask what the lunch is for and the staff tells me we have to be registered. A lady comes from behind us and says, “come with me boys.” Sounded a little sketchy but when a woman at an empowerment lunch tells you to come with her, you follow. We go along with her and she places wrist-bands on us.

“Enjoy your free lunch.”

A big finesse move for the boys. We get free lunch and celebrate women. What do we have for lunch? You guessed it – Chicken. This time in the form of wraps. They are really good (Chicken Counter – 3).

Saturday Night

The Winnipeg Jets are in town tonight and we have tickets! Our tickets are $35 in the third level. We both wear Jets gear and meet up with my friends Alanna and Repski and his friend Brett. At the first intermission we meet up with my friend Kylie who is also from Winnipeg and we talk about how much different LA is and how we miss Greenroom (our former hometown bar).

After chatting with some really nice Kings fans on Facebook live and enjoying some chicken tendy’s (Chicken Counter – 4) we go down to meet up with Repski for the second intermission. Brett had made some new friends (after a few drinks), two older gentleman – one wearing a Jet’s jersey and the other wearing a light blue Hockey Night in Canada jacket. The guy in the Jet’s jersey knows our old elementary school gym teacher, Mr. B. He calls him Buck. Great guy. The guy in the Hockey Night in Canada jacket asks if we want to sit in their row because there were empty seats next to them. We say sure, can’t turn that down. The lady at the gate says that if we don’t have tickets we can’t go down. I say that our friends are saving the tickets for us in the row. 

We walk down to row 5 and see the third period and overtime from the best seats that I have ever sat in for a hockey game. The atmosphere is electric. A King’s fan – older dad – almost gets into a fight with Brett and is more fired up about a goal than I have ever seen anyone get – regardless of their age. Jets lose but the boys win big with another finesse move. $35 row 5 tickets at Staples Center. Big plays.

Sunday

We play some basketball at the USC gym. There is one guy wearing a green shirt who is an absolute riot to watch play. It’s not that he is a bad player, he’s an okay shooter, it’s just that he likes to shoot from half court for no reason. Everytime we passed him the ball, everyone groaned in their head because they knew a half court shot was coming. We came away with a big victory and a couple of big losses. We meet a dude named Andrew - at least I think that was his name. Great guy.

We go to Malibu with John and have a great photo shoot on the beach. I’ll definitely be posting some big Instas from it. We have fish tacos and burgers (NOT CHICKEN - WOW!!!!!!!!) at this place called Duke’s which is great stuff. We watch some football and relax.

Sunday Night

John and I have people over and host what turns out to be a really fun party (kickback – as they call it here). 2 noise complaints, one spilled drink and a frozen bottle of champagne is a successful night in my books. Some hilarious stories, but you’ll have to ask me about them in person.

Monday

We go to a place called Grinder for lunch. It is not in fact a place where people meet up from the gay dating up with the same name - instead, it’s a phenomenal lunch place. Reminds me of Sals, which reminds me of home. We talk about how being yourself and having self-awareness is the greatest thing you can have in life. And about how you can never get mad at someone for their reaction to your actions because their reaction is based on a completely different life perspective than yours.

Monday Night

Griff bought me tickets to the Clippers vs. OKC game. Griff wears his Russell Westbrook UCLA jersey and I wear Griff’s Calvin Cambridge LA Knights jersey from the movie, Like Mike. I don’t get a single compliment. We see an incredible game from JJ Reddick and Mo Buckets!!! And Russ plays a tough game without much help from his team.

We meet up with John and grab some Asian food before bed. The mushroom chicken was really good (Chicken Counter – 5). We watch some Vince Carter highlights with Terrance and then go to bed.

Griff goes home the next morning and it’s back to reality. It’s been a really good break. I had a great weekend with a lifelong homie and I had a great time relaxing. But I am so ready to get back to work and hustle towards my goals.

Tuesday

I email Power.

“Thank you, I’m really looking forward to the opportunity.”

“We’ll see you Thursday.”

Lessons:

If Something Feels Right - Do It

I was stressing a lot this week because I had another potential opportunity on the table that would have made me unable to take the internship at Power. I was overthinking about future opportunities and what would come from each of them going into the summer here, but then when it came down to it, the opportunity at Power felt right so I took the job. Like my mom texted me, everything will work out. Remember that.

Things Happen for Reasons, Even if You Don’t Understand Them at the Time

After I met J. Cruz and worked on the Chance The Rapper interview at Power, I was disappointed that nothing else came from it. But everything has a way of working itself out. I gained other experiences, put the time in, and came back stronger than ever. And it all ended up coming back around. Trust that if something doesn’t work out for you right away, whether it’s with a relationship, job opportunity, friendship, or whatever it is - that is wasn’t mean to at that time. Keep moving forward and pushing towards your goals and you will see that things have a funny way of working themselves out.

Good Support Systems are Everything

If you find people who genuinely support you and make your life better, hold on to them, because these people are rare. Griffin has been one of my best friends forever but he continues to bring value into my life and support me even from all the way back home. I don’t take that for granted. He also told me that I have a great support system around me here. People like John, Jeff, Repski, Terrance and all of my friends here support me and want to see me do well and I appreciate that more than any of them know. Keep the genuine people around you who will keep you grounded and humble. Thank you to my friends back home and my new friend out in my new second home.

And remember, it’s your life -  so do what you want to do and don’t let anyone else tell you what’s best for you. Only you know. Have a great day and I’ll let you know how my first week at Power goes. Love to you and yours.

 `

[specialchan]

Homemade CBD oil by a noob (contributions welcome) via /r/CBD

Homemade CBD oil by a noob (contributions welcome)

Good people here,

I said I’d write a post detailing my experience making homemade CBD oil. Please note that I do not have the pretension that this is anything remotely a “definitive guide.” Rather the opposite, my motivation is from the searching I myself did when I started with CBD and the number of lost fellow Canadians I’ve come across on this subreddit, who’d ask questions that I myself wanted the answers for, and there would be one or two promising leads, then the OP would ask a follow up questions, and the people who provided a helpful lead were not heard of again. I hope this chronicle would be a starting point for those who also want to reap the benefits of CBD oil, with the financial pressure from having to purchase pre-made CBD oil alleviated by having the option to explore avenues that may be more affordable and sustainable in the longer term while still being able to enjoy the benefits from the compound.

A bit of background: I had a puff of Cannabis from a joint more than ten years ago and I was not interested. I ordered some buds (Purple Kush) and some pre-made CBD and THC tinctures in May this year, when I began seriously exploring what cannabis could do for me. My chief interest was THC to begin with, as I have had a difficult relationship with alcohol for a long time (I’m a high-functioning alcoholic) and I tried different cognitive approaches (seeing alcohol as a friend, as enemy, with indifference) and the difficulties remained (hence I’m technically an alcoholic). I smoked some of the buds I bought and took the tinctures, doing the latter more consistently than the former, smoking probably once a week with a tiny joint (my throat is inflamed from vaping nicotine previously) so I didn’t have to 1) smoke outside and feel vulnerable for standing out and 2) cough like mad. My cannabis experience is that I reaped the unintended benefits, which piqued my interest in researching more.

Previous to this attempt to make CBD oil at home, I had success making THC oil at home. The buds that I ordered, I didn’t want to smoke them, and I thought I could “get rid” of them by making them into oil. I bought some organic MCT oil from the Superstore (hello hello fellow canadians), the whole shelf of which was 30% off. That’s convenient!

I’m not going to recap what I did making the THC oil, although from that experience I am able to research further into a few things and make a few tweaks as a result. I welcome any comments because the process I followed was rookie and I’m truly a noob in cannabis, and my biggest wish is that the mistakes I am making, will be a signpost for what to avoid. Thank you for the questions that are asked on this subreddit because they enrich my knowledge, and the receptiveness to questions on this subreddit (y’all), because I genuinely think questions are never a waste of time or redundant.

​

Sourcing high CBD flowers:

​

Located in BC, I naturally look towards the BC Cannabis Store (government rec cannabis sales) for materials. I found something that looked good to me: the grower’s spiel is that the flower is a phenotype of cannatonic, which I learnt is one of high CBD strains and which also gives you a body high (like indica) rather than a head high. Concurrently, I found a source from Ontario (non government) that sells industrial hemp flower sourced from Oregon. These work out cheaper, about $100 (before tax) for 1 oz of hemp flowers, while I eventually paid $130+ approx. (before tax) for the “cannatonic phenotype”. I picked the cannatonic phenotype because its terpene profile appealed to me. I know I can get the hemp flowers in the future and it’s likely as I am interested in making CBD oil for my animal, for whom I’d invest in time and whatever it takes to protect it from the adverse effect of trace THC.

