#i apologize to all popular posters who now have to put up with another dozen gimmickers

[alphabetcompletionist]

you see. when i was younger this sort of thing would definitely be something i'd want a piece of pie from. i'd chew on what bit to do for the better part of an hour, come up with something like 'preposition-completionist', make a few posts and get a few followers before discarding it like an ice cream cone. but now i'm the progenitor of it. and it's scary.

ABCDEFGHI KLMNOP RSTU W Y

21/26

[tomsfoma]

The Meanest Thing I’ve Ever Done

I still consider my first real girlfriend to be Beth Ann Mabee. We dated the summer of my freshman year, and she was the first girl I ever French kissed. Still though, my first long-term relationship – and the girl to whom I lost my virginity – was Sadie Conners. Sadie and I had a tumultuous relationship that was based primarily on teenage hormones. During the year we were together, I shifted identities from athletic hockey player with class clown tendencies to full-blown reckless stoner. When we first met, Sadie was playing goalie for the varsity soccer team and I was playing right wing for the JV hockey team. By the time we broke up, she was still playing goalie for the varsity soccer team, and I was skipping class to smoke weed and steal cigarettes. Like most teenagers in relationships, we broke up here or there for a day or two and then got back together, making up with characteristic teenage passion. The final time we broke up though, felt different. It had the weight of ineffable finality. I knew there would be no making up that time. The final time we broke up was because of one of the meanest things I’ve ever done to anyone.

The summer before my junior year, my family was taking a week-long vacation at my parents' cottage in Canada. My dad’s side of the family has these four cottages all next door to one another on Lake Erie. At the end of this row of cottages, there’s another summer cottage that belongs to a family consisting of a mom, a dad, and two daughters. One daughter is around mine and my brother’s age and the other is my younger sister’s age. My father grew up with their father, and in a way, they’re like honorary family members. They’re just family members that we only see in summer — at the cottage.

On this particular trip, my friend Mike joined us. Of all the years we were best friends, he only came to the cottage a few times, but this one was memorable for two reasons. One: it was his first trip, and two: it was the origin of the awful deed that caused the end of my relationship with Sadie and left a permanent scar on mine and my brother’s relationship.

One sunny afternoon during the trip, Mike, myself, my brother, my sister, and the two honorary daughters were hanging around talking and goofing off. It was a relaxing day and the wind from the lake kept us cool and comfortable. We were sitting on a picnic table in the backyard, not far from the tree swing that hung from a giant oak tree. The two daughters had brought a makeup kit with them. It was a small, square pink box with metal edges and a metal handle. The boys were talking trash and the girls were painting their nails. At some point, the girls had the idea to put makeup on my brother. We all chased, caught, and pinned him down. Mike and I held him to the ground while the girls painted his face with blush and glitter and lip gloss and deep purple eye shadow.  Mike took pictures with his digital camera. My brother fought back, but only a little. He had a crush on the older honorary daughter, and I think he enjoyed the interaction with her.

Several months later, the magic of summer was wearing off and the reality of school was setting in. My brother was transferred from a public middle school to the Catholic high school that Mike and I were attending. The day before school started, my brother was boasting about how cool he was at his current middle school, and how nobody could embarrass him at that – or any – school. Mike and I fought hard to be cool, and it didn’t come naturally to us. We didn’t have a lot of friends, and we didn’t run with the popular crowd. My brother’s arrogance was an assault on our efforts, and we took his challenge to heart. We were two years older than him, but we were still just boys.

Mike had a good reputation with parents and teachers. Behind the scenes though, he had devious ideas. He just didn’t have the guts to execute them. That’s where I came in. I had a terrible reputation with parents and teachers. I didn’t care what adults thought of me as long as my peers thought I was funny or entertaining or cool.

The devious plan Mike had this time was to use the photo of my brother that we had taken at the cottage several months earlier. We were going to create a gay personal ad for him and post it around the school. It said homophobic things like “my favorite color is obvi purple,” “my favorite activities include watching men’s volleyball,” and “I enjoy Rice-a-Roni, but I’m the REAL San Francisco treat.”

We printed off dozens of copies the night before the first day of school. We arrived early the next morning and hung them up on lockers in every hallway, plastering them throughout the school in a huge clockwise motion. By the time we arrived back at the hallway we started in, the first ones we had hung up were gone.

The teachers had started taking them down as soon as they saw them. Between that and students grabbing copies to show their friends, the posters didn’t stay up for long. 

But they stayed up long enough.

I didn’t see my brother that morning. He was so embarrassed by the posters that almost as soon as he arrived at his new high school – to the scene of strangers laughing at him -- he turned around and decided to walk the five miles back home in the rain.

He didn’t get far.  Early into his journey, a beige 1992 Park Avenue pulled over and rolled down the window. “Ryan, what’s wrong? Do you need a ride home?” Sadie asked. He wiped the tears away from his beet-red face and nodded. When Sadie arrived to school later, she had words with me.

My immaturity had always been a point of contention with her, and this stunt was the final straw. Unforgivable was the word she used. Her voice was devoid of any anger. She had only contempt for me now.

I spent the rest of the day feeling like I had a ball of lead sitting in the pit of my stomach. When I got home, I asked to see my brother, but my parents said he didn’t want to see me. I told them I wanted to apologize, but they told me to leave him alone. I desperately needed to get rid of the anxiety and shame that beleaguered me, and I knew the only way to do that was to tell him how sorry I was.

