#Hairy Larry Writes - Home | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thisismandee · 5 years

Text

The Rebel and The Criminal

This is the last chapter following the actual script. I do plan on continuing this story. I don't know how long I will continue it but we shall find out. I just wanted to say thank you to everyone that had read this story so far.

Chapter 11) Sincerely Yours

We all sat there in silence for a minute. I was shocked that she gave into peer pressure that was surrounding her.

"I never did it either, I'm not a nymphomaniac, I'm a compulsive liar." Allison says with a cheeky grin on her face.

"You are such a bitch! You did that on purpose just to fuck me over!" Claire yelled at Allison. She had every right to be upset, Allison sat there and pushed Claire to the edge.

"I would do it you love someone it's okay." Allsion says. I think she is trying to defuse the tense situation, but I don't think it is going to work.

"I can't believe you, you're so weird. You don't say anything all day and then when you open your mouth...you unload all these tremendous lies all over me!"

"She has a right to be upset. You all did just attack her all at once." I said trying to stand up for Claire. She looked over and gave me a small smile.

"You're just pissed off because she got you to admit something you didn't want to admit to" Andrew directs towards Claire.

"Okay, fine, but that doesn't make it any less bizarre." Claire did have a point. The one time Allison has a full conversation with us, it is to get Claire to admit information of her personal life.

"What's bizarre? I mean we're all pretty bizarre! Some of us are just better at hiding it, that's all." Andrew also has a point. I had my own secrets, but I have just been good at hiding them.

"How are you bizarre?" Claire looks at him doubtful.

Allison is quick to answer for him. "He can't think for himself." She gives him a look. Like she knew things about Andrew. Was there something going on between the two of them and I just haven't noticed it.

" She's right. Do you guys know what, uh, what I did to get in here? I taped Larry Lester's buns together." I had heard about that, but I didn't know that it was Andrew that did that.

"That was you?" Brian asks.

"Yeah, you know him?"

Brian nods his head, "Yeah, I know him."

"Well then you know how hairy he is, right? Well, when they pulled the tape off, most of his hair came off and some, some skin too." I give him a look of disappointment. I can tell from his face though that he feels bad about what has happened. He continues to tell his story. "And the bizarre thing is, is that I did it for my old man...I tortured this poor kid, because I wanted him to think that I was cool. He's always going off about, you know, when he was in school...all the wild things he used to do. And I got the feeling that he was disappointed that I never cut loose on anyone, right...So, I'm...I'm sitting in the locker room, and I'm taping up my knee. And Larry's undressing a couple lockers down from me. Yeah...he's kinda... he's kinda skinny, weak. And I started thinking about my father, and his attitude about weakness. And the next thing I knew, I uh, I jumped on top of him and started wailing on him...And my friends, they just laughed and cheered me on. And afterwards, when I was sittin' in Vernon's office, all I could think about was Larry's father. And Larry having' to go home and...and explain what happened to him. And the humiliation...fucking humiliation he mustuv felt. It must've been unreal...I mean." Andrew has tears in his eyes. " I mean, how do you apologize for something like that? There's no way...it's all because of me and my old man. Oh God, I fucking hate him! He's like this...he's like this mindless machine that I can't even relate to anymore..."Andrew, you've got to be number one! I won't tolerate any losers in this family...Your intensity is for shit! Win. Win! WIN!" You son of a bitch! You know, sometimes, I wish my knee would give...and I wouldn't be able to wrestle anymore. And he could forget all about me."

I didn't notice it until now, but I also had tears in my eyes. I felt bad for Andrew and what he had to go through at home, and the way that it made him act in person. "I think your old man and my old man should get together and go bowling." Bender says from his spot in the circle. Andrew lets out a laugh. I then hear Brian starting to talk.

"It's like me, you know, with my grades...like, when I, when I step outside myself kinda, and when I, when I look in at myself you know? And I see me and I don't like what I see, I really don't."

"What's wrong with you? Why don't you like yourself?" Claire asks him.

"'Cause I'm stupid...'cause I'm failing shop. See we had this assignment, to make this ceramic elephant, and um...and we had eight weeks to do it and we're s'posed ta, and it was like a lamp, and when you pull the trunk the light was s'posed to go on...my light didn't go on, I got a F on it. Never got a F in my life... When I signed up, you know, for the course I mean. I thought I was playing it real smart, you know. 'Cause I thought, I'll take shop, it'll be such an easy way to maintain my grade point average." I scoffed. He thought it was going to be easy? Shop actually takes some smarts.

"Why'd you think it'd be easy?" Bender asks him. I could tell that he was annoyed.

"Have you seen some of the dopes that take shop?" Brian asks.

" I take shop...you must be a fuckin' idiot!"

"I'm a fuckin' idiot because I can't make a lamp?"

"No, you're a genius because you can't make a lamp." I could sense the anger in Benders voice.

"What do you know about Trigonometry?"

"I could care less about Trigonometry."

"Bender, did you know without Trigonometry there'd be no engineering?" Brian questions Bender. I don't get why these boys were arguing over something that was so stupid.

"Without lamps, there'd be no light!" Bender says back. Okay this conversation was going nowhere and it wasn't needed. Why are they arguing over something so miniscule.

"Okay so neither one of you is any better than the other one," I say to both of them. They stop their pointless arguing.

"I can write with my toes! I can also eat, brush my teeth." Allison adds to the conversation. I was so confused on what was going on. She was so random, but she did know how to diffuse this situation.

"With you feet?" Claire asks.

"Play Heart & Soul on the piano." Allison adds.

"I can make spaghetti!" Brain says.

"I can, uh, tape all your buns together." Andrew jokes.

" I can speak latin, Its weird but I can do it." I say trying to add to the conversation.

" I wanna see what Claire can do." Bender says.

"I can't do anything." Claire insists.

"Now, everybody can do something."

"There's one thing I can do, no forget it, it's way too embarrassing."

"You ever seen Wild Kingdom?" Bender asks. "I mean that guy's been doing that show for thirty years."

Claire finally gives in. "Okay, but you have to swear to God you won't laugh. I can't believe I'm actually doing this." She takes out a lipstick and opens it. She places it in between he breasts and applies the lipstick from her cleavage. She lifts her head and the lipstick is perfectly applied. I do have to admit I was impressed. Me and everyone else claps. But then I hear Bender clapping sarcastically and slow.

" All right, great! Where'd you learn to do that?" Andrew asks Claire.

"Camp, seventh grade." She says as she is putting away the lipstick.

"That was great Claire, my image of you is totally blown." Bender says sarcastically. He is being an asshole. He needs to watch himself.

I slap him, "You're a shit! Don't do that to her. You swore to God you wouldn't laugh!" I screamed at him. He was being so rude. He looks over to me.

"Am I laughing?"

"You fucking prick!" Andrew says, also standing up for Claire.

"What do you care what I think, anyway? I don't even count, right? I could disappear forever and it wouldn't make any difference...I may as well not even exist at this school, remember?" Bender was throwing Andrews words back at him. Yes, Andrew did say that, but John was being a complete douche bag to Claire right now. He turns to Claire. "And you, don't like me anyway"

"You know, I have just as many feelings as you do and it hurts just as much when somebody steps all over them!" I could tell Claire was getting tears in her eyes and she was about to start crying.

"God, you're so pathetic!" John was getting very angry with her at this point. "Don't you ever...ever! Compare yourself to me! Okay? You got everything, and I got shit! Fuckin' Rapunzel, right? School would probably fucking shut down if you didn't show up! "Queenie isn't here!" I like those earrings Claire." He was taking this too far.

"Shut up." Claire mumbles.

"Are those real diamonds, Claire?" Why did he have to take it this far.

"Shut up!" Claire was now getting angry.

"I bet they are. Did you work for the money for those earrings?" He doesn't know how to be nice does he?

"Shut your mouth!" Claire is kicking him to try to get him to stop.

"Or did your daddy buy those?"

Claire is now crying, "Shut up!" he screams at him.

"I bet he bought those for you! I bet those are a Christmas gift! Right? You know what I got for Christmas this year? It was a banner fuckin' year at the old Bender family! I got a carton of cigarettes. The old man grabbed me and said "Hey! Smoke up Johnny!"" He notices Claire's tears. "Okay, so go home'n cry to your daddy, don't cry here, okay?" He needs to be put in his place. I lean over and slap him across the face.

"Will you stop it! Leave her alone! She doesn't deserve you being a fucking asshole to her! Just leave her the fuck alone!" I yelled at him. He looks at me but doesn't say anything back. His hand is to his face from where I slapped him.

"My God, are we gonna be like our parents?" Andrews asks.

"Not me, ever." Claire answers.

"It's unavoidable, it just happens." Allsion says.

"What happens?"

"When you grow up, your heart dies." Allison seems somber. But I feel she is right. I can see myself in my mother everyday, and it makes me scared.

"Who cares?" Bender asks.

"I care."Allsion looks like she is about to cry.

"I care too." I added. I also felt tears forming in my eyes. Bender looked over at me. He looked like he actually cared how I felt about the situation.