​

Amount of flowers

​

The cannatonic flowers came in packages of 3.5g (thank you non-metric friends for your patience and understanding). I used four packages, making it approx. 14g of flowers. I used this amount because it happened to be near the amount of leftover Purple Kush I had to get rid of, so I know how much MCT oil to add to result in comparable concentration in each dropper.

​

Preparation of flowers

​

I turned on the oven to around 240 F but turned it off again, because I realised it’d take me a while to grind the 14g of flowers down. I ground the buds to loose leaves and spread the results on a baking sheet, taking some care to make it a thin and even layer. With my last attempt, I left the leaves in a mason jar, the lid loosely on, and placed it on the cookie sheet with a damp towel and the mason jar lying horizontally on it. The reasoning I read was that terpenes are better preserved and the smell is better contained in an apartment. Doing it differently this time, it smells, but I think it smells like ginger nut and hope I can get away with it (this remains to be seen. Wish me good luck!)

​

Decarb

​

THC and CBD have different release points, and from memory, I believe CBD has a lower decarb temperature. I found that there are many instructions for decarbing on the internet and even in this subreddit, and I think at the end of the day, it’s hit and miss which method we choose to use. I decarbed the flowers at 240F this time. Instruction says 60 minutes. I set the alarm to 30 minutes at which time I flip the sheet this way and that for even decarb. I’m hoping the terpenes wouldn’t be burnt off completely or deactivated too much because they are the reason I picked the cannatonic over the hemp flowers this time.

​

Double boiler

​

I put the decarbed leaves into a mason jar and mixed them with approx. 250ml of MCT oil. I set up a double boiler with a pot and a steamer on which I prop the mason jar. Last time, I think I burnt the THC oil (it gave me heartburns and I left it alone for a week or so and the burn disappeared) because the mason jar was touching the boiling water for around 30 minutes. This time, I let the mason jar touch the water (not submerged) but the water is simmering on low heat. The method I am following this time says to let the the chemistry work for 2-3 hours (it says even more if you want). I stir the content every half hour or so.

​

Straining

​

I strain the oil with cut old pantyhose (they are versatile) and leave it to cool before transferring to some old bottles from commercial products and a jar which I refrigerate until I need it.

Thank you for reading and I hope this thread becomes a safe place for noobs like me to ask more specific questions in the process of at-home extraction. I also welcome any feedback, including what I could have done better.

Submitted August 08, 2020 at 07:45PM by tripoverastone via reddit https://ift.tt/2PCzMDX

[thrashermaxey]

The Journey: CIBC Canada-Russia Series and Fastest Rising Prospects

Hello fantasy hockey fans, and welcome to The Journey! If you’ve followed this column for any length of time, chances are you’ve become quite familiar with the great work of Jokke Nevalainen, Brad Phillips, Kevin LeBlanc and some other awesome writers around the site. My name is Brayden Olafson – I’m from a small town in Saskatchewan and have been working with DobberProspects for about two years, and I’ll be taking the reins here going forward. Like much of the staff at Dobber, I consider myself a student of the game at all levels, and love to get involved in discussions with fellow fans and readers. The best way to get a hold of me is through the comments here or on Twitter @olaf1393.

With those pleasantries aside, let’s get into some hockey. Since Dobber has just released his November edition of the Top 200 Fantasy Prospect Forwards, we’re going to have a look at some of the biggest risers and fallers. First though, we’re going to have a quick look at the U20 Canada-Russia series that wrapped up on Thursday night in Drummondville.

The CIBC Canada-Russia series was hosted by six different cities across Canada over the course of the last two weeks. Beginning in Vancouver on November 5, and wrapping up on Thursday in Drummondville. The six-game series in which the Russians challenge each league’s All-Star team twice, is one of the best annual opportunities for scouts to compare the top U20 Russian talents to the top U20 Canadians. The age bracket allows for already drafted players in addition to draft eligible players to get prime exposure leading up to the World Junior Championship roster selections. The WHL’s bench boss Tim Hunter will also head up Canada’s final roster at the holiday classic, so you can be sure that the results of this series will weigh heavily on the selections. It also so happens that the Russians’ will be slotted in Canada’s pool for round-robin play at the WJC, which added an extra element of evaluation to Hunter’s two-week cross-Canada escapade.

Neither the Dub, nor the O tallied a single official powerplay goal in their series, despite a combined 15 opportunities. Coach Hunter admitted that the team showed little to no cohesion on the man advantage, likely as a result of their unfamiliarity with each other. That narrative seemed to carry through the week for the CHL teams, which Hunter also admitted, was a factor in their evaluation. The Russians have provided consistent competition for the seemingly cyclical Canadian squads. This time around, the parity of the series was uncanny. While both of the first two CHL leagues were able to split their respective series with the Red Machine, the QMJHL failed to close in either of their contests. The Russians clinched their first win of the series since 2010 with a regulation goal to send the final game of the series to overtime. The six games had a World Junior-like excitement, despite it being the lowest scoring series in the 16-year history.

The dynamic scene of evaluating young hockey players means that the results of a best-on-best series such as this can have a more significant impact on a player’s apparent value than similar events for other groups. With that being said, here are some of the players that made the most positive impact on their stock through the course of the short series.

Russia

Stepan Starkov (FA) – The undrafted 19-year-old center led the Russian’s in scoring through the series. He’s flown under the radar in his previous years of draft eligibility and has never played outside of the Iron Curtain which could stint NHL interest. His performance over the last couple of weeks could create interest though.

WHL

Dylan Cozens (2019 Draft) – Of the several 2019 draft eligible players to be featured in the series, Cozens seemed to have the most positive impact on his team. The Yukon native is on an upward trajectory, which will leave Tim Hunter with a tough decision when it comes to the 17-year-old and World Junior selections.

OHL

Michael DiPietro (2017/64th, Vancouver) – The Canucks prospect added to his successful 2018 with a win for team OHL. Tim Hunter marveled at the 19-year-old’s athleticism, a factor that could make him a favorite to land the starting role for Canada in Vancouver.

QMJHL

Jared McIssac (2018/36th, Detroit) – After a moderately successful draft year in Halifax, McIssac has been able to refocus his game on his strengths as a complete defender. Despite being held off of the score sheet in either of the QMJHL’s contests, he provided sound defensive play and flashes of opportunity in the offensive zone.

The Russian lineup is a fairly accurate picture of what we will see on the ice in Vancouver and Victoria this Boxing Day, however each of the Canadian players will continue to compete until the final selection camp.

Fastest Rising Prospects

Now getting into the meat and potatoes of this week, the fastest rising players from Dobber’s most recent edition of his top-200 Fantasy Prospect Forwards.

Brett Howden – New York Rangers – Up to 13 from 99

An unlikely hero in the Rangers’ rebuild saga, Howden has emerged from the Blueshirts group of youngsters as a reliable source of offense and defense. Coming over in the Miller/McDonagh transition from Tampa, Howden was seen as a relatively safe type of player who would spend time in Hartford before coming up to play in a support role on Broadway.

This October, however, revealed a renewed set of expectations for the former 27th overall pick. The 20-year-old is on pace for a 48-point rookie campaign playing primarily between Jesper Fast and Jimmy Vesey. That mark would eclipse either of his two line-mates annual totals through their fifth and second years respectively. Howden is currently scoring on 20% of his shots, in all likelihood, an unsustainable rate to keep up through the length of the season. His second unit powerplay opportunity has been limited though, which provides an opportunity for growth between now and the end of the year. Sticking on a line with Vesey and Fast will also allow Howden to continue flying under the radar against other teams’ defensive tactics, all in all, painting a pretty nice picture for future success.

At 6-3, Howden is a specimen. There’s certainly room for growth in his game, but this early success rewrites his script to some extent. It’s plausible that by the end of the year he will have surpassed both Lias Andersson and Filip Chytil on the teams projections, putting him in line to be the poster-boy and 1-C at MSG for years to come.