Later that evening I walked into his room to find him lying face down on his bed, on top of his Notre Dame comforter, shoes still on, backpack lying on the floor next to his bed. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t realize what I was doing. It was stupid.” He didn’t respond. “Dude, I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I already got 4 weeks detention and I think I’ve got more punishment coming from school and mom and dad on top of it.” He remained silent.

“What can I do to make it up to you?”

“Go away,” he mumbled into his pillow.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, “I mean it.”

“I don’t forgive you,” he replied. I walked out of the room and shut his door behind me.

Days passed before he started talking to me again, and when he did it was with more restraint. Over the coming weeks and months, we started talking more freely, but things were never the same. Maybe it was because he was adjusting to high school and growing up. Maybe it was because I was going through my own shit, breaking up with girlfriends, getting arrested, getting suspended, getting in fights. Maybe we were just two very different people who happened to be raised in the same home, and we were inevitably going to grow apart anyway. Maybe the friendship we had as children was destined to die. Or maybe my unforgivable mistake killed it.

Later on, in his high school journey, my brother became one of the bona fide cool kids. He ended up attending the University of Michigan before moving on to Notre Dame law school. After graduation, he got a job at a prestigious law firm in Chicago and eventually moved on to an even more prestigious law firm, where he’s currently working today. Last time I checked anyway.

We don’t talk much anymore. When I do see him at the occasional wedding or funeral, we’re polite, and we talk to one another, but it doesn’t feel like I’m talking to my brother. It feels like I’m trying to make small talk with an ex-classmate.

Every once in awhile I think about him and the friendship we had as kids. Sometimes I miss the person I was when we had that friendship. The person I was before I rotted away and shed my sweeter self.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever see him again. Or if he’ll ever forgive me.

[chronicbatfictioner]

JayTim Week 2018

Day 2: Friends/Enemies to Lovers // Supernatural AU Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3

Tim Drake was a better detective than he was as a Robin. He was small, lithe; not as agile as the original Robin, Dick Grayson, or as massive and strong as the second Robin, Jason Todd. His investigative and deductive skills, however, is often said to be second only to the Batman.

Him finding where Jason has been staying would not have been counted as a surprise for those who know him. Like Dick Grayson, like Bruce Wayne, Bruce's butler, Aflred Pennyworth. Like his Titans teammates.

Like Jason Todd.

"What do you want." Jason's voice rang out even before Tim stepped in through the window.

"I should've asked you that. You've been sending me things." Tim replied, carefully walking in to the small apartment, unsurprisingly located at the Skid Row area of the Tenderloin district. Tourists avoided the area like the plague, having heard of tales and lores of the unsavoryness that is the Tenderloin District.

For Jason Todd - as well as Tim Drake - the city being San Francisco, not Gotham, even the worst part of the district looked like Gotham's standard parts. Jason would have felt right at home here, Tim thought idly, before remembering his own apartment that used to be the Theatre at Crime Alley where Bruce's parents were murdered.

The Red Hood's helmet was staring at him from a bedside table right next to the four-poster bed. The apartment itself was a loft and not overly large, and there was only a partition that would separate the bedroom from the living room. But it has a functioning oven, apparently. And Jason was baking something in it right there and then.

"I'm testing recipes." Jason deadpanned.

"What's in it." Tim retorted. "Why me."

Jason shrugged and turned back toward the oven. "You're here, and you have friends who could devour them, so nothing would be gone to waste." Jason reasoned.

"There are lots of people around here who could eat them, anyway."

Jason scowled at him. "And have them confuse French pastry with Persian pastry?"

"What Persian-- wait. No. That's not the point. I want to know why you're... feeding me."

Jason scowled at him, again. Tim started to wonder if it was his default expression setting or if the Lazarus Pit had warped his face from the grinning, happy Jason Todd of the past to this perpetually scowling-or-frowning expression.

"You have friends." Jason repeated. "I'm not just feeding you. And they're hella healthier than the junks you people have been feeding on."

"You've tried to kill us."

Jason gave him a withering look. "No I didn't. Just you." he corrected.

Tim rolled his eyes. "You've tried to kill me." he elaborated. "And now you're... what the hell are you doing, Jason?"

Jason just lifted an incredibly delicious smelling Shepherd's Pie out of the oven. "Dinner." he said. "Mine. You want?"

In spite of only recently finishing a large piece of chocolate cake that Tim hoped has not vanished to the abyss that is Bart Allen's belly by now, Tim's stomach rumbled loudly and unabashedly - and unsolicited-ly. Jason put the pie on the table and cut it to six equal pieces.

"Six?"

"Two for each." Jason said.

Tim had to look around, in spite having checked and recon-ed the entire block three times before he got in. "There are only two of us."

Jason just glared at him and handed him a spoon. "Your pick. I'll eat first." he said. And then louder, "last person here don't get to pick!"

Sure enough, a blue-black clad body practically slithered from the vents. "No fair. What if you put glass bits in where I'm gonna bite?"

"I'd have them as visible garnishes if I'd wanted to kill you, Grayson." Jason groused. Dick pointedly ignored him and took a plate and handed it to Tim. "I'll start billing you louse tomorrow." Jason added.