"Um, I was just thinking, I mean. I know it's kind of a weird time, but I was just wondering, um, what is gonna happen to us on Monday? When we're all together again? I mean I consider you guys my friends, I'm not wrong, am I?" Brian asked the group. I have to admit I hadn't thought about this until now. I felt like I would still be friends with them. I was new here so I didn't have many friends, and I had gotten to know them pretty well just in this one Saturday.

"No" Andrew answers the question.

"So, so on Monday, what happens?" Brian asks

"Are we still friends, you mean? If we're friends now, that is?" Claire asks him to clarify.

"Yeah."

"Do you want the truth?" I had a feeling Claire was about to say something that was going to be mean.

"Yeah, I want the truth."

"I don't think so." Claire seems somber from this answer. I felt the tears coming again in my eyes. I was hoping that some way, we all can be friends after this, but I guess I was wrong.

"Well, do you mean all of us or just John?" Allison ask Claire.

"With all of you." Claire looks over at me. She can tell that I am upset, but she doesn't change her answer.

"That's a real nice attitude, Claire!" Andrew snaps at her.

"Oh, be honest, Andy...if Brian came walking up to you in the hall on Monday, what would you do? I mean picture this, you're there with all the sports. I know exactly what you'd do, you'd say hi to him and when he left you'd cut him all up so your friends wouldn't think you really liked him!" She was trying to justify her answer, but it wasn't working.

"No Way!" Andrew says. I feel like he really means it though. I could see, come Monday, I'm walking down the halls and I see Andrew and we mutually say Hi to each other. I feel like he wouldn't stoop that low.

"Okay, what if I or Mandy came up to you?" Allison asks Claire.

Claire looks upset to have to answer the question truthfully. "Same exact thing." At that moment I feel a tear on my cheek. Clair had been there for me, and I had been there for her, but on Monday all of that was going to be different. I thought, maybe just maybe I had made some sort of friend finally at this school. I look over at Bender and he sees that I am upset. He then addresses Claire.

"You are a bitch!" He yells at her. I can tell that he was getting very angry with her.

"Why? 'Cause I'm telling the truth, that makes me a bitch?"

"No! 'Cause you know how shitty that is to do to someone! And you don't got the balls to stand up to your friends and tell 'em that you're gonna like who you wanna like!" He was furious.

"Okay, what about you, you hypocrite! Why don't you take Allison to one of your heavy metal vomit parties? Or take Brian out to the parking lot at lunch to get high? What about Andy for that matter, what about me? What about Mandy? What would your friends say if you were walking down the hall with her. They'd laugh their asses off and you'd probably tell them you were doing it with her so they'd forgive you for being seen with her." I was completely crying right now. Why did I have to be brought into this conversation. After what Claire told me earlier. This just makes me more upset, because was she telling me the truth, or just saying things to make me feel better? I wanted to leave so badly.

" Don't you ever talk about my friends! You don't know any of my friends, you don't look at any of my friends and you certainly wouldn't condescend to speak to any of my friends so you just stick to the things you know, shopping, nail polish, your father's BMW and your poor-rich-drunk mother in the Carribean!" He yelled at her again.

"Shut up!" Claire is now crying too.

"And as far as being concerned about what's gonna happen when Mandy and I walk down the hallways at school, you can stay out of it. It is none of you business. Just bury you head in the sand, and wait for your fuckin prom!" This comment made me feel a bit better. It felt like he was sticking up for me. I still couldn't help but cry, but I did feel some sort of comfort.

"I hate you!" Claire sneered at him.

"Yeah? Good!" There was silence, then Brian speaks up.

"Then I assume me, Allison, and Mandy are better people than you guys, huh? Us weirdos." He turns to Allsion. "Do you, would you do that to me?"

"I don't have any friends." She responds.

"Well if you did?"

"No...I don't think the kind of friends I'd have would mind." Brian then looks over in my direction.

"Would you ever do that to me or Allison?"

"No, after today, all of you are my friends, in my mind anyways." I wiped away a stray tear.

"I just wanna tell, each of you, that I wouldn't do that...I wouldn't and I will not! 'Cause I think that's real shitty." Brain was getting visually upset.

"Your friends wouldn't mind because they look up to us." Claire speaks up. Brina and me both let out a laugh.

"You're so conceited, Claire. You're so conceited. You're so, like, full of yourself, why are you like that?"

Claire is crying again. I don't get why though. She is the one that is being rude. "I'm not saying that to be conceited! I hate it! I hate having to go along with everything my friends say!"

"Well then why do you do it?" I ask Claire.

She looks over at me. Then she addresses everyone in the group. " I don't know, I don't...you don't understand..you don't. You're not friends with the same kind of people that Andy and I are friends with! You know, you just don't understand the pressure that they can put on you!" Brian has a shocked expression on his face.

" I don't understand what? You think I don't understand pressure, Claire? Well fuck you! Fuck you!" He hides his face in his sleeve but I can tell that he is crying. "Know why I'm here today? Do you? I'm here because Mr. Ryan found a gun in the locker."

I was stunned. My mind started going to the worst of the worst situations. I then realized that we didn't really know much about each other.

"Why'd you have the gun in your locker?" Andrew asks Brian.

"I tried. You pull the fuckin' trunk on it and the light's s'posed to go on...and it didn't go on, I mean, I..." Brian didn't really answer the question. He was avoiding it.

Andrew asks again, "What's the gun for Brian?"

"Just forget it"

"You brought it up, man."

" I can't have an F, I can't have it and I know my parents can't have it! Even if I aced the rest of the semester, I'm still only a B. And everything's ruined for me!" My heart goes out to him. I had times in my life where I felt that type of low, but I was never pushed that far to even get my hands on a gun.

"Oh Brian" Claire says.

"So I considered my options, you know?" Brian says.

"No, killing yourself is not an option." I say calmly to Brian.

"Well, I didn't do it, did I? No, I don't think so."

"It was a handgun?" Allsion asks him.

"No, it was a flare gun, went off in my locker."

"Really?" Andrew asks and then he lets out a laugh. I was confused.

"It's not funny." Brian says. Soone everyone starts to laugh, even me. It was a pretty sad, but funny situation. Soon Brian is even laughing. "Yeas it is, fucking elepahnt was destroyed."

"You wanna know what I did to get in here?" Allsion asks. We all look over to her. I was curious. "Nothing, I didn't have anything better to do." I started to laugh with everyone else. That is pretty comical. "You're laughing at me," She says.

"No." Says Andrew. But then Allsion starts to laugh.

"Yeah you are!" Allsion says in between her laughs. After everyone lets out their laughs, Bender looks over to me.

"What about you Mandy? I think you are the only one we don't know about. What did you do to end up in this wonderful Saturday detention?"

"You guys know Mr. Ryan, this history teacher? Well we all know that he is an a-hole right? Well, I don't appreciate A-holes. So, on wednesday, he was talking about something but then for some reason he decided to talk about his personal opinions about a topic. He was getting out of hand so I asked him, 'Are you always so stupid or is today a special occasion?' And as I was leaving the classroom, I might have flipped him the bird." I say chuckling thinking back to that day. He was such an asshole and he deserved that.

Everyone seemed shocked that I said something like that to a teacher. I know why. I am a shy person most of the time but if you push me over the edge I am like a loose cannon. I just couldn't help it. Soon everyone is laughing again, because let's be honest, Mr. Ryan deserved it.

Brian gets up from the circle and goes into one of the offices. Soon, we hear music playing, we all start dancing around the library. On tables, on the second floor, just everywhere. We were free for those few moments. Nothing was holding us back. It was the best couple of minutes ever!

I looked up at the clock and realized that it was 3:15. I went and grabbed Bender. I don't think he realized the time. "Hey, you have to get going, if Vernon finds you here, you are for sure dead meat."

"I guess you are right, here come with me I am going to need some help." He grabs my hand as we go to the second floor. I watched as he climbed on a table and opened up the duct in the wall. "Hey" John looks down at me. "I just wanted to say, that on monday, I would say hi to you. Also, I had a good time with you this Saturday, thank you."

Was John Bender saying thank you? "Thank you? Are you going soft on me?"

"I'm not going soft, hell no. and you should appreciate the 'thank you' those only come along every ten years." He laughs and I let out a laugh as well. I then look up at him, and there is silence between us. Our eyes meet, it all of a sudden felt like there was a magnet between the two of us. I started to get closer to him, and he started to lean down, but then he turned around real quick. He had a nervous look on his face. "Hey see you at 4, sweets."

I felt embarrassed. Were we going to kiss just then or was that just my imagination. I decided to ignore it. "Yeah see you at 4, troublemaker." He smirked and climbed into the duct. I joined the group again.

They were all sitting on the railing just waiting for the time to go by faster. Claire broke the silence. "Brian?"

"Yeah?" Brina answered.

"Are you gonna write your paper?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Well, it's kinda a waste for all of us to write our paper, don't you think?" Claire did have a point.

"Oh, but that's what Vernon wants us to do."