Sheldon Rempal – LA Kings – up to 114 from 202

Signed as a free-agent out of Clarkson, the opportunistic Sheldon Rempal is in the business of proving people wrong. At 5-10, 165lb, he makes Mitch Marner look like a pretty big boy – but that hasn’t slowed him down at any level of hockey yet. In his draft year, Rempal played for the Nanaimo Clippers of the BCHL on Vancouver Island – he tallied a respectable 50 points in 58 games, but nowhere near draft caliber. It wasn’t until two seasons later in his final year of Junior A that he exploded with 59 goals and 110 points through 56 contests.

Three years later, Rempal can tell the same story of his two years of Division I and how that success has catapulted him into the AHL. A handful of games into his pro career, the 23-year-old was off to a blistering start with Ontaio before being recalled to the Kings to play alongside Jeff Carter and Ilya Kovalchuk. His audition with the team was short lived with Dustin Brown returning from the IR, but with the developing turmoil on the team it might not be long before we see him reinstated in the Kings top-6.

At this point, Rempal becomes almost a pure boom/bust type of prospect for the Kings. At a time when the team is uncertain of their future, that kind of name plate could certainly be something to bet on.

Kristian Vesalainen – Winnipeg Jets – Up to 28 from 83

Success in the European professional leagues can often go underappreciated – just look at Elias Pettersson. Kristian Vesalainen really isn’t a whole heck of a lot different – before you go screaming about Pettersson’s NHL production, his pedigree, his nice hair… hear me out. Vesalainen plays a 200-foot game, and his production may never amount to the exact level of Pettersson’s, but the concept of his underappreciation due to his geographic circumstances is equivalent. The Jets are also in a totally different situation than the Canucks where it would be unacceptable to give Vesalainen the same kind of opportunity that Pettersson is getting right now.

At 19 years of age, Vesalainen’s vision, poise, hockey sense and size make him a tantalizing prospect who has the potential to flank a top NHL line in the future. In recent news, Vesalainen has been called up to play for the Jets, one day before his European out clause was set to begin.

Aleksi Heponiemi – Florida Panthers –Up to 36 from 88

The Panthers second-round-pick from 2017 was a star at the Canadian major junior level for the last two years. In his draft and draft+1 seasons, he scored 86 and 118 points respectively good for 16th and 3rd in WHL scoring those years. Although he would remain eligible to play in the league for another year, Heponiemi and his advisors opted for a change in scenery that would attest to his ability as a complete and maturing player. This summer, he announced that he would be returning to Finland to join Kärpät of the Finnish Liiga.

Competing against men, rather than a narrow group of his peers in Canada, Hepo has proven early this fall that he is an adaptable player. He’s shown that an increase in the level of his competition will not stand as a barrier to his development – hence the boost to 36 on Dobber’s list. If he’s able to sustain this level of play over the course of a full campaign, his next challenge will be closing the gap on an NHL job as early as next October.

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-home/the-journey/the-journey-cibc-canada-russia-series-and-fastest-rising-prospects/

[itsworn]

What If Drivers Called Their Own Penalties?

Racing Like Golf?

In golf, especially professional golf, players are expected, and most of the time do, call their own penalties. I’m sure in amateur golf that doesn’t happen nearly as often. We’ve all seen Caddy Shack the movie, right. “That doesn’t count, I was interfered with…”, said Ted Knight. Anyway, it’s called the honor system.

What if in racing, drivers called their own penalties for an incident? Ty Majeski is one of the most recent examples when he “tapped out” for an incident where he made contact with his competitor and rather than having both drivers sent to the rear, he opted to take the blame. That was the honorable thing to do.

One could say this is not to be unduly praised as it is the right thing to do, but it might be considered rare in the sport of racing. It seems that everyone sees what happened as someone else’s fault, most of the time.

I think deep down, everyone knows who played a larger part in most incidences. And sometimes it’s just a racing thing where someone gets in too deep thinking the other driver’s spotter will surely tell them, “inside, inside…”. But maybe not.

It would be nice if there were more of the golf mentality in racing. I know personally I get annoyed when I see over-aggressive drivers take out other drivers and then try to pass off the blame. And the boos from the grand stands tells how the fans feel.

What if they did take the blame? I honestly believe that not only would their fellow racers respect them more and give more room on the track in certain situations, the fans would appreciate the gesture and root them on more aggressively. Hey, we could all use a little racing love, right?

The more mature drivers could set an example for the younger, up and coming, drivers. Then the sport would grow to be more racer and fan friendly. I really think both the racers and the fans come to the race track to see good hard racing and not overly aggressive tactics and fighting. You can tune in to MMA or go watch a hockey fight that turns into a game at some point if that is what you are into.

I wished more racers would take the high road like Ty and just tap out when they need to. He gained a lot of respect when he did that and you would too. And here is another thought.

What if the driver really doesn’t have a good idea about what happened? Many times they need to look at replays on Youtube to really understand the situation. So, if the spotter, or other team member, or even the officials, were to talk to the offending driver and tell them hey, you were the guy, it would help them make the decision to tap out.

Nobody wants to be “the guy”, but sometimes in life we just are. Suck it up and admit when you are wrong and get on with life. Resistance to admitting doing someone wrong hangs in the air much longer than admitting that we have made a mistake, trust me on that.

It takes guts and maturity to “man” up and do what is right. Do you think of yourself as tough? Then show it. It takes a very mature person to admit being wrong, so how mature and tough are you, really? Think about it.

If you have comments or questions about this or anything racing related, send them to my email address: chassisrd@aol.com or mail can be sent to Circle Track, Senior Tech Editor, 1733 Alton Parkway, Suite 100, Irvine, CA.

Becoming A Setup Guy

Hello,

I’ve been helping a team with their racecar for a couple seasons now and I have reached the point where I want to become more involved with the actual setup of the car and become more help to the team. I love reading the chassis tech articles, but want to study and learn more.

Do you have any helpful resources or ideas that I can pick up and speed the learning process up. And I know that there isn’t magical formulas out there and I know every car, track, and driver is different.

Eric Wise

What I did when I first started wanting to be the setup guy was study all of the books and magazine articles I could find. When I finally thought I knew enough, I asked to do the setup for the next race.

It was impossible to talk the crew into doing that, we were leading the tight points race at the time and it was late season. I talked the owner into convincing the team I could do it. Then when I changed the setup, it was horrible. What I thought I knew was all wrong.

Then we didn’t have the resources we have now. There is much better information out there from not only Circle Track, but the companies that specialize in offering the equipment teams use to setup the cars as well as the actual car builders.

Back in the day some twenty years ago, the builders often learned new technology from the teams who raced their cars and then that technology eventually found its way into the new designs of race cars. It is still that way today, but the builders are much more eager to learn than they were back then.

For you in your situation, show the team you have studied the current trends and try to learn how they are developing their setups. Make small inroads into helping with your team’s setup. Little gains and victories can add up to them having much more confidence in your abilities.

When you have learned enough and shown you have knowledge, the day will come when you will be trusted to make the setup decisions. For most teams, those decisions are usually made by a group of two or three, but being in with that group and being able to make a difference is its own reward.

Track Safety Comments

Dear Mr. Bolles,

I have read with interest your story and the follow up comments with regards to Track Safety, or lack there of. The incident at Toledo Speedway was not only disappointing for someone who is involved with a safety team but embarrassing as well.

I am a key member of a Safety Team here in Canada called the Canadian Motorsports Response Team. We are a volunteer team comprised of Doctors, Nurses, Certified Paramedics and Fire Fighters. We currently provide fire, rescue and medical services for the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Canada, the Grand Prix of Trois Rivieres, the World Rally Cross Championship in Trois Rivieres as well as coverage for Castrol Raceway in Edmonton, Alberta and, this year we became the travelling Safety Team for the APC United Late Model Series here in Ontario.

Our training is done all year round with our dedicated group with the aid of our Formula 1 tub, our various racing seats and our three stock cars. One has been converted to a “cut” chassis, one is a live fire trainer and the third is a rolling chassis for practicing driver removal without cutting as well familiarization. We are also Holmatro Motorsports Instructors and Certified ANSUL Motorsports Distributors and Instructors.

When we arrive at any given track for an event our staff wears all the appropriate PPE, our trucks are equipped with a full array of fire suppression equipment (portable fire extinguishers, 65 gallon foam unit), extrication equipment including hydraulic tools, air tools and cordless tools and, advanced life support medical equipment.

Some may see this as overkill, however 99.9% of tracks here in Canada have NO properly equipped or trained Safety Teams! A pick up with a couple of fire extinguishers and a first aid service for medical is about you get here. If drivers express concerns the response is “well, you don’t have to race here”!