Tim placed a large one-sixth of the pie on the plate, and handed it to Dick, who promptly forked a large mouthful. "No poison. But if I die in the next hour, I want you to avenge me, Timothy." he said in all seriousness after swallowing the pie.

Tim blinked as he placed a second piece - picked randomly, and handed it to Jason. And another one for him. He was a third ongoing when Dick - already halfway through his piece - commented, "Tim actually hated Shepherd's pie."

Jason groaned. "And you didn't tell me this before, why?"

Dick grinned impishly. "I want to see how you'll change his mind to come to love this wonder of this English cuisine."

Tim was still shoveling the pie into his mouth quietly, savoring each and every piece of mystery meat in it. Jason caught his eyes and asked, "converted, yet?"

"Considering it." Tim replied without thinking. "The sorbet was a hit, though. Especially with the girls." he added, then shook his head and refocused. "Seriously! What. You planning to make a bakery or something, maybe? Supplementing your ill-gotten income with a more..." he looked at his plate and was quite surprised to see it kind of only have a few forkfuls remaining, "...sweet-and-savory flavored?"

Jason gave him a dirty look. "Gee, nice to know you have such nice thoughts about my income. I suggest you get off your high horse once in a while, though. Even the almighty Oracle's 'income' aren't all squeaky clean." he pointed out. "The sorbet was good?"

Dick, Tim realized, was already on his second slice of the pie, and was watching the banter with such mock-interested expression that made Tim wanted to slam the pie dish onto his face.

"It was. But that's still not answering my question. Why are you sending me and my friends food?" Tim persisted. Because if anything, persistence is his middle name: Red 'Persistent' Robin. "You've tried to kill me. And now you're wine-ing and dine-ing me. Metaphorically. Except for the 'dine-ing' part. Why."

Jason winced. "Growing pains?" he offered lamely.

Tim did not groan. Even at Dick's snicker. "You mean my pains?"

Jason was still wincing as if the pie was coming out of his sitting end in the form of jagged rock. Tim internally grimaced at his own vicious and petty thought.

"Okay," Jason said, pausing. Glared at Dick, who gave him a hand signal of encouragement. Glared at Tim. "You want seconds?"

"Probably in a minute. You were saying? --that's pertinent to my question?"

Jason sighed dejectedly. "You're persistent." he finally said after a few dozen heartbeats.

"I didn't get this job by being pretty, contrary to popular beliefs. And I will slam the pie dish to your face if you snicker again, Grayson!" Dick was visibly trying to wipe the smirk off his face, Tim could handle that, he thought. Kind of. At least Jason agreed on the face-slamming idea. 

Jason's answer, he was not sure about. "I think you're pretty. But also pretty good with this..." Jason made a repetitive circle over the pie that Tim took as his generalized gesture that meant 'everything or something', "...job."

"Of course." Tim retorted, watching the second slice of the pie landed on his plate, and realizing that Jason's fork suddenly came too near to his jugular to his liking. "I'm still here, aren't I?"

"He's got a point," Dick agreed.

Jason punched Dick's shoulder. "Well I didn't leave by choice, did I?"

A little pang of hurt stabbed at Tim's heart. "I didn't, either... technically." he said, his voice suddenly soft as he avoided Dick's eyes.

"Oooh, no, no, no, no. I've said my apologies. And you two aren't going to make this about me now." Dick suddenly protested. "Back to the matter at hand," he prodded Tim, momentarily dazed and lifting an eyebrow to complete his bitchface. But it was Jason who spoke next.

"Okay. Yeah. I'm not good with it. So I'll just..." he grimaced. Twenty heartbeats later, he muttered under his breath. "I'm sorry."

Tim blinked. If he had blinked earlier, he might have missed Jason's lips moving. He was also certain that he hadn't heard the words as much as he'd read Jason's lips.

"You..." he croaked, and then cleared his throat before continuing, "baked me stuff to apologize."

Jason was clearly blushing. "Yes. No. Well, kind of. I baked because I'm not good with words. Dessert, anyone? I've only got wine as sweets."

"I'm eighteen." Tim replied automatically, because he'd had this part of the conversation with Jason before. He'd had this part of the conversation multiple times with Jason before in the past few years, to be exact.

"You're legal in Australia."

"We're not in Australia."

"We can pretend. I won't tell if you won't." Jason continued.

"Bake. Words. Why. We're not done here." Tim pressed his lips for emphasis. And opened them again to allow his last forkful of pie in.

"I said it already! I'm sorry!" Jason huffed, picking up his and Dick's empty plates. Tim automatically followed with the empty pie dish and his own plate. Jason dumped both plate into the sink, and said, "Just put 'em there." and went to get some soda and bottled water from his fridge. And Tim just watched him after he finished placing the dishes into the sink. "Soda or water?"

"Whatever won't kill me." Tim replied. Jason handed him the water bottle.

"Less sugar. Won't kill you." Jason said. Tim observed the bottle for signs of tampering, found none, and chugged down the water rather gratefully.

He also figured that if he were to die now, at least he was wearing clean underwear.

Besides, Dick took the soda. Tim was always sure that Dick would defy all expectations and actually die of diabetes at a very old age.