"True, but I think we'd all kinda say the same thing." Again another good point from Claire.

"You just don't want to write your paper...Right? "

"True, but, you're the smartest, right?"

I could tell that this flattery was getting to Brian. "Oh, well."

"We trust you." I say to Brian. He looks over at all of us and we all nod in agreement.

"Alright, I'll do it." Brian finally agrees.

"Great." Claire then looks over at Allison and then me, then back at Allison. "Come on."

"Where are we going?" Allison asks. Claire is practically dragged me and Allison with her.

"Yeah, Claire where are we going?" I ask for myself.

We move to the back of the library and Claire empties out her makeup bag. She then pushes back Allison's hair and starts to do her makeup. I do have to admit she had a way to really highlight someone's assets. "Mandy, can you go in my bag and grab the white top I have in there?" Claire asks me.

"Yeah." I start rummaging through her bag and I finally find the top she is talking about. "Here" I say as I hand over the top to Claire.

"Thanks." She takes the shirt. "You know you really do look a lot better without all that black shit on your eyes."

"Hey, I like that black shit." Allison says.

"This looks a lot better, look up."

"Please, why are you being so nice to me?" Allison asks. I just stand by and watch Claire work her magic. I had to admit that Allison was starting to look like a completely different person.

"Because you're letting me." Claire puts on what I am guessing the finishing touches. Allison then goes to change into the white blouse. Claire and me go back to join the boys. "Hey Mandy, I just want to say sorry about what I said earlier. I was just very upset and I was speaking in the moment. I shouldn't have brought you up in that argument with John. That kid just really gets under my skin and I can't stand it. I just knew that mentioning you was going to get him upset, so that's why I did it, and I just want to apologize."

I was happy that Claire was apologizing. "Thank you, and I forgive you." I thought about Monday. I really hope that the conversation earlier was able to sway Claire, because I really wouldn't mind being her friend. All of a sudden the doors from the room Allison was changing in open up and she walks out. She looks completely different. Her hair is pushed back and you can see her face. She was gorgeous. The boys look up and see her. Allison walks right up to Andrew. He looks like he is in shock.

" What happened to you?" Andrew asks her.

"Why? Claire did it! What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, it's just so different. I can see your face."

"Is that good or bad?" Allison asks him concerned.

"It's good!"

Seeing them makes my heart melt. They were so cute, and I could see them being with each other after this Saturday. It dawned on me that I had some unfinished business to take care of.

I leave the library and start to walk the halls cautiously. I was looking for any sign of life. As I turned the corner I see that the light was on in a supply closet. I opened the door with the hopes that I found what I was searching for. When I opened the door I wasn't disappointed. I found John Bender on what looked like a spare desk. He looked up at me.

"You lost?" He asks. I just smile at him, and he smiles back. I swallowed the lump that was in my throat. I walked closer to him and it felt like everything was moving in slow motion. I was now inches away from Bender. His eyes were still locked on mine. I decided I had to go for it. I leaned forward. And I closed my eyes, before I knew it my lips met his. I felt him reciprocate the kiss. I felt butterflies in my stomach. This is what I had been waiting to do for what feels like ever. He breaks the kiss.

"Why'd you do that?" He asks.

"Because I knew you wouldn't" I smile at him. I did have one question that I want answered. "Am I just a girl you would just consider? Or..?"

He leans in and gives me a kiss. This one I lean into, and it felt like I was on cloud nine. I wrapped my arms around his neck. He again broke the kiss. "Mandy, no. You are different than any other girl I have ever met." I give him a quick kiss. That was the answer I was hoping for. I quickly left the closet, before I got caught.

As I was walking back to the library I could feel that my cheeks were beat red. This had been the best Saturday that I had had in a long time. When I got back to the library we only had two minutes left, so I took my seat and waited.

Before I knew it all six of us were walking down the hallway together. I was holding Benders hand the whole way. Allison was holding Andrews, and we all had huge smiles on our faces. We pass Carl on the way out.

"See ya Brian" Carl says.

"Hey Carl" Brian recipricates.

"See you next Saturday." Bender adds.

"You bet!"

We all leave the school and split off into our own ways. Brian waves as he gets into his parents car. Claire does the same and they drive off. I see Allison and Andrew share a kiss before Allison gets into her car. I was so happy that they found each other during this detention. I look over to Bender.

"You walking home?" He asks.

"Yeah, I don't live that far away."

"Want to walk together?" I squeeze his hand as a yes. We begin to walk through the football field. I look up at John. I swear this is the happiest he has been all day. I couldn't help myself. I stood on my tippy toes and gave him a kiss on his cheek. He looked down at me and then forward again. He then shot his arm up in a fist. Best Saturday Ever!

Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you're crazy to make an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, a rebel, and a criminal. Does that answer your question?

Sincerely yours,

The Breakfast Club

#the breakfast club #breakfast club #john bender x reader #john bender x oc #john bender #brian johnson #claire standish #andrew clark #allison reynolds #fanfiction #fanfic #therebelandthecriminal

30 notes · View notes

mewhenhorrormovies · 4 years

Text

You swine. You vulgar little maggot. You worthless bag of filth. As we

say in Texas, you couldn't pour water out of a boot with instructions

printed on the heel. You are a canker, an open wound. I would rather

kiss a lawyer than be seen with you. You took your last vacation in

the Islets of Langerhans.

You're a putrescent mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little

worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a

cad, and a weasel. I take that back; you are a festering pustule on a

weasel's rump. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench,

a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon.

I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same

species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at

the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut.

Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are

a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. You are a technicolor yawn.

And did I mention that you smell?

You are a squeaking rat, a mistake of nature and a heavy-metal bagpipe

player. You were not born. You were hatched into an unwilling world

that rejects the likes of you. You didn't crawl out of a normal egg,

either, but rather a mutant maggot egg rejected by an evil scientist

as being below his low standards. Your alleged parents abandoned you

at birth and then died of shame in recognition of what they had done

to an unsuspecting world. They were a bit late.

Try to edit your responses of unnecessary material before attempting

to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a

nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able

to access it ever so much more rapidly. If cluelessness were crude

oil, your scalp would be crawling with caribou.

You are a thick-headed trog. I have seen skeet with more sense than

you have. You are a few bricks short of a full load, a few cards short

of a full deck, a few bytes short of a full core dump, and a few

chromosomes short of a full human. Worse than that, you top-post. God

created houseflies, cockroaches, maggots, mosquitos, fleas, ticks,

slugs, leeches, and intestinal parasites, then he lowered his

standards and made you. I take it back; God didn't make you. You are

Satan's spawn. You are Evil beyond comprehension, half-living in the

slough of despair. You are the entropy which will claim us all. You

are a green-nostriled, crossed eyed, hairy-livered inbred

trout-defiler. You make Ebola look good.

You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid,

nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an

ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with

you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in

a land that reality forgot. You are not ANSI compliant and your markup

doesn't validate. You have a couple of address lines shorted together.

You should be promoted to Engineering Manager.

Do you really expect your delusional and incoherent ramblings to be

read? Everyone plonked you long ago. Do you fantasize that your

tantrums and conniption fits could possibly be worth the $0.000000001

worth of electricity used to send them? Your life is one big

W.O.M.B.A.T. and your future doesn't look promising either. We need to

trace your bloodline and terminate all siblings and cousins in order

to cleanse humanity of your polluted genes. The good news is that no

normal human would ever mate with you, so we won't have to go into the

sewers in search of your git.

You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and

obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living

emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a

loathsome disease, a drooling inbred cross-eyed toesucker. You make

Quakers shout and strike Pentecostals silent. You have a version 1.0

mind in a version 6.12 world. Your mother had to tie a pork chop

around your neck just to get your dog to play with you. You think

that HTTP://WWW.GUYMACON.COM/FUN/INSULT/INDEX.HTM is the name of a

rock band. You believe that P.D.Q. Bach is the greatest composer who

ever lived. You prefer L. Ron Hubbard to Larry Niven and Jerry

Pournelle. Hee-Haw is too deep for you. You would watch test patterns

all day if the other inmates would let you.

On a good day you're a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are

deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of

wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted.

Spammers look down on you. Phone sex operators hang up on you.

Telemarketers refuse to be seen in public with you. You are the source

of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go.

May you choke on your own foolish opinions. You are a Pusillanimous

galactophage and you wear your sister's training bra. Don't bother

opening the door when you leave - you should be able to slime your

way out underneath. I hope that when you get home your mother runs

out from under the porch and bites you.

You smarmy lagerlout git. You bloody woofter sod. Bugger off, pillock.

You grotty wanking oik artless base-court apple-john. You clouted

boggish foot-licking half-twit. You dankish clack-dish plonker. You

gormless crook-pated tosser. You bloody churlish boil-brained clotpole

ponce. You craven dewberry pisshead cockup pratting naff. You cockered

bum-bailey poofter. You gob-kissing gleeking flap-mouthed coxcomb. You

dread-bolted fobbing beef-witted clapper-clawed flirt-gill. May your

spouse be blessed with many bastards.