Recently, a driver lost his life at a dirt track in Quebec. His car was hit in the roof area by another car and it was a 20 minute wait for the local Fire Department to arrive to cut the driver out. The lack of even basic training is upsetting!

In 2015, key members of our organization who are members of the International Council of Motorsport Sciences (theICMS.org) began hosting a Race Track Safety Program (RaceTrackSafety.net) at the PRI Show in December. We host didactic sessions with topics ranging from proper PPE to responding onto a track safely and choosing the proper fire suppression equipment.

Following these sessions we then do hands-on presentations of helmet and frontal head restraint (HANS etc.) removal, immobilization techniques, extraction and extrication techniques, use of hydraulic tools with presentations by Holmatro and AMKUS, the use of cordless tools and fire fighting techniques with the aid of digital fire trainers .

These hands-on sessions are aided by open wheel props, a stock car chassis, a sprint car chassis and a funny car. When everyone has gone through these stations we end the program with live demonstrations by the Holmatro Safety Team who have been great supporters of getting training to the “grass roots” tracks and our own Canadian Motorsports Response Team. The program has been a great success with Doctors and Nurses as well as Safety Team members attending with very positive feedback and we continue to improve and add to both the didactic and hands-on portions.

I just want to get the word out that there are teams out there that care and that training for those who are interested is available. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely, Blaine Bates, Canadian Motorsports Response Team

This wonderful information and I urge any track safety crew members who are planning on going to PRI to try to attend the sessions given by Blaine and his group. This may be the only chance you get to become better informed about what you do. If you’re were not planning on going to PRI, then maybe you should.

Setup Art Comments

Hello Bob,

I just enjoyed your article on “Painting suspension set ups”.  This was quite interesting to me, being a life-long painter and car enthusiast.  I do like original and exotic suspension systems. My current project isn’t original, but it thrills me.  After restoring all the muscle cars over all the years, this is my first resto-rod/street rod.

You seem to be quite a talent. Try to find how deep it runs in you. Like you said, some are lucky and the well never runs dry. We will improve until we die at the easel.

Bill Ewing

I really think the artist in racing will never truly feel that they are complete in their knowledge. That is what drives us, and like you said, thrills us. It is the constant challenge and no matter how good you get at your art, there is always another challenge just around the corner.

Fuel Burn Off Thoughts

Bob,

I just finished reading your article on Fuel Burn Off Trade-Off in the March 2017 issue. Interesting. All things being equal, I thought the car would get tight due to having too much cross weight for the reduction in rear weight as the fuel burns off. I reviewed your prior articles about cross weight and how cross weight needs to increase as the rear weight % goes up.

If I was scaling a car with half a fuel load vs. a full load using the Chassis R&D software I would reduce the cross weight. Can you tell me why during a race, the car should stay balanced?

Art Salve, Tolland CT

I think that is what I was trying to demonstrate in the article. That has been the question, why does the handling not change with fuel burn off? Let me give you some food for thought. One thing that might answer your question is this, remember that the front tires have a variable grip generator, and that is steering.

When we steer the car more, we gain grip in the front from the greater angle of attack the added steering gave us. When the car is neutral in handling and neutral in balance, the steering is reduced compared to if the car were tight in handling or balance. So, we have room to gain grip by steering a little more.

If the cross weight does not change, but the front to rear percent changes, then what the car needs for cross weight does change on a sample car by 1.8 percent of cross. We go from 52.3 to 49.9 percent of cross the car needs, except that the installed cross weight does not change seemingly making the car tight. But that’s not all.

If we can steer against that almost two percent of cross plus from what we need, then we can still be neutral in handling with just a bit of a tight car. But, as we all know, there are a lot of things going on in the car besides just fuel burn off. Here is something else to think about.

What is also happening as the race progresses is the rear tires are getting hammered and many cars want to go loose in the later laps of a long race. If during fuel burn off the installed cross weight begins to be higher than what the car wants, then there might be a compensating factor here that tightens the car. The combination of, and offsetting factor of, the two keeps the car more neutral and neutralizes the loss of grip in the rear tires. It’s complicated.

The post What If Drivers Called Their Own Penalties? appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network http://www.hotrod.com/articles/drivers-called-penalties/ via IFTTT

[middlecountries]

Monserrate

‘My dad’s a doctor and my mom a lawyer - where could I go from there?’

I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. I was having dinner with another dry-waller, Chris Penner, a guy I’d up until this moment respected and considered a friend. We were at Angela’s on a Wednesday evening in early May and I guess the two beers he’d had after work had loosened his tongue.  

What an idiot-fuck. I felt embarrassed for him he was so stupid. In parts of Bogota you’d get beaten within an inch of your life for saying something so dumb. Is this what wealth and prosperity amounted to, the right to be an over-privileged asshole? I wanted to tell him how my father had died or that my mother had worked sixteen hours a day scrubbing toilets to get us out of Colombia. Fucking idiot. He even knew my dad was dead, although not how he died. 

Penner seemed to remember my dad was dead because his expression slackened and his eyes started shifting nervously. I decided to absolve him and met his embarrassed gaze. He was just a sheltered white-boy like most of my Canadian friends. To guys like him, renovating rich assholes’ houses for a living was a choice, not a foregone conclusion.  

We paid our bill and left the restaurant. I got on the 165 and took it up Cote des Neiges towards Jean-Talon where I lived with my mom and brother. The bus passed the outer edge of the Mount Royal cemetery and I thought some more about Chris and his Canadian privilege. In this country the dead owned more than the living in Colombia, and yet somehow people still found things to complain about.  Fucking whiners.    

Maybe it was just Montreal. My cousin Manny lived in Ottawa and loved it there. He made fifty bucks an hour in construction and barely broke a sweat. Maybe I should move there? Maybe it was a more sober, inland city like Bogota. Maybe it wasn’t subject to passing currents like Montreal and other port cities.

The bus pulled up to my stop and I got off. We lived in a ten-story high-rise on Jean-Talon. I walked inside, unlocked the lobby door and checked our mailbox. It was only flyers and bills so I left them and took the elevator upstairs. I walked inside and yelled hello to Mom and Luis. Mom was in the kitchen and Luis was as usual, lying on the couch watching some American sit-com. Fucking dreamer. 

I went to mine and Luis’s room and sat down at my desk. I turned on my computer and logged into chat hoping my cousin would be online so I could talk to him about moving to Ottawa. Luckily he was. ‘Hey,’ I wrote, no-doubt interrupting multiple conversations he was having on g-chat with girls. ‘How goes the battle?’  

‘No battle here, brother,’ he replied, followed by: ‘Living is easy.’ 

‘Really?’

‘Fuck yeah.’

I couldn’t think how to say what I wanted to so I just said it: ‘I think I need to get out of Montreal. Could you get me a job in Ottawa if I come there?’

‘For real? Yeah, brother. I can get you a job no problem. You’re going to love it here. The chicks love Latin guys!’

‘Cool. And you think I could crash on your couch for a while before I find a place?’

‘Definitely!’

‘Great. I haven’t decided for sure but I think I’ll do it. ‘

‘Do it brother. We’ll live it up. Ottawa’s a great town.’

‘For sure. I’ll call you soon to tell you I’m for sure coming. Thanks again.’ I signed out of chat and leaned back in my chair. Ottawa: I didn’t know much about it except that it was the seat of the federal government and it had once been a fur-trading post. This last point sparked my imagination. In my mind’s eye I saw myself paddling up a river wearing a fur-pelt hat, exploring uncharted land, trading furs with Natives, using nothing but my wits to guide me.  

Suddenly Mom came barging in the room carrying a plate of empanadas. ‘Hi sweetie,’ she said. ‘I brought you some food.  Did you eat already?’

‘Mom – Can’t you ever knock?’

‘Knock? It’s my own house? Why would I have to knock in my own house?’

I stood up and walked out of the room. ‘I’m going to take a shower,’ I said, grabbing a towel and slinging it over my shoulder. ‘I’m not hungry.’

In the shower my mind drifted back to my fantasy. I was back in my canoe surrounded by trees as tall as buildings.