Tim shook his head again and tried to focus. But his belly felt healthily full for the first time in-- well, since he'd stopped residing at the Wayne Manor.

"I need to go on home, now." Dick announced. "You two derps promise not to kill and/or maim each other, yeah?"

Jason sighed out loud. Tim just shrugged. Hey, he's not the killer around here.

Still, their nonconformity seemed to satisfy Dick. "Okay," he said. "Thanks for dinner, Jay. Superb pie I'm sure Alfred would be proud of." Jason just smirked as Dick climbed out the ventilation shaft he had came in from.

"He parked the Titans' invisible jet on the roof." Jason explained.

"I didn't see or hear him comin'." Tim admitted, gingerly took a seat next to Jason on the couch as Jason started channel surfing.

"He's Grayson, whaddya expect." Jason remarked. "Anything in particular you wanna see? Other than counting my freckles, maybe?"

Yes, Tim was still gawking at Jason. His brain was still trying to compute the 'I'm sorry', delicious shepherds pie and other baked goods, and 'less sugar, won't kill you'. And Jason. And the fact that all of the above came from Jason.

"Does this mean the baked goods will be a thing?" he wanted to know and promptly smacked his head internally. No, mouth. His brain did not want to ask just for the baked goods. He wanted to know if Jason being nice and have dinners and just plain 'ole being nice to him would be a routine of some sort. Because Tim's conscience was starting to imply that he could get used to it and feel alright about it. Maybe even be a little happy at it.

Jason shrugged as he settled on a 'how-to-make' something program on TV. "If you want."

Tim scratched his head. "I..." he started. Jason's eyes were glued to the TV and Tim wondered how the hell he'd kept his emotions so much in check. Except when he was furious about something. And Tim definitely know about the furious Jason, he'd been on the receiving end one time too many. "...do you take requests?"

"If I have the recipe, sure." was Jason's reply. "You going back to the Tower?"

"Yeah." Tim answered, forcing back a yawn, his body's signs that it is contented. "I better get going..." he said, starting toward the window. "Thanks for the dinner. And the baked stuff."

Jason got up and followed him to the window. "You have my number. One of it, at least, or a dozen. Let me know you got there safe." he said before Tim slipped out of the window to the fire escape.

Tim nodded, "sure." he said. He caught jason's eyes, And if asked later, by anyone - short of by extreme and copious use of some kind of truth serum and/or mind-reading - Tim would not admit of what brought in the impulse to hug Jason. But he did. He felt Jason tensed a little, and then relaxed under his arms and hugged back awkwardly.

Nope, definitely not saying anything.

[mastcomm]

Dog the Bounty Hunter Is Hunting Alone

PINE, Colo. — In September, three months after the death of his wife, Dog the Bounty Hunter was angling under the Colorado sun at a trout pond in the backwoods of the Rocky Mountains.

The pond was close enough to the highway that trucks mashing down Route 285 would roll down their windows to yell his name. To each passer-by, he raised his thumb and pinkie in a trademark shaka sign of good will.

Dog says he has 12 children, 11 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. He also says he has had four wives, been convicted of robbery 18 times and captured 10,000 fugitives. And he claims God promised to make him famous.

“I need the attention. I wake up every day and say, ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the baddest bounty hunter of them all?,’” he said, with a conspiratorial arched eyebrow before turning serious: “I need love.”

With the pompadour-mullet, jailhouse tats and beet-red tanned skin — lots of it — the only thing missing is the theme song.

Families pulled their minivans over and ran out to greet him. A woman with a graying ponytail and vodka on her breath sidled up as well. “I just want to say I’m praying for you and Beth,” she said, as if consoling an old friend.

Dog squirted fake cheese onto a Triscuit and ate it, then lit another menthol Marlboro and eyed a pickup truck creeping into the parking lot. It’s not all love, he said: “I’m tested once a week, guys looking to see how tough the Dog is. That’s what the Taser is for.”

Behind his wraparound Oakley sunglasses, his blue eyes are marked by deep circles. A cloud of nervous energy comes and goes like a storm. He is 66 and alone for the first time in decades. He is now also without a television contract.

“This is the big moment,” he said, when asked what’s next. “That’s the big question.”

Suddenly, there was a strike on the line. But when Dog lifted his rod from the water, the hook was bare.

The next bite wouldn’t be until hours later, after a Safeway run for supermarket sushi. Back at the lake, Dog finally caught a foot-long trout. Blowing minty smoke, he cackled and reached into the shopping bag. “Want a piece of my spider roll?” he asked, and grinned.

Back in 2004, Duane Chapman, known as Dog, hot-wired a reality revolution with “Dog the Bounty Hunter.” Riding shotgun with his family of bickering bounty hunters, many of whom had done time themselves, viewers were pulled along on fugitive chases as Dog led his crew in pursuit of those who had broken the terms of their bail agreements.

The popular show, broadcast on A&E, spurred what was called a wave of “redneck reality,” bringing America hit shows like “Duck Dynasty” and “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.” It lasted eight seasons.

Spinoffs and three years on Country Music Channel followed, but nothing matched his success at A&E. Last year, he returned to television once again with “Dog’s Most Wanted,” on WGN America. In it, Dog and Beth Chapman continued to chase fugitives.