You are so clueless that if you dressed in a clue skin, doused yourself

in clue musk, and did the clue dance in the middle of a field of horny

clues at the height of clue mating season, you still would not have a

clue. If you were a movie you would be a double feature;

_Battlefield_Earth_ and _Moron_Movies_II_. You would be out of focus.

You are a fiend and a sniveling coward, and you have bad breath. You

are the unholy spawn of a bandy-legged hobo and a syphilitic camel.

You wear strangely mismatched clothing with oddly placed stains. You

are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just knowing that

you exist. I despise everything about you, and I wish you would go

away. You are jetsam who dreams of becoming flotsam. You won't make

it. I beg for sweet death to come and remove me from a world which

became unbearable when you crawled out of a harpy's lair.

It is hard to believe how incredibly stupid you are. Stupid as a stone

that the other stones make fun of. So stupid that you have traveled

far beyond stupid as we know it and into a new dimension of stupid.

Meta-stupid. Stupid cubed. Trans-stupid stupid. Stupid collapsed to

a singularity where even the stupons have collapsed into stuponium.

Stupid so dense that no intelligence can escape. Singularity stupid.

Blazing hot summer day on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one

minute than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. It cannot

be possible that anything in our universe can really be this stupid.

This is a primordial fragment from the original big stupid bang. A pure

extract of stupid with absolute stupid purity. Stupid beyond the laws

of nature. I must apologize. I can't go on. This is my epiphany of

stupid. After this experience, you may not hear from me for a while.

I don't think that I can summon the strength left to mock your moronic

opinions and malformed comments about boring trivia or your other

drivel. Duh.

The only thing worse than your logic is your manners. I have snipped

away most of your of what you wrote, because, well ... it didn't

really say anything. Your attempt at constructing a creative flame was

pitiful. I mean, really, stringing together a bunch of insults among a

load of babbling was hardly effective... Maybe later in life, after

you have learned to read, write, spell, and count, you will have more

success. True, these are rudimentary skills that many of us "normal"

people take for granted that everyone has an easy time of mastering.

But we sometimes forget that there are "challenged" persons in this

world who find these things to be difficult. If I had known that this

was true in your case then I would have never have exposed myself to

what you wrote. It just wouldn't have been "right." Sort of like

parking in a handicap space. I wish you the best of luck in the

emotional, and social struggles that seem to be placing such a

demand on you.

P.S.: You are hypocritical, greedy, violent, malevolent, vengeful,

cowardly, deadly, mendacious, meretricious, loathsome, despicable,

belligerent, opportunistic, barratrous, contemptible, criminal,

fascistic, bigoted, racist, sexist, avaricious, tasteless, idiotic,

brain-damaged, imbecilic, insane, arrogant, deceitful, demented, lame,

self-righteous, byzantine, conspiratorial, fraudulent,

libelous, bilious, splenetic, spastic, ignorant, clueless, EDLINoid,

illegitimate, harmful, destructive, dumb, evasive, double-talking,

devious, revisionist, narrow, manipulative, paternalistic,

fundamentalist, dogmatic, idolatrous, unethical, cultic, diseased,

suppressive, controlling, restrictive, malignant, deceptive, dim,

crazy, weird, dyspeptic, stifling, uncaring, plantigrade, grim,

unsympathetic, jargon-spouting, censorious, secretive, aggressive,

mind-numbing, arassive, poisonous, flagrant, self-destructive,

abusive, socially-retarded, puerile, and Generally Not Good.

#oh my word #my friend found this #she said ‘oh my word look at what i found! lets send it to savannah’ so we sid #but i wanted to share it with yall not because i dont like yall but because you could send this to somebody you hate #have at it

1 note · View note

philippmichelreichold · 5 years

Text

#review #scifi Space Infantry by Dave Drake et al

Space Infanty is a Military Science Fiction anthology edited by Drave Drake, Charles G. Waugh and Martin Greenberg. It contains stories by a dozen authors spanning 3 decades. In order of appearance they are:

"The Rocketeers Have Shaggy Ears," by Keith Bennett; "His Truth Goes Marching On," by Jerry Pournelle; "But as a Soldier, For His Country," by Stephen Goldin; " Soldier Boy," by Michael Shaara; "Code-Name Feirefitz," by David Drake; "The Foxholes of Mars," by Fritz Lieber;

"Conqueror," by Larry Eisenberg; "Warrior," by Gordon R. Dickson; "Message to an Alien," by Keith Laumer;

". . . Not a Prison Make," by Joseph P. Martino; "The Hero," by George R. R. Martin, and "End Game," by Joe Haldeman.

Of the lot, Joe Haldeman, Gordon R. Dickson, Jerry Pournelle and Fritz Leiber are Hugo Award winners, though not for these stories. Mr. Drake and Mr. Haldeman served in Viet Nam. Their experiences color and inform their stories. Mr. Drake once said that his Hammers Slammers stories were partly therapy. Though clumped together as "Space Infantry," these stories run a wide gamut in attitude and outlook, and they need not strictly speaking be about Infantryman at all. Anyone simply seeking simple action adventure, bang-bang-your-dead, stories may be disappointed. There is so much more here than that. Anyone looking for high quality writing should read these stories. They stand out as excellent severally and separately. The book is essential to anyone with more than a superficial interest in Military Science Fiction-- especially anyone interested in the crafting or the history of Military Sci Fi.

The Rocketeers Have Shaggy Ears Mr. Bennett's story is not so much about ground sloggers as downed rocketeers who get the job done regardless of any obstacles and who coincidentally save their corps from absorption or disbandment. The basis for the title, according to Drake, is a song-- "The Mountaineeers Have Hairy Ears," whose lyrics I'll not reproduce here, and which carries the same emotional load of the Viet Nam Era, "don't mean nothin" in the context of having just had one's eye shot out. Mr. Drake was half a generation removed from Rocketeers, as I am from Drake's Slammers. In the context of today's milieu, the story is shockingly militaristic and imperialistic, much reflective of the attitude of the times in which it was written, 1950. No consideration is given to the real estate and no quarter to the natives. AS I said, the these admitted "Sons of bi-- er, Space" get the job done. There is of course a problem with some stories written in the 1950's. The idiom is changed. Readers of today may find it difficult to relate to.

His Truth Goes Marching On Dr. Pounelle is a Politcal Scientist and this story is as much a poli-sci treatise as it is a work of military science fiction. It is of course set in the Falkenberg's Legion universe before the collapse of the Co-Dominion and the ascension of Lysander to the Spartan throne, just prior to Ace Barton and Peter Owensford signing up with Colonel Falkenberg. Don't get me wrong, there's enough army life and gun play and slogging through mud for anyone's taste. There's also betrayal and a nuke.The story is well worth the read for anyone with a brain. But you won't know the truth till you read that last couple of paragraphs.

But as a Soldier, For His Country, Quoth the author, "It's a young man's story, venting frustration at the futility and lunacy of war." It grew into the novel, The Eternity Brigade. I'm one of those people made uncomfortable by this story. But guess what-- the purpose of good writing is not to make the reader feel good. Imagine the sheer unpleasantness and daily grind of war. Then imagine the worst parts. Imagine dying in battle. Then imagine being resurrected and even copied countless times for an age, till finally you meet yourself in battle. A well wriiten reductio ad absurdum.

Soldier Boy Michael Shaara won the Pulitzer Prize for The Killer Angels, a novel about the Battle of Gettysburg. "Soldier Boy" was also made into a novel; it tells the story of the lone soldier, at a number of disadvantages, that must come to grips with a superior opponent through his native intelligence and leadership skills. It's a well crafted story about a young man coming into his own. The antagonistis remarkable. Code-Name Feirefitz Despite being in law school, David Drake was drafted to serve in Viet Nam. He eventually became a member of a Battalion Information Center with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. His experiences there form the basis of his Hammer's Slammers stories. The prime movers in "Code Name Feirefitz" are not the highly capable Captain Esa Mboya or his Golf Company Slammers, but two civilans. Their conflict is key to Mboya's own conflict between duty and conscience. The story contrasts the grittiness and hardness of the soldiers as they set about doing their duty with the composure and quiet persistence of Esa's brother Juma as he does his. Their dedication contrasts with the desperate selfishness of ben Khedda as he seeks to sacrifice anyone to survive. The faith of Jooma plays against that of the Kaid who will risk anything to save his people, and both stand out against the faithlessness of ben Khedda.

The Foxholes of Mars Fritz Leiber has won numerous awards-- one of the great masters of Science Fiction. Leiber's opening imagery and setting creation is masterful. Leiber's prose is deep and lush with layers of meaning. War is just the setting for a deep and not terrible pleasnt look deep into a man's soul-- the soul of a budding demagouge. I find no indication that this story won Hugo or Nebula. It should have. It's shocking that an anthology containing this story should be available for a penny. This story in and of itsself is priceless.

Conqueror Eisenber crafts his story well, creating a believable setting and a sympathetic protangonis in a story that starts out being a story about the lone foot slogger a long way from home and in need of human contact, validation of his own humanity. Ends up as a story about successful psy-ops and asymmetric warfare against an occupying force.