Yes, I thought, I’m going to move to Ottawa as soon as I’m finish this last reno.  Life there would be purer: hard work and simple fun. I won’t have to stomach anymore angst-y Montreal artistic-types. Go to work and go home; save money and live simply. I’d call Manny in the morning and tell him I was in for sure.   When I got back to my room, Mom was sitting on the bed with her arms folded. I knew the best way to hurt her was to turn down food and as usual it was having the desired effect. ‘How can you ask me to knock like a stranger after everything I’ve done for you and your brother?’ she said. ‘If we still lived in Colombia, we’d all be dead.’

I ignored her and pulled my boxers on beneath my towel.  

She continued: ‘Oh, I know what you think. You think this place is wrong. Spoiled, rich Canadians with no sense of struggle and hardship. Well maybe you should forget hardship? Ever think of that? Your father thought he should do things the hardest way and look what happened to him, God rest his soul.’ She crossed herself.  

I don’t know why but I blurted out I hated Montreal and was moving to Ottawa.

Immediately, her eyes began to water. ‘Yeah,’ I continued. ‘I’m going to get a job in construction with Manny and find people who think like I do.’

‘In Ottawa?’ Her voice was cracking.  

‘Yes.’ I watched her head lower and a few tears roll down her cheeks.  ‘But Esteban,’ she said, raising her head.  “Ottawa is so—so protestant!’

‘That’s exactly what I want. Cold and unemotional living. I’m leaving after I’m done this last reno. Goodnight, Mom. ‘ 

I walked to the doorway and stood there waiting for her to leave. She got up and walked past me. On her way out, she took out her rosary beads and started rubbing them. I think she even muttered some dumb prayer.  

If I felt any remorse for hurting my mom, it was overshadowed by excitement. I was starting out on a mission to test my mettle in the friendless wild. I was going to become truly hard boiled, not the fake, rich white-kid kind like Chris Penner’s. No. I’d grow thick-skinned and self-reliant. I’d show these soft, spoiled Canadians how men were meant to live.    

On the following Sunday I packed up and started out for Ottawa. I caught the bus from Berri-UQAM and we left downtown on the 20 West. The traffic crawled along the Decarie and so did my thoughts. I thought about leaving Mom and Luis and even started thinking about my dad. Luckily I drifted off to sleep before anything got too dark.   

I woke up half-an-hour later and we’d cleared the suburbs and were almost at the Ontario-Quebec border. Ontario – Canada’s most populous province – sounded like a barrio to me. The Laurentian foothills disappeared and evergreens sprung up on each side of the highway. But they weren’t lush and dense like I’d imagined. Instead, they grew in small patches between knolls and crevices stretching out in all directions. It looked more like a desolate moonscape than anything from National Geographic.  

I glanced around the bus for alternative fuel for my fantasies. Nearly everyone else on the bus was dark-skinned with children in tow. I shut my eyes trying to picture them as my fellow explorers and fur-traders but it didn’t work. Clearly we were all modern day economic migrants bound for low-level, unromantic jobs.  

I gazed out the window for the next hour or so and eventually the bus began a slight turn and descent. We were entering the Ottawa Valley and like the first time our plane touched down in Canada fifteen years earlier, my stomach sunk.   Several turnoff signs appeared – the first signs of human life for miles. We rounded another bend and a few houses and commercial buildings came into view. After another turn – this time over an interchange – I saw a mall. It was like any of the malls you’d find in Quebec except for one difference: on one of the large, grey concrete walls there was a sign with goldenrod, high-cursive lettering. ‘The Hudson’s Bay Company’, it read, and beneath it was a coat of arms with a deer and a bear on it. I took it as a clear sign of adventure ahead.  I must be practically at James Bay, I thought.  I sat up in my seat, eager to begin my transformation.   Manny lived in a big, two-story, redbrick house divided into four apartments. He greeted me in the foyer, hugged me and slapped the back of my neck. ‘Brother, you’re here!’ he said.

‘I am,’ I replied.

‘Give me your bag.  We’ll have a beer then I want to show you the Market.’

‘’The Market?’ We’re going shopping?’’

‘No-no.  It’s the bar district that everyone goes to. You’re going to love it.’

‘And they call it a market?’

‘Esteban–‘ he grabbed my shoulder and looked me in the eye. ‘Always questioning. I love you, man.’  

He slapped me on the neck again and we went inside. His living room consisted of a matching couch and armchair and a plywood-and-milk-crate-coffee table. He threw my bag down beside the couch and went to the fridge and got two beers. I heard him twist the caps off the beers and he came back to the living room.  ‘Cheers,’ he said.  He handed me a beer and made sure I looked him in the eye before taking a sip.  

Manny was halfway done his beer a few seconds later. ‘I tell you, brother.

Chicks here can’t get enough of us. We’re like royalty. You’re going to need a stick to keep them off.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah, brother.’ He took a long swig of his beer. ‘This chick I took home the other night? She was a ten. All I did was look at her across the bar for a minute then walk up to her and say, ‘in my country, men start wars over women like you.’’ He laughed at his own joke and I chuckled politely. He told me about a few more of his sexual conquests on his way to and from the fridge for more beer. After we’d drunk a couple more beers each, he said we were leaving.   We went to a pub in the Market that played loud dance music. Manny went straight to the bar and ordered us two shots of tequilas. There was a group of girls standing down the bar and Manny ordered shots for them too. We started talking to the girls and before I knew it, I was dancing with one of them. (‘Stacey’, was her name, I think.) Manny kept handing me beers as we danced. I could feel myself getting pretty drunk so Stacey and I sat down at a booth to talk. We shouted a few things about ourselves over the loud music then Manny staggered over and said something in my ear:

‘What?!’  

‘Better close the deal! We’ve got to work in the morning!’

‘What?! What time?!’

‘Six.’

‘That’s in four hours!!’

‘Relax, brother! It’s just laying rebar! It’s the simplest job ever!’

I looked away in anger. I didn’t want to show up to my first day of work hung-over. I told Stacey I had to work in the morning but it was nice meeting her. Then I forced Manny to leave and we got a cab back to his place. I passed out on his couch still wearing the same clothes I’d left Montreal in.  

Laying rebar was not as easy as Manny’d said. You had to know all the different sizes and strengths; there was bending and cutting, and different tools for doing those things. Plus, I had to learn to read pattern diagrams that were sometimes as big as several folding tables pushed together.  

The morning after my first night in Ottawa, I only managed to lay and fasten about a tenth of what the other guys did. By 9AM, I was dying for lunch. Somehow I pushed through until noon when we put down our tools and went to buy from a chrome-paneled food truck. Manny was lively despite having had only three hours of sleep. ‘I see you rebar about as fast as you pick-up chicks,’ he joked as we sat down on a stack of two-by-fours to eat. 

I chewed my food-truck hamburger and half-smiled in response.  

‘Ah, Little Este. Are you mad, brother?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner we had to work today? I look like an idiot trying to keep up with these guys.’

Manny raised his thick eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry, brother. I just thought you’d like to go out and make some friends since you’re new in town.’

I didn’t respond and ate the rest of my hamburger in silence. ‘I’m going to go lay down for a few minutes,’ I said when I was done eating. ‘See you after work.’  

I went and stretched out on a patch of grass and closed my eyes for a moment.  Someone shouted ‘Back to work’ and I was back on my feet again.   I laboured to learn the tricks of laying rebar for another six hours that day. Around four, the foreman called ‘quiting time’ and Manny and I drove back to Manny’s in his red Civic hatchback. When we got home, I flopped down on the couch and Manny went to the fridge for a beer. He came back to the living room and sat down in the armchair and started texting. Twenty minutes and two beers later he spoke: ‘Some chicks want to meet you. Want to hit the Market?’ I rolled away from him and faced the inside of the couch.  ‘Absolutely not.’ ‘Ok, brother. You need to sleep. It’s been a long day. I’ll see you in the morning.’ He got up, changed his shirt and left the apartment. I dragged myself to the bathroom to shower and brush my teeth. When I got back to the couch I passed out the second my head hit the pillow.  

That’s more or less how the next four months went.  I picked up the tricks to rebar-ing in the first month and was able to join Manny for nights out in the Market and still function at work the next morning.  I slept with a few girls but no one I was very into or who seemed into in me apart from my being Latino. It was just as well. I was making great money and able to start paying off my student debt. (Philosophy degree – oh, how valuable you’ve proved to be for increasing concrete’s tensile strength.)  I didn’t need a girlfriend changing my focus.  