This time, she had a diagnosis of throat cancer. So the show became about her last days riding with “Big Poppa,” as she called him. She tried chemotherapy multiple times and quit. “I want to die in my boots,” she said in the first episode. In June, as shown in the season finale, at age 51, she did.

“Beth was adamant, she wanted everything filmed,” said Matt Asmus, the showrunner. “If anyone wanted the camera turned off, it was Dog.”

Throughout the season, as Ms. Chapman loses hair and weight, Dog and his posse continue to slice through the heartland, quoting the good book and catching crooks. But as she begins to slip away, falling into a coma before being taken off life support, Dog’s grip on reality becomes more tenuous in his grief.

“I don’t want to live,” he says after her death, eyeing her pill bottles. The season’s end shows a broken man — the opposite of the hero that Dog spent years building onscreen.

After Ms. Chapman’s death, Dog had a pulmonary embolism. Testosterone supplements had thickened his blood, Dog suspects. He checked himself out of the hospital against advice, pushing “an orderly up against a wall because he wouldn’t let me leave,” he said. “They couldn’t stop me.”

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the doctor and TV personality, flew to Colorado for an intervention.

“Does Dog want to live or not?” Dr. Oz told me. “Dog told me a dream where Beth said, ‘Big Daddy, what took you so long? Maybe she’s waiting, what am I living for?’”

Dog said he has now been chewing ice cubes to lose weight. His 5-foot-7 frame is down to 187 pounds. He is smoking only two packs a day, placing disposable filters on his cigarettes.

But sunblock and quitting tanning salons aren’t happening; neither are prescription glasses. Eating and sleeping well are still issues for him — so is gout — and what he really wants to do is write another book, this one about Ms. Chapman, he said. And he has plans for a new show.

He is working on a pardon from the state of Texas, which could help him realize a boyhood dream: becoming Sheriff Dog. (In 1976, a failed drug deal led to Dog’s murder conviction. Dog says he didn’t pull the trigger — he was in the car — but, according to Texas law, he was an accessory.) He would be a real sheriff, in a real town that needs cleaning up, he said.

Of course, it could be filmed. “I think it’d be a hit,” he said.

At the Fort, an old adobe restaurant with thick bison steaks, Dog’s wolf ringtone kept howling as his publicist called repeatedly. It was the first day of the president’s impeachment inquiry but what was on his mind was TMZ, which was showing an advance clip of Dog’s appearance on Dr. Oz’s show with the headline “Ticking Time Bomb.”

“Ticking time bomb,” Dog repeated while on the phone with his bounty hunting partner David Robinson, discussing plans to hunt down a fugitive from Hawaii. “Biggest bond I’ve ever written,” he said, picking at his quail.

Dog said he would have to pay $1.5 million if he couldn’t catch the person accused of dealing drugs, who had fled to California.

He needs the money, he said. “I’m broke,” he said. Years of medical bills and being the patriarch of a sprawling family took a heavy toll. If he doesn’t get his man, he said, the bank will take his Colorado home.

“I can go,” Dog told his partner. “I’m three hours away, David. Just got a blood clot, that’s all.”

“You’re on the medication, right?” Mr. Robinson said.

“Yeah,” Dog said. “TMZ burned me tonight, I’m on my last leg.”

“How’d they find out?” Mr. Robinson said.

“Rats,” Dog said. “We live in a rat world — ask Trump.”

Dog won’t say who he voted for, but he did attend Donald Trump’s inauguration. He said it didn’t matter to him who is in the White House. “I feel an allegiance,” he said. “I think Michelle Obama would make a great president.”

His other political opinions include: Teachers should be armed to protect students, and he is open to gay marriage and freedom of religion — he wears a skullcap for Shabbat dinners with Marty Singer, an entertainment lawyer.

“I rarely socialize with my clients,” said Mr. Singer, who calls Dog a great friend and “as honest as they come — sometimes too honest.”

Mr. Singer is also worried.

“Dog’s very lonely,” said Amy Weiss, Dog’s manager at Brillstein Entertainment. “I was there at many points in the hospital with him, and it was very difficult. He’s lost, but he knows he must go on and provide for his family.”

“The irony is,” Dr. Oz said, “he’s a man who everyone relies on for advice. He was crutching so much on Beth — how are you going to show up in your own life?”

When Dog’s mother died in 1995, he spent a year smoking crack, he said. Then he sobered up and started dating Ms. Chapman. They had met in 1986 when he posted her bond after she shoplifted a lemon.

They finally married in 2006 — we saw it in Season 3 of “Dog the Bounty Hunter.” Drama became a Chapman family industry. There were public family disputes and I.R.S. fines for back taxes.

On the eve of the wedding, Dog’s daughter Barbara died in a stolen car in Alaska. Months later, marshals stormed his Hawaii home, leading Dog out in handcuffs — a result of a Mexican extradition case against him, eventually thrown out.

The drama with the most enduring impact began when his son Tucker sold recordings to the National Enquirer of Dog using a racist slur. Friends like Snoop Dogg and the pastor Tim Storey stuck by him, but his book “You Can Run but You Can’t Hide” was pulled from stores. Licensing deals crashed. A&E put his show on hiatus. Dog apologized on Larry King and Sean Hannity.