Warrior The first Gordon Dickson I read was the short story "Soldier Ask Not" in The Hugo Winners. Warrior is a side piece to his Childe Cycle stories, about the Dorsai general Ian Graeme. It is included in the anthology Lost Dorsai.

Though the action of the story takes place far from the battlefields of the Splinter worlds, it is full of strategy, including the principle of calculated risk, and tactics. (Including Tactics of Mistake-- this is a Graeme we're talking about.) It portrays Graeme as the Dorsai archetype-- not only the consummate soldier, but a man who would cross all of Hell and half of New York City to pay a debt for good or ill. And all the more so to exact justice forhis soldiers. Dickson's prose can be a little pompous and overbearing-- his treatment of villains a little dismissive, mere stick figures lacking depth. But then he wants Graeme to be overpowering-- to his advesaries, to the helpless bystander cops, and to the reader.

Message to an Alien Keith Laumer is a Nebula Award writer who is porbably undervalued today. His Retief stories are based on his experiecnes as a military attache in Burma. His Bolo stories were part of the inspiration for Drake's Slammers. This story is about the lone and disgraced soldier who was turned out for being righter than his superiorsthe civillian authorities could ever admit. He acts alone again and totally without anyone else's support to nip an invasion in the bud and stop a war. Laumer's disdain those with authority but lacking the sense to use it shows through. Dalton's mastery of the situation, the authoirites, and of the invaders is a pleasure to read.

. . . Not a Prison Make Martino's novelette is based on the unique premise of guerilla warfare carried out by low technology aborigines. He builds the story thoroughly, exploring the occupying forces attempts to mount an affect defence. The key is to force to the negotiating table people who have no interest in negotiations. The solution is unique to he situation, and the resolution acceptable to all. The Hero The United States has reached the point in its decadence/decay where it is sometimes more convenient to ignore its veterans and treat them with disdain then to give them the consideration and rewards they deserve. And so it is in "The Hero." Kagan serves honorably and well. When his term of enlistment is up, he demands his desserts, and his superiors balk. Can't conceive of him going to Earth. George R. R. Martin uses overstatement to drive home his point, contrasting the soldier with his bosses. In the end, it's clear that they are as dishonorable as he is honorable, as undeserving of his service as anyone could be.

End Game Joe Haldeman won an award for The Forever War. In the End Game, we find out what it was all for. Time has past. A lot of time has past, and Man is more like the Taurans than veterans like Marygay and William. There's a place for people like them called Middle Finger, heh heh. Anyone familiar with The Forever War knows Haldeman is a great writer, that he despises the stupidity and waste of war, and that he makes his case very well.

Image cover art under fair use for the review. Contact publisher for reuse.

My text creative commons 4.0

3 notes · View notes

man-creates-dinosaurs · 6 years

Photo

BIGFOOT JOINS THE RANKS OF AMERICAN CHRISTMAS ICONS

When did Bigfoot become a Christmas icon? I’m sure that question sounds strange to most of you, but I can’t be the only one to have noticed Sasquatch’s gradual induction into the pantheon of modern American Christmas characters. Right now you can buy Bigfoot Christmas tree ornaments, sweaters and stockings online, while a retailer as mainstream as Wal-Mart currently has a pair of yuletide Yeti shirts for sale in stores. If you need more proof just pull up Netflix and check out the new film Pottersville (2017, Dir. Seth Henrikson); an indy Christmas comedy with some major league talent including Michael Shannon (The Shape of Water), Judy Greer (Jurassic World), Ron Perlman (Pacific Rim) and Ian McShane (American Gods) – the latter doing his best impression of Robert Shaw’s character from Jaws (1975, Dir. Steven Spielberg). The film revolves around the small town of Pottersville – from the Christmas classic It’s A Wonderful Life (1946, Dir. Frank Capra) – which has fallen on hard times economically. The residents gets an unexpected Christmas gift however in the form of a series of Bigfoot sightings which instantly transforms their forgotten hamlet into a must-visit tourist attraction!

Naturally, some people will scoff at the idea of Bigfoot becoming a part of the American Christmas holiday, but personally I’m all for it. I’m a big fan of Christmas monsters, ghosts and goblins – all of which were a part of the season long before Frosty the Snowman and Elf on the Shelf came along and something which I spoke about at length with John W. Morehead of Theofantastique last year. But still, the question persists, when exactly did Bigfoot get in on the holiday scene – or has he always been here?

When looking for Bigfoot’s entry point into the Christmas season the most obvious starting place is Rankin/Bass Productions’ 1964 holiday classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (Dir. Larry Roemer & Kizo Nagashima) featuring stop-motion by underappreciated Japanese animator Tadahito Mochinaga. As anyone who has experienced this timeless piece of Christmas Americana knows, Rudolph and his friends spend much of the movie being menaced by a giant Yeti referred to by the various characters as either the Abominable Snow Monster of the North or just the Bumble for short. Perhaps the only true Christmas kaijū, scholar Jason Barr sees the Bumble as one of the many thematic descendants of King Kong, which corroborates author David Coleman’s observation, as found in his encyclopedic The Bigfoot Filmography (2011), that no single film has had more impact on the pop-culture perception of Bigfoot and the Yeti then King Kong (1933, Dir. Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack).

Of course, King Kong is a work of paleo-fiction, specifically the ‘Lost World’ sub-genre and as a result retains elements of the colonialist worldview which gave rise to the literary and cinematic tradition of stories concerning white explorers traveling to distant exotic lands where – unlike back home – “time stands still” and primitive beasts and people exist in Eden-like bliss; or at least until our intrepid adventures decide it’s their god given right to run roughshod over the place killing and/or capturing the animals and conquering the indigenous inhabitants.

As Barr writes in his book The Kaijū Film (2016), Rudolph’s Bumble is no exception to this tradition as we see the fearsome Snowman “is not only outwitted by the gathered cast” but also reduced to literal “toothless subservience” and subsequently put “to work decorating Christmas trees” in Santa’s workshop. Truly a sad fate for any once ferocious Christmas monster.

But in more recent years the Bumble’s kith and kin appear to be getting their revenge!

This leads us to our second possible point of origin for the modern Christmas Bigfoot; researcher Phyllis Siefker’s 1997 tome Santa Claus, Last of the Wild Men. Here Siefker challenges the conventional notion that America’s Santa Claus is merely a modified version of Europe’s St. Nicholas. After all, asks Siefker, why would Protestant immigrants to the New World bring with them the tradition of an extremely popular Catholic saint? As an alternative explanation Siefker proposes that Santa – with his great beard, furry coat, and habit of nocturnal prowling – is really based upon the ancient pre-Christian figure of the Wildman as outlined in such excellent scholarly works as Richard Bernheimer’s Wild Men in the Middle Ages (1952) and Roger Bartra’s Wild Men in the Looking Glass: The Mythic Origins of the European Otherness (1994).

The idea that Santa isn’t actually a “right jolly old elf” and instead a hairy, savage Bigfoot-like monster must have been at least part of Finnish filmmaker Jalmari Helander’s inspiration for his fantastically bizarre 2010 film Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale in which plucky child protagonist Pietari discovers that “the Coca- Cola Santa is just a hoax” while the actual Kris Kringle is a Kong-sized goat-horned monster who “tears naughty kids to pieces” until “not even their skeletons are left.” Unfortunately for Pietari and his friends, a rich oil tycoon from America – possibly inspired by real-life American oil tycoon Tom Slick (d. 1962) who spent much of his fortune hunting for Bigfoot and the Yeti – has come to unseal the tomb buried beneath the Korvatunturi mountain range where the Saami people imprisoned Santa long ago.

Of course for cryptozoologists like Loren Coleman who entertain the possibility that there might be some truth behind such worldwide Wildman tales, Siefker’s work represents more than just a radical rewriting of Christmastime folklore, but rather the tantalizing – though unlikely - possibility that a character as iconic and beloved as Santa Claus may have been inspired by a relic population of anomalous-primates!

More recently a different kind of yuletide Wildman has been making his presence known here in the US. This, of course, is the Krampus; a kind of shaggy demon with curled goat horns, a lolling red tongue and a talent for punishing naughty children with switches and chains. As outlined in Al Ridenour’s excellent The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas (2016), Krampus hails from Austria where in small remote mountains towns such as Bad Gastein and Öblarn the day preceding the Catholic Church’s feast in honor of St. Nicolas sees the celebration of Krampusnacht (“Krampus Night”) in which children of all ages anticipate a visit from St. Nicholas and his posse of Krampus. These house visits are enacted by local Krampuspass (“Krampus Troupes”) composed of men ranging in age from their late teens to early forties who prepare all-year by sewing heavy wool suits made from sheep and goat’s hair and carving handcrafted wooden masks – called klaubaufkopfe (“Krampus heads”) – which along with chains, bells, switches and baskets will be worn by the performers as they accompany St. Nick – typically played by the tallest member of a troupe – throughout the town to distribute rewards and punishments. In addition to these house visits many towns also feature a Krampusumzüge (“Krampus-Run”) in which dozens of individuals dressed as the Krampus run through the streets threatening and menacing children as well as occasionally smacking a pretty young girl on the rear with their switches all while consuming copious amounts of alcohol. All of this makes for a festival that is equal parts Christmas, Halloween and Mardi Gras.