Then the fall arrived and things changed despite my plans. Work slowed, the temperature dropped, and everyone at work and the bars became more irritable.  One cold, mid-October morning, a foreman made a racist comment and I couldn’t let it slide. I was installing a floor mesh and called Manny to give me a hand shifting it. Manny was forty feet from me so I had to yell for him to hear. I shouted to him in Spanish like we always spoke to each other. All of a sudden the foreman, Mike – ‘Beason’, I think – was standing in front of me.   ‘Hey Steve,’ he said, ‘I don’t mind you speaking Spanish on my site, but keep it down, okay? You’re not out at the bar trying to impress some chicks…’

‘Uh, I was just asking Manny to come help–’

‘I don’t give a shit. I said no screaming no Mexican on my site. Comprende?’

Blood rushed to my face. Who the fuck was this drop-out-asshole talking to?  I dropped my hickey and took a step towards him. Luckily Manny ran up held me back. 

‘Were you going to hit me, Steve?’ the foreman said. ‘Are you fucking crazy?’ 

By now I was in a full rage and swinging my arms around Manny trying to get a-hold of the racist fuck. ‘Fuck you, you stupid hoser. I’m Colombian. I’m a real worker not some union-protected-fuck like you!’  

Manny walked me to the parking lot as I continued spitting insults at the foreman. ‘What the fuck, brother?’ Manny said when we got to his car. 

‘What do you mean, ‘what the fuck’? Did you hear that shit he said?’

‘He’s the foreman. He can say whatever he wants.’

‘So I’m supposed to just let him be a racist?’

Manny frowned. ‘Yeah. You are.’ 

I was still incensed. ‘You know, you’re worse than he is. You’re ashamed of your country. You wish you were fucking white!’ 

Manny’s face reddened and I thought he was going to hit me. But he just turned and walked away. My mind was still drugged with anger so I didn’t recognize what I’d just said to my best friend. I grabbed my bag from Manny’s car and went to go find a bus back to Manny’s apartment. Fucking idiot, Este. Fortunately, when Manny came home from work that night, I had enough sense to apologize to him for what I’d said. 

‘It’s nothing brother. Forget about it,’ he said.

Of course, I wasn’t asked back to work the day after my run-in with the foreman and I was rarely called to work the rest of the fall. I wasn’t all-to bothered by it. With my newly-freed time and passable financial situation, I could see some of Ottawa’s tourist attractions. In my first week off work, I went to the National Gallery, The Museum of Civilization, and Parliament Hill. Parliament was my favourite. I took a guided tour of it and the guide described how our system of government could be traced back to England’s ruler-subject agreement of 1215 AD, the Magna Carta.  I asked the guide whether she thought that a thousand-year-old system from a foreign country was still the most appropriate system for ruling our own. A friendly debate ensued between us and we bantered playfully throughout the remainder of the tour. Then, after the tour had finished, I told her I’d enjoyed talking to her and asked whether she’d like to get a coffee or a beer some time.  

‘Sure,’ she said, and gave me her phone number.     I felt happier and less angry with some time away from work and not going out every night. Also, the Parliament tour guide and I had coffee one day in late October and it was great. Her name was Sara Sinclair. She was finishing her masters in political theory at U of O and making some extra cash as a guide. She was very smart and agreed with many of my social criticisms, albeit less emotionally so.  

Sara and I started seeing each other regularly.  She lived in the Glebe, an old middle-class area of the city. We went to movies and talked politics over strong, local beers. She had a lot of work to do so I sometimes felt like an afterthought, but other than that, things were going well.  

At Christmas, Sara invited me to her family’s in Napanee, a small town two hours southwest. I was happy to go, but the trip ended in disaster. We rented a car and drove down on Christmas Eve’s day with the plan of spending two nights at her parents’ and driving back Boxing Day. When we got there I could feel a tension in the air. Sara and her mother spoke in monosyllables and her father hardly said a word. Her younger brother muttered ‘hello’ to me and gave me dirty look.  

Things boiled over when we were all seated at the dinner-table and Sara’s father asked me if I would ask the blessing.

I was thrown. Sara had never said anything the least bit religious. ‘Sorry, Mr. Sinclair but I’m not religious…’

He looked at his wife then at Sara. ‘Not religious? You mean you not only brought home a Mexican, but a heathen?’

Sara was on her feat. ‘Fuck you, Dad,’ she yelled. ‘You a fucking bigot!’  

‘Hey, don’t talk to your father like that, young lady!’ said her mom.

‘You’re as racist as he is!’ 

I was embarrassed by the commotion I’d caused, but strangely, not angry. I excused and went and sat in the living room while the Sinclairs swore and screamed at each other. About ten minutes later, the voices quieted Sara came into the living room. Her eyes wet from crying. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

We drove back to Ottawa in the pitch black. For about an hour Sara lambasted her family and hometown for their ignorance and prejudice. Then she lay her head on my shoulder and fell asleep.  

We pulled up to her house in the Glebe an hour later and I walked her up to her apartment. I saw her into bed and she asked me to stay the night. I wasn’t tired and knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I kissed her goodnight and went and got back in the car.  

Staring at the grey foundation of Sara’s building in the headlights, I felt a sudden urge to be in Montreal. I put the car in gear and head out on the two-hundred kilometers drive there.  We’d rented the car for another day anyway. The evergreen moonscape between Ottawa and Montreal was even lonelier at night but I made it safely to Montreal’s northwestern suburbs some time around 2AM. I continued Jean-Talon without bating an eye. I felt like being downtown, in the beating heart of the city.   

I turned onto the 20 East and the downtown skyline appeared in front of me.  I got off at Peel and drove east along St. Catherine’s. The city’s busiest commercial area was almost deserted. All the shoppers and restaurant-goes – even the strip-club patrons – were apparently at home with their loved ones. I stopped at the Nickel’s at the Eaton’s Centre for something to eat. I ordered a smoked meat sandwich and an Ex. The fatty deli meat, skunky beer and blasé server were a welcomed signs of home.  

My thoughts turned to my first home – Bogota – and my dad. I remembered it was a rare, sunny day in January, the height of the rainy season. I was in my room playing with Luis when I heard a knock at the front door. Mom went to answer it and, curious kid that I was, I peeked out of our bedroom to see who was there.  

It was my uncle and he looked unusually stern. He told Mom to sit down in the kitchen and she did. Then he walked past her to mine and Luis’s room. ‘Stay in here with your brother, Este,’ he said as he closed the door in my face. A minute later I heard a scream from the kitchen that haunts me to this day.  It was Mom yelling ‘Noooo!’ Her voice was almost unrecognizable. It sounded like something between a mule being whipped and a baby’s cry. It was sub-human. I sat down beside Luis on the bed afraid. Luis soon started to tremble, knowing even less what was going on.

When the noise finally let up my uncle came to our room and opened the door. He walked in and knelt down in front of us.  He grabbed each of our knees with his large hands. ‘Estaban, Luis – I have sad news. Your father was killed in an accident at work.  A bridge he was trying to repair collapsed on top of him…’ He looked at us and the information started to set in. Luis began to cry inconsolably and I looked back and forth between him and my uncle unsure what to say or do. Gradually, my uncle stood up. ‘This will change your world for years to come, Esteban. I am very sorry.’  A few tears ran down his face and he left.

I sat on the frozen for an hour listening to my brother and mother sob. Eventually, Luis exhausted himself and Mom gathered her herself enough to come tuck him in.  

It was hard growing up without a father, especially after moving to a new country and being a visible minority who didn’t speak either of the local languages.  I got life-hardened well ahead of my peers and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t resent it.  Mom did everything she could to support me and Luis but children need multiple parents even under the best of circumstances.  I suppose Montreal became a second parent of a kind. I certainly identified with it. It was also fractured by history and yet couldn’t speak of its deficits without being called a whiner.  

As I finished my sandwich and beer, I thought about my life’s current difficulties. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted I stay in Ottawa or working in construction. And there were sure to be difficulties ahead with Sara too. I should stay focused on making money until I got out of debt, I decided, and this plan satisfied me for the moment.    

I paid my bill, got up, and left the restaurant. I walked towards the rental car and looked up College-McGill at the eastern face of Mount Royal. It reminded me of Monserrate, the ten-thousand foot mountain just south of Bogota. Mount Royal was an ant-hill by comparison, but it was still an immovable and naturally occurring. It had always been there and always would. I could go anywhere and it would be here when I got back.

I got in the car and drove home to spend Christmas with my mom and brother. 