With the distance of a dozen years, Dog is quick to explain that he came up in the jail system. “I thought I had a pass,” he said, repeating a claim that his mother is Native American. “It was a word I grew up using. I was wrong.”

“I’ll never be forgiven for that one,” he said. “Some people form an opinion of me that I can’t change, but you’ve talked to me and I’m not a racist.” He listed the charities and churches he has visited across the country, and said he himself was a poster-boy image of second chances. “That’s something nobody wants to talk about, people just want to focus on the negatives,” he said.

The movement opposing bail as part of a predatory prison funnel system that disproportionately affects the poor and people of color has strengthened in the last decade. Meanwhile, in early 2016, Ms. Chapman was elected president of the Professional Bail Agents Association, which opposes bail and bond reform.

Dog agreed that the American legal system is particularly hard on black people. “Things could change for the better,” he said, adding that committing crimes is a choice but that nonviolent offenders should not be forced to post bond.

“I am the prime example of the system: The bail bond system, the legal system, of crime,” he said. “I’m a second chance. Guys who don’t have job hopes when they get out, why do you think they go back to what they were doing before they were convicted? If I can change, anyone can. But it’s going to be a lot harder now without Beth, that’s for sure.”

At a PF Chang’s the next day, dressed in a deerskin shirt and knee-high moccasins, Dog laid out his strategy for his newest fugitive’s bond. “Because of my health, Beth’s passing, I’m going to get an extension. I have to catch the bastard.” He laughed. “I love it.”

(The judge, acknowledging his health issues, would grant the extension. The pressure would be off, for now. But the house was still on the line. Even with no cameras rolling, he still had work to do.)

“I got out of prison February 6, 1979. That’s 40 years,” Dog said. “They said, ‘You can’t even get a driver’s license, you’ll have nothing.’ I looked in the mirror to shave and heard my dad saying, ‘Burn your birth certificate, I wish you were never born.’ I said: ‘I’m going to change and be the best at whatever I do in the world.’”

A woman came up and asked for a photo. Dog lowered his sunglasses for the selfie as the check came with a tray of fortune cookies. “You’re not allowed to choose your own fortune,” the waiter said.

Dog ignored the rules and then read his fortune: “You will pass a big upcoming test.” He laughed hard, before coughing. His face got redder and redder, but then he smiled. “I better,” he said.

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[shirlleycoyle]

The USPS Isn’t Made of Superheroes, But It Is a Miracle

This article was sent on Tuesday to subscribers of The Mail, Motherboard’s pop-up newsletter about the USPS, election security, and democracy. Subscribe to get the next edition before it is published here, as well as original articles and the paid zine.

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In case you, like the postmaster general, don’t know how much it costs to mail a postcard, it’s 35 cents. I’d love to hear from you!

When Sarah* was six or seven years old, all her friends dressed up as superheroes for Halloween. Batman, Superman, Aquaman. She dressed up as the mailman.

“This is what I wanted to do my whole life,” Sarah—which is not her real name because postal workers can be reprimanded or even fired for speaking to the press—told me about a month ago. She's now a clerk at a small town's post office. She was drawn to the post office because of the role postal workers play in their communities, the postal service’s history in shaping this country, and the pride she has in serving fellow citizens. She wanted to be part of something that matters. To other kids her age, that meant saving Gotham from the Joker or reversing the rotation of the Earth to turn back time to save Lois Lane. But not to Sarah: “The mailman was my superhero,” she said.

Is it really so odd to think of the mailman as a superhero? The same person comes to our home six days a week with pieces of paper or boxes filled with goods from all over the world. I like to imagine little Sarah asked the mailman one day how he got all these things, and he gave a cute reply, something like I went to all these places and got them myself, just for you! That sounds like a superhero to me.

Of course, the real answer is a mail carrier is just a small part of a 633,000-strong group of people, all working together to get the mail from one place to another because it is something our society has decided it wants to do. Delivering the mail is something we have wanted to do since before we even had a country. And it is something we have consistently done, without prolonged disagreement or interruption, for 245 years.

But mailmen and mailwomen are not superheroes. Not because what the USPS does every day—as just one example, bringing life-saving medicine to people who otherwise couldn't get it—fails to qualify as a superpower, but because superheroes aren’t real. The post office is even better, because it is real.

This is no small point. The post office is an anomaly to the United States of America I know, one that asks not what big business can do for you but what you can do for big business. I have lived my entire life in a country that, almost without exception, believes as a matter of faith that the private sector will address our needs, that government involvement in our life is to be avoided. Yet, here is this government service, created by the very "Founding Fathers" our country worships, that delivers to every single American six days a week, a service many of our fellow countrymen, including our retired soldiers, literally cannot live without. 

Over the last few months, I've spoken to dozens of postal workers around the country, corresponded with dozens more, and received emails from hundreds yet more. I've read five books on the post office—there are, to my surprise, relatively few books about the post office, and only a handful that cover the last 50 years in any detail—and reviewed countless government reports about the post office. I've received thousands of pages from public records requests. 