Since the early 2000s Krampus has begun an unassailable assent through mainstream American pop-culture gradually, and now undeniably, situating himself among other time honored holiday icons. According to reporter Christopher Bickel as of 2014 there are annual Krampus runs, bar crawls, parties and other related events being help in over thirty US cities nationwide while Krampus’ likeness can be found on a huge number of products including Christmas sweaters, stockings, ornaments, playing cards, plush and vinyl toys, decorative figurines, t-shirts, books, comics and in cartoons ranging from Scooby-Doo to American Dad. In 2015 Hollywood unleashed two theatrical Krampus flicks with the William Shatner staring anthology A Christmas Horror Story (Dir. Grant Harvey, Steven Hoban & Brett Sullivan) and Legendary/Universal Pictures’ Krampus (Dir. Michael Dougherty). There’s even a company selling an 11-foot-tall animatronic toddler swinging Krampus which you can put in your front yard! Krampus may also have played a part in inspiring another popular 20th-Century American Christmas monster: The Grinch. As artist Jeffrey Vallance – who via several essays has picked up the torch lit by Phyllis Siefker and continued exploring the possibility of Santa’s Wildman roots – has observed: “Over the ages, the brutal Wildman figure evolved into a character more like a clown or holiday fool. How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss follows a classic Wildman scenario: The Grinch is a hairy, Bigfoot-like creature that lives in an alpine cave in a mountain similar to the Matterhorn.”

While Theodor Geisel – aka Dr. Seuss – maintained that The Grinch was primarily an autobiographical character, considering the beloved children’s author’s German ancestry one cannot help but wonder if yuletide Wildman characters like Krampus didn’t also play some part in the formation of the beloved holiday humbug.

Back in November I delivered a presentation at the American Academy of Religions in Boston on the Krampus in which I argued that American’s recent infatuation with the Krampus – and other Christmas monsters, including apparently now Bigfoot – can best be understood as an oppositional response to conservative’s alleged “War on Christmas,” a moment perhaps best embodied by comedian Stephen Colbert’s 2009 declaration that Americans “need to bring Krampus to America to fight the War on Christmas.” While it seems clear that many Americans who desired a more interfaith approach to the season did not initially see themselves as engaged in a “War” the continual insistence by certain factions – and Fox News host Bill O’Reilly in particular – that there was indeed one eventually drove those opposed to a totalitarian Protestant interpretation of the holiday to fight back and call in the cavalry in the form of a monstrous menagerie of older darker Christmas creations. As scholar Joseph P. Laycock has observed monsters are often underappreciated sources of religious meaning, a set of symbols and rituals which can be used to inspire awe in the beholder, be it participating in a Krampusumzüge or catching a brief glimpse of Bigfoot.

#christmas #king kong #krampus #grinch #rare exports #bigfoot #yeti #rudolph the red nosed reindeer #bumble #sasquatch #santa claus #wildman #cryptozoology #pottersville

13 notes · View notes

douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years

Text

HERE'S WHAT I JUST REALIZED ABOUT LINES

For example, willfulness clearly has two subcomponents, stubbornness and energy. Under the present rules, patents are of secondary importance. But if they did, and it came closer to killing us than any competitor ever did. But I don't recommend this approach to most founders, and others where it would be a 900-page pastiche of existing popular novels—roughly Gone with the Wind plus Roots. This sort of trolling was in the bathroom. If that makes you much more about alliances. But there can't be easy. The classic way to burn up cycles is to have a new idea every week will be equally fatal. Google was true to its own slightly aspy self. Starting a startup is not to work do anyway. It's supposed to mean using the web the way it's meant to be companies at first. Of course, you don't need to.

Meaning that when the note converts into stock in a liquidity event, founders should start companies that make money and to get attention, and a Web browser that you could make it. He got a 4x liquidation preference. All a company is one of the richer neighborhoods in Silicon Valley in the last 40. 16% false positives means that it is designed by committee, and the visual arts is the resistance of the plate. Essays should aim for maximum surprise. I'm optimistic about are ones that calculate probabilities based on each individual user's mail. They confuse it with money. Galleries are not especially excited about being on the Web, all made by hand.

If that was what character and integrity were, I wanted no part of them. There are just two or three times as long to write—and a more powerful language you probably won't like that idea: it's just a field in an object instead of the broken air conditioner in your studio apartment. It's a bit more in proportion to how much you want an investor influence your estimate of how much programmers like to be flattered; they like to acquire startups at just the right place and you've made this beautiful portrait. Where does it increase discontinuously? To see how, envision two things: a the amount of fakeness required in other fields are mean. VCs are the way they taught you to in school. If writing some hairy macro could save you ten lines of code a day on it. An individual European manufacturer could import industrial techniques and they'd work fine. We see this already begining to happen in a predefined way. I don't think it's a mistake to feel bad about that.

The ones driven by money take the big acquisition offers most successful startups it's a necessary part of the feedback loop that makes the world interesting. After Yahoo bought our startup in 1998 I thought one day I'd do some angel investing. Larry and Sergey took money from investors. Like a company whose whole m. She arrived looking astonished. Three days later, having spent much of the difficulty comes from this external force. What I will say is that I don't think ordinary programmers' opinions matter. Don't get too deeply into business models.

So while they're often nice guys, they just can't help it. So the more powerful the language, the shorter the program not simply in characters, of course, projects where the choice of programming language doesn't matter much. So I think efficiency will matter, at least now someone can ask them: why did you choose to do that, people who want to do it well, those who do it well, because in the middle. That doesn't mean the company is at least a generation to turn people into East Germans luckily for England. Mostly they crawl off somewhere and die. Instead of having both lists and strings, have just lists, with some variation that the Facebook rightly ignored, look for things that seem obvious in retrospect. I'm forty. Contradiction. And so far that every playwright since has had to live in his shadow. Everything is just incremental and you just have to give up more than the actual amount of stock the VCs buy, because they had to rewrite their software from scratch. They build Writely.

Angels are individual rich people. We plan to raise, it's not imaginary either. Another possibility would be to establish a local branch, and let them tell you. They don't get that kind of story in our world. Libraries are one place Common Lisp falls short. If you're an amateur mathematician and think you've solved a famous open problem, better go back and check. So I asked them about their trip. It often seems to outsiders that the great industrialists of the nineteenth century had so little formal education. But as knowledge has grown more specialized, we have to make it big if and only if they're not flakes. But even that is survivable.

So either existing investors will change; it may be slightly faster. 9782 free! I used to write existentialist short stories like ones I'd seen by famous writers. But if you yourself don't have good taste, you also have to be a successful language? Novels seem so impoverished compared to history and biography. But it will happen, but whatever the cause, we are just not prepared for the 1000x variation in outcomes that one finds in startup investing right now is angel-sized investments than they were and yet had zero attitude himself. But if so, why didn't they start them? Engineers will work on sexy projects like fighter planes and moon rockets for ordinary salaries, but more was left to the Europeans to explore and eventually to dominate the seas of the Far East. When it was first developed, Lisp embodied nine new ideas. In fact, the sound of the homing beacon.

It might still be reasonable to run with it. The place to look for waves and ask how one could benefit from them. Instead of working back from a goal, work forward from promising situations. For example, in the sense that architects have to design what the user needs, who is this for and what do they have to get rich by creating wealth, and indeed for some of the problems we were trying to get tenure, but it's close enough that except in pathological examples you can treat formally, rather than by you based on respect for their judgement. The thing about ideas, just the raw gaps and anomalies you'd noticed that day. One change will be in giving them additional funding. Studies would become the YC alumni network. Angels. In a way mid-century TV culture was good. Many are underfunded.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #day #ideas #manufacturer #Europeans #example #others #England #world #guys #startups #money #bathroom #gaps

0 notes

biofunmy · 5 years

Text

Robert Frank Dies; Pivotal Documentary Photographer Was 94

Robert Frank, one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century, whose visually raw and personally expressive style was pivotal in changing the course of documentary photography, died on Monday in Inverness, Nova Scotia. He was 94.

His death, at Inverness Consolidated Memorial Hospital on Cape Breton Island, was confirmed by Peter MacGill, whose Pace-MacGill Gallery in Manhattan has represented Mr. Frank’s work since 1983. Mr. Frank, a Manhattan resident, had long had a summer home in Mabou, on Cape Breton Island.

Born in Switzerland, Mr. Frank emigrated to New York at the age of 23 as an artistic refugee from what he considered to be the small-minded values of his native country. He was best known for his groundbreaking book, “The Americans,” a masterwork of black and white photographs drawn from his cross-country road trips in the mid-1950s and published in 1959.

[Read our appraisal describing how Robert Frank redefined the expressive potential of documentary photography — until he gave it up.]