[hoteles5estrellas]

Hello travellers of Reddit! I am looking for some advice about my trip to Morocco and Portugal in July.

I am a Canadian Registered Nurse turned graduate student living in the Okanagan valley in British Columbia, and I am taking myself on a trip to celebrate achieving my Masters Degree (as of June – hooray!!) A little about me. I absolutely adore outdoor activities! I hike, climb, kayak and camp every chance I get. I love to experience the world outside of my home, and cannot wait for a little bit of culture! I have just over 3 weeks to travel. I’m 28yo and will be travelling my aunt who is 55yo for the Morocco and Azores parts and then on my own for the last week. I am of Portuguese background but have yet to visit, so I am stoked for this experience! As for my budget, I am trying to be fairly conscious of it and not go overboard (I’m not really one to need fancy accommodations!) but that said, I set this trip as my reward for graduating and have been saving up for it for a few years.

My VERY tentative itinerary is as follows: (I’ll be starting in Toronto).

July 2: Toronto to Marrakesh.

7(ish) days in Morocco. Hoping to do the following: Check out the market in Marrakesh, High Atlas mountain hike (probably just a day hike), and check out Essaouria.

July 11(ish): Marrakesh to the Azores.

7(ish) days in the Azores. This part is wide open and would love some advice here. I am looking at flying into Terceira I think, but I really don’t know how to choose between that and Sao Miguel. After time in Marrakesh, I suppose something less touristy would be ideal, but I am wide open to suggestion here and would appreciate some! From this part of the trip, I am really just hoping to spend some time outside. Maybe rent some bikes or a kayak and see the beauty!

July 18(ish): Whichever Azorean island to Porto or Lisbon.

Also open to suggestion here! I have been thinking Porto, largely based on what I have read in that it is a little less ‘busy city’ type lifestyle, but I really have no idea. I’ll have about 7 days in whichever area I choose, and will be travelling on my own for this leg of the trip. This may be a time when I can do the hostel thing (which I do not think will happen while my aunt is with me). A friendly coastal city with fresh fish, good wine, outdoor wandering and fellow travellers sounds delightful.

That’s all i’ve got so far!

For anyone that takes the time to read this and respond, thank you!! I really appreciate it! Open to any and all advice

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[mysteryshelf]

BLOG TOUR - Weave a Murderous Web

DISCLAIMER: This content has been provided to THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF by Book Publicity Services. No compensation was received. This information required by the Federal Trade Commission.

Weave A Murderous Web is a mystery novel by Anne Rothman-Hicks and Kenneth Hicks. It is one of three books in the Jane Larson series, published by Melange Books.

Synopsis:

  No good deed goes unpunished. When Jane Larson—a hot-shot litigator for a large firm in New York City—helps out a friend, she is sucked into the unfamiliar world of divorce and child support.

Jane’s discovery of the deadbeat dads hidden assets soon unravels a web of lies, drugs, and murder that keeps getting more dangerous.

Soon, Jane is involved in a high stakes race to recover a missing suitcase of cash and catch the murderer before she becomes the next victim.

  Praise:

  “A sleuthing lawyer returns to the streets of New York in this mystery of drugs, murder, and financial skullduggery… the husband-wife team of Rothman-Hicks and Hicks has again produced a fast-paced, engaging story… overall, this is a satisfying read. An enjoyable romp involving a shady attorney and the mob that should make readers look forward to the next Jane Larson caper.” – Kirkus

  “The action is breathtaking and the writing beautiful. Weave a Murderous Web: A Jane Larson Novel is a story that reminds me of the characters of John Grisham’s Gray Mountain… Jane Larson is the kind of character that will be loved by many readers… The plot is well thought out and masterfully executed, laced with numerous surprises to keep readers turning the pages. This is one of those books that should occupy an enviable place in your shelf if you are into fast-paced thrillers and compelling investigative stories.” – 5 Stars, Ruffina Oserio, Readers’ Favorite

  “MURDEROUS WEB is a classic whodunit with classic New York City characters.” – Gimme That Book

  “Weave a Murderous Web is an enthralling murder mystery. It gets your heart pounding with action and passion, while simultaneously entangling your mind with its ambiguity. The dynamic duo has done it again. The husband and wife writing team of Anne Rothman-Hicks and Ken Hicks pens another on-the-edge-of-your seat murder mystery. Engaging. Witty. Fast paced. I love the Hicks’ contemporary writing style. The narrative is full of delightful metaphorical statements. The setting takes you into the heart of New York City – it reflects just the right amount of ambiance… As the plot progresses, the intensity heightens, catapulting you into a surprising twist, then plummets you into a sudden, yet satisfying end.” – 5 Stars, Cheryl E. Rodriguez, Readers’ Favorite

  “Weave a Murderous Web involves a hotshot Wall Street lawyer who is a sassy, cynical New Yorker through and through. To help out a friend, she gets involved in a seamy matrimonial case that quickly pulls her into a vortex of murder, drugs, and dangerous games of deception.” – The Big Thrill

  “Weave a Murderous Web is a smart and entertaining mystery by Anne Rothman-Hicks and Ken Hicks that will leave lovers of the genre anxiously waiting for another installment starring the intrepid protagonist, Jane Larson… Weave a Murderous Web has plenty to keep the reader engaged as Jane digs in her heels, determined to get to the truth. Witty dialogue, supported by great writing and some understated humor, makes this book not only a must-read – but also a darned good one!” – 5 Stars, Marta Tandori, Readers’ Favorite

  Excerpt:

Chapter One

  I was in my office at Adams & Ridge talking on the telephone when Francine entered. At the moment, my friend, Lee, was on the other end of the wire, yakking up a storm in my ear. Her rant covered already familiar terrain. My man, my David, was drifting dangerously away from me while I did nothing to win him back. As we say around the courts, Oy.

Francine tiptoed forward and placed on my desk a two-day-old copy of The Daily News opened to the item concerning Mark Samuels’ death.

“I gotta go, Lee,” I said.

While Francine waited for me, she had backed into a corner of my office, leaned against the wall, and tried to make her six feet of lanky body less noticeable. Two large metal buttons were pinned to her heavily braided cotton sweater. One read Stop Fracking New York and the other protested against the annual Canadian seal hunt with a scarlet X through an image of a baby seal whose brains had been battered to a pink pulp.

I pointed at the newspaper and gave her a questioning glance, but she quickly averted her eyes to stare at the floor.

“Have you been listening to me at all?” Lee demanded. Her voice rose to a kind of exasperated wail. “David has been dating someone. I think he may be getting serious.”

“David was born serious, Lee,” I said.

“Stop it, Jane,” she shouted so I had to hold the phone away from my ear. Even Francine raised an eyebrow. “You know what I mean.”

“I’m sorry, Lee.”

“I don’t understand why you’re taking this so nonchalantly. You know you still love him. You could get back together in a heartbeat if you’d just spend a tenth as much time on a relationship as you spend on your career.”

“I’m a lawyer, Lee. Not a—”

A sharp intake of breath followed. “Not a baby maker?” Lee demanded. Anger replaced the plaintive wail. “Is that what you were going to say?”

Would I ever admit that the word had been on the tip of my tongue?

“No. I was going to say, ‘not a librarian’, or the owner of some other nine-to-five job. The hours come with the territory, Lee. David knows that, but deep down in that wonderful heart of his, he also thinks the hours spent at the office are A-okay for the guy, but not for the girl. In any event, Martha didn’t raise her daughter to compete over a man.”

The sound of a whale breaching the surface erupted from the phone. “You’re maddening, Jane.”

“No, I’m busy,” I replied.

Lee sighed. “Well, I have to go too. Laurie is home sick and I’m taking her to the doctor. We’ll talk more later, Jane. I’m not going to sit back and let this happen to my two best friends in the world. I’m going to fight, Jane.”

“Goodbye, Lee.”

She disconnected.

Actually, I wasn’t busy at all, or I wouldn’t have spent even that much time on the phone being lectured by Lee. She’s an old friend from Columbia Law, but enough is enough.

A major litigation I had been working on had settled just a day before and the client and powers-that-be at Adams & Ridge were very happy with me—especially Seymour Ridge. The old man himself had hammered out the settlement shortly after I made the CEO of the party suing our client look like a doofus on the witness stand. So, I had some time on my hands until I was given another assignment.