Which is to say, I've been obsessed with the post office, even before Louis DeJoy took over and instituted changes that have made the USPS a consistent news headline. I've been obsessed with it because I want to know what it says about our country that the post office was created, survived through a revolutionary war and a civil war, but is now facing its greatest crisis yet: a financial crisis created by the very people who take an oath to support and defend it. I have come to view the post office as living, breathing evidence that the worldview which has dominated our society for the last several decades is fundamentally flawed, because even as it has been hobbled and weakened, the post office still works. If the post office, long decried by conservatives as the poster child of government inefficiency and therefore undeserving of our tax dollars, is consistently rated the most popular part of the government even without those tax dollars, then maybe inefficiency isn't the pernicious disease they say it is. Perhaps there's something more important than efficiency.

Over the next few months, this newsletter will be a story of the post office, told through what has happened before and what is happening today. With apologies to Sarah and all other postal workers, it is not a story about superheroes—or, for that matter, supervillains. It is a story about people who have done remarkable things and people who have profoundly erred, and the hundreds of thousands of people who show up in what can often be a very difficult, even hellish, place to work. 

But the story of the USPS is mostly one of contradiction and confusion. It must cover its own costs without government subsidy, but must also serve nearly all Americans six days a week, something private carriers like UPS and FedEx would never do because it cannot possibly be profitable. It must put aside tens of billions of dollars in future retiree benefits, but has almost no control over what it charges for stamps and packages. It cannot rent out unused retail space or open new lines of business, even something as simple as installing a copy and fax machine in the lobby (although, if a post office already had one prior to 2006, it can keep it). It is, in other words, a "business" that is legislatively barred from doing what businesses do.

This isn't to say the postal service hasn't innovated. To pick just a few examples, it was one of the first entities to utilize optical character recognition computer programs, wisely deployed to read addresses on mailpieces. Sorting mail has evolved from a manual, laborious task to a largely mechanized one. It has cut its workforce by more than 100,000 people over the last few decades while still delivering the mail six days a week.

But the USPS has not been rewarded for these advances. In fact, it has effectively been punished for them, since its productivity has made it a constant target for budgetary chicanery to make the federal deficit appear smaller than it is. The modern USPS has been defined by an extended, bipartisan effort to cut costs, especially what it pays its workers, even as every government and consultant review acknowledges delivering 48 percent of the world's mail to some 330 million people is an inherently labor-intensive task, made more intensive every year as there are more people and businesses to deliver mail to. From 2009 to 2018, the USPS had to make deliveries to 8.5 million more homes and businesses with 77,000 fewer employees. And now, in 2020, we are being told yet again the USPS must be more efficient and cut costs. It's no wonder the post office has become an increasingly difficult place to work.

This conflict between "efficiency" and the quality of life for its workers is at the heart of the postal service's troubles, and it is not a new conflict for the post office (or, for that matter, the industrialized world). In 1919, Postmaster General Albert Burleson, a fervent anti-unionist who re-segregated the post office based on race, called unions "a menace to public welfare and should no longer be tolerated or condoned" shortly after declaring it was his goal to get the post office to make money every year (it is worth noting postal unions didn't even have collective bargaining power at the time). In response, National Association of Letter Carriers president Edward Gainor retorted in a union newspaper in early 1920, "Shall a postal surplus be achieved at the expense of inadequate service or underpaid postal employees?" (This reply was documented in historian Philip Rubio's indispensable book Undelivered: From the Great Postal Strike of 1970 to the Manufactured Crisis of the U.S. Postal Service.) Gainor's question is the question that has haunted the USPS for a century.

In recent weeks, millions of Americans have woken up to the USPS’s plight. Americans are aware the post office will serve as a critical link in the chain of democracy, bringing empty ballots to voters and completed ballots back, and they are worried about whether the post office will be able to do that without major incident. But what makes the post office a major source of concern is fundamentally the same thing that concerns us about the state of the country as a whole: that our critical institutions have been starved of resources, that our government is no longer robust enough to deal with new challenges, that it is being run by people uninterested in serving the agency’s stated mission. With respect to the post office, it is an overdue awakening. “Save the post office” has become a widespread sentiment. Indeed, the post office needs saving; it has needed saving for a long time.

We don't need a superhero to save the post office. We need something equally rare. We, as a country, need to agree on something important: that the post office is not a business but a service every American directly benefits from, and therefore every American should pay into. In fact, it is difficult to imagine anything more deserving of tax dollars than a peaceful, civil service that binds every American together, promotes commerce, and serves as a link of last resort to vulnerable populations. Instead of feeding the good thing, we, as a country, have decided to starve it. Reversing this policy would require not just reversing a bad law, but admitting we were wrong about some very big ideas. That is what makes it so difficult, and also so important.

But if there's anything that can possibly accomplish this, it is the post office. I don't believe in superheroes, but if the post office can manage to do that, I just might start believing in one.

The Week In Mail

A postal union member told a San Antonio newspaper they were instructed to hide backlogged mail for a Congressman’s visit to the post office.

DeJoy announced a “suspension” of some of his most controversial policies but it didn’t actually change anything. The USPS will also not reconnect any of the sorting machines it has already unplugged.

There is a massive disconnect between the rhetoric from USPS management, which generally characterizes mail delays as minimal and an unfortunate side effect of new policies, and what postal workers are experiencing on the ground. No wonder the USPS is warning workers not to speak to the press.

While many of DeJoy’s policies are concerning, there’s good reason to believe voting by mail will still work. But mailing your ballot back early can’t hurt.