“The Americans” challenged the presiding midcentury formula for photojournalism, defined by sharp, well-lighted, classically composed pictures, whether of the battlefront, the homespun American heartland or movie stars at leisure. Mr. Frank’s photographs — of lone individuals, teenage couples, groups at funerals and odd spoors of cultural life — were cinematic, immediate, off-kilter and grainy, like early television transmissions of the period. They would secure his place in photography’s pantheon. The cultural critic Janet Malcolm called him the “Manet of the new photography.”

But recognition was by no means immediate. The pictures were initially considered warped, smudgy, bitter. Popular Photography magazine complained about their “meaningless blur, grain, muddy exposures, drunken horizons, and general sloppiness.” Mr. Frank, the magazine said, was “a joyless man who hates the country of his adoption.”

Mr. Frank had come to detest the American drive for conformity, and the book was thought to be an indictment of American society, stripping away the picture-perfect vision of the country and its veneer of breezy optimism put forward in magazines and movies and on television. Yet at the core of his social criticism was a romantic idea about finding and honoring what was true and good about the United States.

“Patriotism, optimism, and scrubbed suburban living were the rule of the day,” Charlie LeDuff wrote about Mr. Frank in Vanity Fair magazine in 2008. “Myth was important then. And along comes Robert Frank, the hairy homunculus, the European Jew with his 35-mm. Leica, taking snaps of old angry white men, young angry black men, severe disapproving southern ladies, Indians in saloons, he/shes in New York alleyways, alienation on the assembly line, segregation south of the Mason-Dixon line, bitterness, dissipation, discontent.”

“Les Americains,” first published in France by Robert Delpire in 1958, used Mr. Frank’s photographs as illustrations for essays by French writers. In the American edition, published the next year by Grove Press, the pictures were allowed to tell their own story, without text, as Mr. Frank had conceived the book.

It was only after completing the cross-country trips chronicled in “The Americans” that Mr. Frank met Jack Kerouac, who had written about his own American journeys in the 1957 novel “On the Road.” Kerouac wrote the introduction to the American edition of Mr. Frank’s book.

“That crazy feeling in America,” Kerouac wrote, “when the sun is hot and music comes out of the jukebox or from a nearby funeral, that’s what Robert Frank has captured in tremendous photographs taken as he traveled on the road around practically forty-eight states in an old used car (on Guggenheim Fellowship) and with agility, mystery, genius, sadness, and strange secrecy of a shadow photographed scenes that have never been seen before on film.”

Twenty years later, Gene Thornton, writing in The New York Times, said the book ranked “with Alexis de Tocqueville’s ‘Democracy in America’ and Henry James’ ‘The American Scene’ as one of the definitive statements of what this country is about.”

‘Snapshot Aesthetic’

Mr. Frank may well have been the unwitting father of what became known in the late 1960s as “the snapshot aesthetic,” a personal offhand style that sought to capture the look and feel of spontaneity in an authentic moment. The pictures had a profound influence on the way photographers began to approach not only their subjects but also the picture frame.

Mr. Frank’s aesthetic — as much about his personal experience of what he was photographing as about the subject matter — was given further definition and legitimacy in 1967 in the seminal exhibition “New Documents” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The show presented the work of Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand, who at the time were relatively little known younger-generation beneficiaries of Mr. Frank’s pioneering style. The show established all three as important American artists.

Robert Louis Frank was born in Zurich on Nov. 9, 1924, the younger son of well-to-do Jewish parents. His mother, Regina, was Swiss, but his father, Hermann, a German citizen who became stateless after World War I, had to apply for Swiss citizenship for himself and his two sons.

[Read about how Robert Frank brought a uniquely Jewish approach to his art.]

Safe in neutral Switzerland from the Nazi threat looming across Europe, Robert Frank studied and apprenticed with graphic designers and photographers in Zurich, Basel and Geneva. He became an admirer of Henri Cartier-Bresson, who co-founded the photo-collective Magnum in 1947 and whose photographs set the standard for generations of photojournalists.

Mr. Frank would later reject Cartier-Bresson’s work, saying it represented all that was glib and insubstantial about photojournalism. He believed that photojournalism oversimplified the world, mimicking, as he put it, “those goddamned stories with a beginning and an end.” He was more drawn to the paintings of Edward Hopper, before Hopper was widely recognized.

“So clear and so decisive,” Mr. Frank told Nicholas Dawidoff in 2015 for a profile in The New York Times Magazine. “The human form in it. You look twice — what’s this guy waiting for? What’s he looking at? The simplicity of two facing each other. A man in a chair.”

Early on, Mr. Frank caught the eye of Alexey Brodovitch, the legendary magazine art director, who gave him assignments at Harper’s Bazaar. Over the next 10 years, Mr. Frank worked for Fortune, Life, Look, McCall’s, Vogue and Ladies Home Journal.

Restless, he traveled to London, Wales and Peru from 1949 to 1952. From each trip he assembled spiral-bound books of his pictures and gave copies to, among others, Brodovitch and Edward Steichen, then the director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art.

Walker Evans’s book “American Photographs,” which was not well known in the 1950s, may have been the greatest influence on Mr. Frank’s landmark “Americans” project.

“When I first looked at Walker Evans’ photographs,” he wrote in the U.S. Camera Annual in 1958, “I thought of something Malraux wrote: ‘to transform destiny into awareness.’ One is embarrassed to want so much of oneself.”

Evans, then the picture editor at Fortune, as well as Brodovitch and Steichen, wrote recommendations for Mr. Frank when he applied for a 1955 Guggenheim Fellowship to finance the project. Carrying two cameras and boxes of film in a black Ford Business Coupe, he traveled more than 10,000 miles and wound up taking, by his count, more than 27,000 pictures, from which he culled 83 for “The Americans.”

In 1949, he met the artist Mary Lockspeiser, nine years his junior, and gave her, too, a handmade book of photographs, which he had taken that year in Paris. They married the following year and settled in Manhattan, in the East Village, in the heart of a vibrant Abstract Expressionist art scene. (She is now known as Mary Frank.)

Mr. Frank remembered seeing through a window Willem de Kooning, paint brush in hand, pacing his studio in his underwear. At the Cedar Tavern, a legendary neighborhood bar, he would drink and argue with the artists of the period. Their son, Pablo (named after the cellist Pablo Casals), was born in 1951, and his daughter, Andrea, in 1954.

All the while Mr. Frank supported himself sporadically, if reluctantly, with commercial work. Just before the American edition of “The Americans” was published, Lou Silverstein, The Times’s art director then, hired him to make a series of photographs on the streets of New York for an advertising campaign for the newspaper titled “New York Is.” The pictures were later compiled in a slim promotional book of the same name to attract prospective advertisers.

For all their commercial intent, however, the pictures for The Times revealed a strain of loneliness similar to what runs through “The Americans.” After Mr. Silverstein died in 2011, Mr. Frank sent a note to his memorial service and had it read aloud, saying, “He gave me moral support as well as financial — and this made my life in New York City possible.”

After “The Americans” was published, Mr. Frank’s artistic energies shifted to film, and, although he continued to work in photography and video, he would never again reach the same level of recognition for his work. Mr. MacGill, a longtime friend, once posited that Mr. Frank would eventually be remembered as a filmmaker more than as a photographer.

The Scene: A Bohemian Loft

His first film, “Pull My Daisy” (1959), is a cornerstone of avant-garde cinema. Made in Alfred Leslie’s art studio loft in the East Village, it was co-directed by Leslie, narrated by Kerouac and featured, among others, Allen Ginsberg, Mary Frank, Gregory Corso, David Amram, Larry Rivers and Mr. Frank’s young son, Pablo.

Adapted by Kerouac from his play “The Beat Generation,” the film, 28 minutes long, follows in grainy black and white the antics of a merry band of bohemians who show up unannounced at a Lower East Side loft, where a painter, the wife of a railway brakeman, has invited a respectable bishop over for dinner. The film became a cult favorite as an expression of the Beat philosophy of improvisation and spontaneity even though, as Leslie later revealed, it was planned and rehearsed.

In 1960, Mr. Frank, along with Jonas Mekas (who died in January), Peter Bogdanovich and other independent filmmakers, founded the New American Cinema Group, the same year Mr. Frank began filming “The Sin of Jesus,” based on an Isaac Babel story.

He made his first feature-length film in 1965, “Me and My Brother,” about Julius Orlovsky, brother of Peter, who was Ginsberg’s lover. With this film, Mr. Frank began to blur the line between documentary filmmaking and staged narrative scenes.

The breakup of his marriage to Mary in 1969 coincided with “Conversations in Vermont,” the film he made about his children, Andrea and Pablo. The next year he bought a fisherman’s house in Mabou, Nova Scotia, with the artist June Leaf, whom he married in 1975 and who is his only immediate survivor. Andrea died in a plane crash in Guatemala in 1974; Pablo died in 1994.