More to the point, I wanted to know why Francine was still standing in my office, staring at the tips of her shoes. She was a legal assistant with the firm. I had gotten her the job. However, she didn’t work on any of my cases. That was a rule I had laid down from the beginning.

“Hello, Francine,” I said.

“Hi, Jane.” She looked up shyly, smiled her timid smile, gave a meaningful glance in the direction of the paper and resumed looking at her shoes. I had known her for so long that she was more like a relative than a friend, in the sense that one does not choose one’s relatives. She was really really shy but also effective in getting her way with me. I read the article.

It was as depressing as I had expected. Mark Samuels was a single practitioner who worked out of a small office above a bodega on 116th Street. He wasn’t married and had no family to speak of. The exact date and hour of his demise were uncertain. The body was discovered only after fellow inhabitants of his East Village apartment house reported a foul odor during the last week in June when a heat wave had sent temperatures rising into the high nineties. Those same conditions had made his remains swell like a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

How can a person die without anyone knowing for a week or ten days? Did he have no friend or family member who cared to check on him? Were all of them as completely egotistical as he was?

The cause of death, however, was easy to determine. When the cops broke down his door, three short fat lines of cocaine were still in place on the old-fashioned hand mirror Mark used to chop the drug fine enough to snort. The coroner confirmed Mark died of severe heart arrhythmia, which is to say his ticker skipped a few too many beats before stopping altogether. Testing of the merchandise showed the stuff he’d inhaled had been nearly pure—several times the strength of what is normally available on the street. As the cops put it, either he had chosen to depart this green orb flying on nose powder or he was inordinately careless. I suppose it didn’t much matter which alternative was true. The result was the same. An overdose had killed him.

I looked up warily, unwilling to reveal I had the slightest interest in the entire subject.

“Why are you showing this to me, Francine,” I asked.

“Didn’t you know Mark when you worked for Legal Services for the Poor?”

Did she expect me to burst into tears?

“Yeah,” I said, “and he was just as big a screw-up then. They put him in the Family Law area because he could do the least harm there. At least no one could lose their apartment or get sent to jail because of him.”

Francine winced. You might think this resulted from a superstitious aversion to speaking ill of the dead. You would be wrong. Francine had an aversion to speaking ill both of the living and the dead.

“He kept doing matrimonial work after he left Legal Services,” Francine added. She nodded, as if agreeing with her own words, then fell into silence. Silence was her friend.

“And?” I said.

Francine pulled up her sweater, which was being dragged low by those protest buttons and exposing her collarbones and the top of her boney chest. Her stringy hair, a field mouse brown, had no discernible style. She had never chosen to master the art of makeup despite my efforts with pencil, rouge, and lipstick back when we were teenagers. The only jewelry she now wore was a pendulous locket with gold thread tying it together. She said she’d purchased it in a wild moment at an uptown thrift shop. Of course, those buttons and their slogans were a kind of jewelry, I suppose, in that jewelry also says, “Look at me. This is what I am.”

Francine smiled at her shoes and continued. “Well, he had a client, Gail Hollings, who is a very good friend of mine, Jane, and—”

Now I saw where this was going. “Would this friend of yours be in need of a lawyer?”

“She’s in an awful fix, Jane. She has a court appearance at two o’ clock this afternoon. She gave Mark three thousand dollars, which was all she could scrape together. She has no money left at all.”

“Ridge will be glad to hear that. No money. Great.”

Francine rummaged in the front pocket of her cargo pants, pulled out a wallet, and then drew from inside it a picture of a young child with long blond pigtails that dwarfed her diminutive round face but did not steal the scene from her toothy grin.

“She has a little girl,” Francine added, glancing from the snapshot to me and back again to emphasize her point.

“No money, no lawyer, and a kid. This just keeps getting better, doesn’t it?”

My mother, Martha, who insists I call her by her first name, always says Francine faces a bright future if Jesus’ prediction about the meek is really true. Believe me, the meek have power, especially over those of us with guilt. Martha would love that. Guilt. I was like a fish nibbling at a big juicy worm and getting closer and closer to the hook. Francine was the fisherwoman, waiting patiently for the slightest pull on the line.

“Look, you know I can’t take on this case, Francine. However, I have some free time today, so I can at least go down to court and adjourn the matter until we can find someone to help Gail and little…”

“Courtney,” Francine said with a rush of breath that made the name seem like a prayer. An expression filled her eyes that reminded me of an early Renaissance image of a martyr at the moment of supreme sacrifice, pain mixed with a kind of bliss that seems to make it all worthwhile.

The hook was set. That much was obvious. Francine had only to slowly reel me in.

I opened a drawer and pulled out a legal pad to record the names of mother and daughter.

“There’s just one thing maybe you should know,” Francine said.

My pencil poised in midair and then wrote “one thing” with an exclamation point. I still have that piece of paper in the top drawer of my desk.

“Yes?”

“Well, Carmen Ruiz has kind of taken an interest in this because of the women’s rights angle and what happened to Mark and all.”

“Carmen Ruiz? Last time I heard of her, she was spending time at a fat farm.”

This was code. Everyone knew that the ‘fat farm,’ as I had injudiciously put it, was also a place where people could lose other bad habits, such as drugs.

Francine winced again and swallowed hard. “That’s unkind, Jane.”

Chalk one up for the meek.

“You’re right, Francine. How is Carmen doing?”

“She’s got a new gig on cable. One of the local news stations.”

I nodded. I was safe from unkind remarks if I kept my mouth shut. At one time the cognoscenti had called Carmen the “female Wolf Blitzer” because she had enjoyed asking the hard questions, especially of men who were not used to being pushed around. The fact that she had the flashing good looks of a gypsy queen didn’t hurt, but now she was scuffling on cable news.

“She said she called you a couple of times.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been busy.”

I was on the verge of getting back the advantage, never easy in a conversation with humanitarian types like Francine, especially if your mother always places such types on a pedestal, a very high pedestal.

Martha has not been affiliated with any organized religion since her mind began to function at age eleven. Still, she shares Jesus’ distrust of wealth and is fond of quoting both his advice to sell all you have and give it to the poor and his adage that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

“You don’t even believe in Jesus,” I argue.

“I don’t have to believe in Jesus as God to know he’s telling the truth,” she retorts.

When I had accepted the job at Adams & Ridge, Carmen had had some unkind things to say to mutual friends about my going for the gold. Her whole premise that Martha’s goodness had gotten lost in one generation to my grabbiness had cut a bit too close to the bone. I hadn’t forgotten.

“Carmen’s working on a series about children and the courts,” Francine said. “Kids falling into poverty are a very big problem.”

“I’m aware of the problem, Francine. I’ll skip over the question of what has made Carmen give a good hoot in hell about children all of a sudden. What does any of this have to do with that coke-head Mark?”

“Oh, nothing much. Nothing at all really.”

She was hedging, worried that the prospect of helping Carmen might have made me shut the whole thing down before it ever began.

“Go on, Francine.”

“It’s just… she knew Mark fairly well and doesn’t think his death was accidental. She says Mark did drugs too much to do something that stupid.”

“So she thinks he did it on purpose? Is that it? He committed suicide over the predicament of his client and child?”

“Not exactly,” Francine said.

In hindsight I can see clearly how nonchalant she wanted to seem, playing with the gold locket and dropping it inside her sweater, glancing in the direction of the window as if a pretty bird had alighted there.

“Carmen thinks Mark was murdered.”

  About the Authors:

Anne Rothman-Hicks and Kenneth Hicks have been collaborating on books for forty-six years.  Their first joint effort was a student project while Anne was at Bryn Mawr College and Ken attended Haverford. Since then, they have written over twenty books together. They are members of International Thriller Writers. They live and work in New York City, where many of their books are set.

  Their Jane Larson series of mystery/thrillers involves a high-powered New York City attorney with a penchant for getting involved in situations that she would be better off leaving alone. These novels have been praised by reviewers for their gritty portrayals of city life, lively characters, fast action, surprise endings and highly polished prose. Jane is cynical and rebellious, but she finds herself drawn to the simple life her deceased mother lived as an attorney who served women unable to afford legal services. The first two books in the series are Weave A Murderous Web and Praise Her, Praise Diana, both published by Melange Books, LLC. A third novel, Mind Me, Milady, will be published in early 2017.

  Readers can connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

  To learn more, go to http://randh71productions.com/blog/

BLOG TOUR – Weave a Murderous Web was originally published on the Wordpress version of The Pulp and Mystery Shelf