There’s a growing concern about the process that got DeJoy the job in the first place, including possible undue influence by Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin. Former Vice Chairman of the USPS Board of Governors David Williams told the House Progressive Caucus he resigned because “it became clear to me that the administration was politicizing the Postal Service with the Treasury Secretary as the lead figure for the White House in that effort.”

As disruptive as DeJoy’s changes have been thus far, what he has planned for after the election is way bigger.

Cher, please.

This Machine Arrests Fascists.

Postcards

We’ll post the postcards here! Send me one so this section isn’t empty next week.

VICE Media c/o Aaron Gordon 49 S 2nd St. Brooklyn, NY 11211

The USPS Isn’t Made of Superheroes, But It Is a Miracle syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[our-commons-blog]

The Women’s March The first thing you see is the crowd. The mass of people—most of them women—patiently settling in for the march. Even in the outlying Metro stations on the outer edges of the D.C. suburbs, thousands of people lined up in anticipation, a sea of pink “pussy hats” and marchers cheerfully greeting each other in solidarity. I was, in fact, taken aback when another marcher thanked me for attending the march. “Where else would I be?” I responded. “This is the most important thing in the world right now.” Then, emerging blinking and a little bleary-eyed from the L’enfant Plaza Metro station, you see the real immensity of the crowds. Block after block of people standing up, speaking truth to power. The crowd immediately felt like a community, and organizers were attentive to all their attendees’ needs. One of the members of our group was using a wheelchair, and volunteers sprang into action to make sure we were given a space with a good view of one of the giant screens showing what was happening on the stage. The sign language interpreters were tirelessly working in shifts to relay all of the stories being told. Then, after you settle in, you see the signs. As a media scholar, I am attentive to the ways in which media both depict and permeate events. And the Women’s March was saturated with imagery from and participants in both entertainment and political media. The first sign that stood out for me was held defiantly aloft, proclaiming, “Inaugurate the Resistance,” an allusion to the small, underdog military force led by Princess Leia, played by the late Carrie Fisher. Fisher’s indomitable spirit seemed to permeate the march. Dozens of posters made allusions to the Resistance or included Andy Warhol-style images of Fisher’s iconic heroine. But Star Wars wasn’t the only pop culture touchstone that could be seen on the signs. One sign, tapping into both Harry Potter and Star Wars fandom urged participants to “Resist he who shall not be named.” Others cleverly hearkened back to Mary Poppins: “Super Callous Fascist Racist Extra Braggadocios.” In addition, “stars” from the political and entertainment worlds were featured as key speakers. These included celebrities such as Ashley Judd, who offered a passionate spoken-word reclamation of the phrase “nasty woman,” and politicians such as Kirsten Gillibrand, who promised to fight for civil rights, but also activists such as Angela Davis and even Sophie Cruz, the brave six-year old who spoke in both English and Spanish about how the children of undocumented residents might be affected under a Trump administration. In that sense, the March was deeply grounded in the history of protest and civil rights. Davis’s message of political activism meshed with more contemporary narratives—including popular storylines that could help give meaning and an identity to the groups assembled throughout the country. And it was this spirit of pop-culture inflected defiance that stuck with me after the march. As a resident of North Carolina, I’m a veteran protestor, spending countless summer evenings joining the Moral Monday protests, where signs implored the state government to “stop making our state the subject of The Daily Show.” And it’s this ability to laugh, to mock, to take existing discourses and to reactivate them, that made me believe in the creative power of the Resistance. The signs were, by far, the most visible expression of the energy of the crowd. The Women’s March was not just about speaking back against Trump as an individual who has engaged in sexist behavior or even a misogynistic culture that not only tolerated but also tacitly accepted his behavior. They were a manifestation of a culture of resistance that is in the process of defining itself. We can now see this spirit of opposition manifesting itself on an almost daily basis in protests across the country. This does not diminish the real—and difficult—work of organizing, or the potentially risky work of standing up against the many inhumane policies announced in Trump’s executive orders on immigration, voting rights, abortion gag rules, and torture. Michael Moore’s speech outlined the pragmatic tasks we must add to our daily routines: the calls to our Congressional representatives, the phone banks and other grunt work that is part of our democracy. Of course, the March isn’t just a singular event. The fact that organizers were able to put together a mass march in such a short amount of time may no longer come as a surprise in the age of digital media, as Zeynep Tufekci reminds us (https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/does-a-protests-size-matter.html?referer=). What matters, of course, is what happens after the March. How it fits into new political narratives and new perceptions of women’s roles. Just days after the March, for example, a North Carolina state representative, Joyce Krawiec, tweeted (http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2017/01/24/north-carolina-senator-tells-women-marchers-brains-lard-couldnt-grease-small-skillet/), “Message to crazies @ Women’s March – If Brains were lard, you couldn’t grease a small skillet. You know who you are.” The response from people sympathetic to the march was fast and furious. Some constituents sent her buckets of lard, while others used Twitter to demand an apology. Many of the morning news shows also sought to cast the March as a singular event. Others have isolated controversial speakers as an attempt to derail and distract. Therefore, it is absolutely vital that attendees of the March—and others sympathetic to its politics—dive into the dirty work of a democracy. As I have commented elsewhere, The Resistance has made civic engagement sexy again. It’s time to keep it that way. -Chuck Tryon