In the early 1970s, Mr. Frank was commissioned to make photographs for the cover of the Rolling Stones album “Exile on Main Street.” He was then asked by the band to shoot a documentary film about its 1972 concert tour. The film chronicled not only the group’s performances but also the violence of the crowds, the drug use and the naked groupies. It was not what the Stones had in mind. The band obtained a restraining order, which put limits on where and how often the film could be shown.

That same year, Frank published “Lines of My Hand,” a book of photographs he had made before and after “The Americans.” His work was becoming more autobiographical, diaristic.

While the photographs in “The Americans” are the most widely acknowledged achievement of Mr. Frank’s career, they can be seen as a prelude to his subsequent artistic work, in which he explored a variety of mediums, using multiple frames, making large Polaroid prints, video images, experimenting with words and images and shooting and directing films, like “Candy Mountain” (1988), an autobiographical road film directed with Rudy Wurlitzer.

Still, it is “The Americans” that will probably endure longer than anything else he did. In 2007 he consented to hang all 83 of the book’s photographs at the Pingyao International Photography Festival in China, in celebration of the book’s 50th anniversary. And in 2009, the National Gallery of Art in Washington mounted “Looking In: Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans,’” an exhaustive and comprehensive retrospective of his masterwork, organized by Sarah Greenough. The show traveled to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Mr. Frank acknowledged that in photographing Americans he found the least privileged among them the most compelling.

“My mother asked me, ‘Why do you always take pictures of poor people?’” Mr. Frank told Mr. Dawidoff in The Times Magazine. “It wasn’t true, but my sympathies were with people who struggled. There was also my mistrust of people who made the rules.”

William McDonald contributed reporting.

Sahred From Source link Arts

from WordPress http://bit.ly/2ZWFyai via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress

0 notes

mexcine2 · 7 years

Photo

The Amazing Colossal Irishman -- Get Outta Town (1960) poster

Although I generally choose subjects for these essays which—in addition to providing fodder for my witty commentary—are reasonably competent in both an artistic and marketing sense, today’s poster doesn’t necessarily fit that criteria. This poster isn’t especially inspired and doesn’t seem to have that “hook” that might pique the ticket-buying interest of movie audiences. However, Get Outta Town is a sentimental favourite and the poster is worthy of examination.

As noted above, I have a soft spot for Get Outta Town (the movie, not the poster so much). Clearly a low-budget vanity project for actor Doug Wilson, the film has nice noir-ish feel to it, the location shooting adds verisimilitude, and the vernacularised title* draws attention (apparently the working title was “The Day Kelly Came Home,” which isn’t bad; the picture was re-released in 1964 as Gangster’s Revenge, which sounds like a generic translation of a Japanese yakuza movie title).

*[ Get Outta Town was the first in a planned trilogy, to be followed by Fuhgettaboutit and Whatsamattayou. Alright, that’s totally not true. As far as I know.]

Most of the behind-the-camera personnel behind Get Outta Town don’t have extensive Hollywood credits. Executive producer William B. Hale might be the same “William B. Hale” who made a 1950s documentary on the Watts Towers entitled “The Towers,” but this is unconfirmed. Co-producer/director Charles Davis is only cited by IMDB as the director of one other, later independent film (assuming this is the same Charles Davis); cinematographer Larry Raimond has a handful of credits spanning nearly 3 decades. Scripter Bob Wehling seems to have had the most work experience, directing a couple of features and doing some acting in additional to his writing chores. Co-producer and star Doug Wilson has a handful of TV appearances on his resumé, and IMDB also indicates he was a film editor, although no credits are provided.

[To be fair, technical credits on episodic Fifties television series are not well documented, so at least some of these people could have been hard-working professionals, just not on theatrical features. As an aside, Get Outta Town’s on-screen credits are in the familiar “Sixties TV sitcom” font, which subliminally reinforces the television-industry connections of the cast and crew.]

Get Outta Town carries a 1959 copyright date by “MCP Film Distributing Co.” (the production company is listed variously as “Albex Films” and “Davis-Wilson Productions”) and was released in 1960 by Sterling World Distributors (the 1964 re-release was handled by Beckman Film Corp.). A fair amount of “paper” can be found for Get Outta Town, including the one-sheet poster illustrated here, lobby cards (I think I even own one), and an insert.

The poster for Get Outta Town (which spells the title Get Outta’ Town, although the film itself doesn’t have the apostrophe) isn’t horrible, but is rather bland. The yellow background was, for some reason, a popular motif in some Fifties-Sixties cinema posters: perhaps the designers thought it was eye-catching or made the artwork “pop” more than a white background would. To me, it signifies “cheap indie film,” though, but I suppose that could be a conditioned response based on the number of posters I’ve seen like this, as opposed to a strictly artistic evaluation.

[More yellow-background posters, from a quick scroll thru www.wrongsideoftheart.com: Carnival Rock, Because of Eve, Cage of Evil, Curse of the Faceless Man, Eighteen and Anxious, Fingerprints Don’t Lie, Girl Fever, Girl on the Run, Liane Jungle Goddess, Red Lips, Right Hand of the Devil, Teenage Zombies, The Violent Years, Wild for Kicks, The Naked Road, Teenage Thunder, Operation Conspiracy, New Orleans Uncensored, Five Guns West, The Party Crashers, Chained for Life, The Incredible Petrified World, The Woman Eater, Voodoo Island, and many more. The titles alone give you an idea of the class of movies that used the garish yellow background in this era.]

The main image is, of course, of producer-star Doug Wilson. He’s big, burly, with muscular arms and a hairy chest revealed by his unbuttoned shirt. There’s a sort of John Wayne-ish vibe about this portrait, and it was probably not coincidental. I’m of two minds about this. First, the art does convey the impression of a tough, action-oriented, even working-class protagonist, perhaps a truck driver or an oil rig worker or a longshoreman or a construction boss, etc. (this is somewhat at odds with the tone of the film itself, which is more of an urban crime picture). On the other hand, Doug Wilson stars in the movie but he’s not a movie star, so a gigantic painting of him, mostly devoid of context, might not be the best sales tactic. He’s looming over a cityscape, there’s a dead body and two women, but mostly this is DOUG WILSON, TOUGH GUY. Take it or leave it.

Two women are pictured on the poster. The poster’s text (to be discussed shortly) suggests these are the protagonist’s “two girl friends,” and we can surmise that Lefty is the good girl (modest top and skirt combo, tasteful necklace) and Righty is the bad girl (spaghetti-strapped gown with a fringed hem, bare shoulders), but they are both awkwardly posed and both share the same shocked and apprehensive expression. They’re his “girl friends?” They seem to be regarding him fearfully, not affectionately. Maybe it’s awe of his massive masculinity that makes them look that way.

Thus, while the artwork and design aren’t crude or confusing, the exact nature of the film is hazy. Perhaps the text can clear this up? But if you’re relying on the printed words on a poster to educate your audience about what to expect, you’ve got one strike against you to begin with.

The Get Outta Town poster’s text is relatively on-point. “Kelly turned the town upside down the day they killed his kid brother!” Got it: revenge motive for town-inversion. “He took the law into his own hands!” His own big, meaty, tough-guy hands. How would you describe Kelly? “A two-fisted Irishman with two girl friends!” One girlfriend for each fist, it seems.

[Doug Wilson is credited as “Kelly Oleson”—I don’t remember if his heritage is explained in the film itself, but “Oleson” is a “Danish-Norwegian patronymic surname,” according to the unimpeachable source for everything, Wikipedia. Even if you spell it “Olson,” it’s still Scandinavian, not Irish. But I guess “two-fisted Irishman” sounds better than “two-fisted Scandinavian.” Unless of course you’re Scandinavian.]

The poster indicates the film has an “All-Star Hollywood Cast.” You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean. Perhaps you do know, you’re just hoping we don’t call your bluff. “All-Star Hollywood Cast?” Doug Wilson was in an episode of “Rawhide.” And two episodes of “Science Fiction Theater!” Jeanne Baird did a lot of television in the Fifties and Marilyn O’Connor played “Rita—Saloon Gal” in an episode of “Tombstone Territory.” The rest of the cast is a mixture of people who made a few other appearances (mostly on television) and those whose sole IMDB claim to fame is Get Outta Town. So we’ll give them “Hollywood Cast,” but I’m calling shenanigans on “All-Star.”

The text on the Get Outta Town insert poster is significantly different than the one-sheet’s. The top tag-line is hilarious: “ ‘Squirrel’s’ Tongue Slipped!” No, it’s not an erotic movie shot at a furry convention, “Squirrel” is the name of a minor character in Get Outta Tongue. He let something slip, you see, “...and Kelly’s Fists Went Into Action!” [btw, “Kelly’s Fists” would have been a good alternate title for the film.] “This Irishman cleaned up gangland when police didn’t!” Also “His love for two girls solved a nasty crime!” However, it also caused considerable heart-ache.

The poster for Get Outta Town isn’t bad—technically speaking, the art and design are professional—but it’s not unique or compelling, especially given the no-star nature of the production. In a way that’s too bad, because the film itself is rather enjoyable in its way.

#film poster #get outta town

0 notes