Back in December my bff and I went to get tattoos together. We got the same design in the same place: simple lettering of our favorite phrase, except I had him tattoo mine a little bigger than hers, thinking it would be better for longevity. We were given the same aftercare instructions which, it being my first tattoo, I followed RELIGIOUSLY. Washed 4-5x a day with anti bacterial soap and moisturized for 3 weeks with the sample goo from the shop (Recovery salve), then mad rabbit gel for the last 3 weeks and now whenever I remember to put it on. My tat looks great!
Hers however… blurry everywhere and looks grey. The letters are melding into each other. She has a few other tattoos in illustrative style and I was noticing how much they tend to fade on her skin; on one the features are completely gone after less than a year. She follows the aftercare given by the first artist who tatted her; to just wash and moisturize the tattoo after she showers (usually 2x a day). She moisturizes with unscented lotion after 3 days with second skin on.
Why do our tattoos look so vastly different? Does ink stay better in some peoples skin than others? Does it have anything to do with our aftercare practices?

American National, relocated to Ireland for work 2 years ago with close to $35k in credit card debt. Paying cards back was manageable, until a few months ago. While visiting family in the US, I experienced a medical emergency which put me in the hospital. Irish medical insurance will not cover costs, so that added close to another $30k in debt.
Since I’m in this limbo between the two countries, I don’t qualify for financial assistance or debt consolidation in the US since I no longer reside there, and Ireland will not grant any of those options due to my 1G visa status.
Struggling to keep afloat financially, so I was considering just altogether stop paying. I know it is not a sound financial decision, but I don’t qualify for bankruptcy either.
I work for an American company, but I am full time employed in their Ireland branch.
Could my wages be garnished or at this point I have nothing else to lose? I don’t plan on returning to the US, other than to visit, so my credit can rot.

This is a pureasoiaf version of a theory I posted in asoiaf earlier today (mainly with the links to potential show spoilers removed)!
Most are familiar with Cantuse’s Night Lamp theory about the battle in the ice in TWOW; Stannis defeats the Frey army by luring them into the ice lakes at the crofter’s village. The core idea is popular and accepted. What happens next is not as widely accepted. Stannis winning the battle in the ice still leaves Roose Bolton and his army occupying Winterfell. What is Stannis and his army to do to capture the castle and win the north?
There are a few ideas, but the "theory” lacks a universal name like Night Lamp. BryndenBFish may be the source of the original idea and I know u/The_Coconut_God, u/BaelBard, and u/bewildered_baratheon have written variations. I will dub these theories as the “Trojan Horse of Winterfell” for reference’s sake. The Trojan Horse of Winterfell is not only a corollary/sequel to the Night Lamp theory, but it is also a Pink Letter theory. Allow me to offer my explanation and take on it.

The Trojan Horse of Winterfell: A Little Summary

Per the Theon TWOW sample chapter, at the crofter’s village before the battle in the ice, Stannis orders Justin Massey to escort Tycho Nestoris and (F)Arya off to Castle Black; Stannis warns of potential false reports of his death. The same morning, for their planned treachery, Stannis arrests Arnolf Karstark and his family and disarms their army; Stannis plans to give the army, innocent of the plot, a chance to prove themselves. Stannis also arrests Tybald, the Dreadfort maester brought by Arnolf, but not before Tybald sends a raven with a map of the crofter’s village to Winterfell. Stannis seizes Tybald’s two remaining ravens, which fly to Winterfell. The battle in the ice happens as stipulated by the Night Lamp theory. The nominal Bolton vassals Manderlys will turncloak and join Stannis, and the secret Bolton vassals Karstarks will remain with him. Stannis will likely have Frey clothes and supplies seized from their baggage train.
Stannis has everything for the Trojan Horse of Winterfell: he will send Tybald’s ravens to the Boltons Winterfell to claim that the Frey-Manderly-Karstark host defeated Stannis. The Boltons will believe it and send ravens to King’s Landing announcing the defeat. Then, the Karstarks and Manderlys and possibly southron knights in Frey clothes will march to Winterfell. In some variations (such as mine) Asha Greyjoy will be a “prisoner” of this host, which will also carry frozen heads of Freys (passed as the heads of Stannis’s men) and the sword Lightbringer. They will not have “Arya” or Theon (some theories have Theon disguised as Arnolf, but let’s keep it simple).
This “friendly” army will be welcomed to Winterfell. Its leaders will present Lightbringer and heads to the Boltons, but inform them that Theon and “Arya” were not found. Roose will order a feast to celebrate, but Ramsay will be furious. Likely without Roose’s leave (hence no signatures; no skin because the “friendly” army did not bring any), Ramsay will write the Pink Letter to Jon Snow boasting of Stannis’s [false] defeat. As he finishes the letter, Ramsay will hear a noise downstairs, and half-ass the smear and send the raven before investigating. There he will find the “friendly army” massacring the Boltons, possibly joined by Whoresbane’s Umbers. Stannis seizes the castle, wins the day.
TL;DR Per the Night Lamp theory, Stannis wins the battle in the ice against the Freys. He then sends fake news of his death to the Boltons; Ramsay writes the Pink Letter based on this false information. Stannis sends his men posing as allies to the Boltons to Winterfell, where they are welcomed only to massacre the Boltons, capturing Winterfell for the Mannis. That’s the popular conception of the Trojan Horse of Winterfell as I interpret it.

Big Walder in Little Winter Town

Now, I would like to contribute a new aspect of the Trojan Horse of Winterfell not part of the popular conception: Big Walder Frey. He is Lord Walder’s grandson by his son Jammos via his fourth wife, Alyssa Blackwood. Lame Lothar is his full uncle. Big Walder is clever boy, and, unlike his cousin Little Walder, is not cruel (and is even disturbed by his cousin’s behavior). He is also ambitious, somehow thinking he will inherit the Twins despite being behind dozens of people. Big Walder is very familiar with the line of succession and does not especially care about the deaths of his kin:

"We're cousins, not brothers," added Big Walder, the little one. "I'm Walder son of Jammos. My father was Lord Walder's son by his fourth wife. He's Walder son of Merrett. His grandmother was Lord Walder's third wife, the Crakehall. He's ahead of me in the line of succession even though I'm older."
"Only by fifty-two days," Little Walder objected. "And neither of us will ever hold the Twins, stupid."
"I will," Big Walder declared. "We're not the only Walders either. Ser Stevron has a grandson, Black Walder, he's fourth in line of succession, and there's Red Walder, Ser Emmon's son, and Bastard Walder, who isn't in the line at all. He's called Walder Rivers not Walder Frey. Plus there's girls named Walda." (Bran I, ACOK)
"My lords, your uncle Ser Stevron Frey was among those who lost their lives at Oxcross. He took a wound in the battle, Robb writes. It was not thought to be serious, but three days later he died in his tent, asleep."
Big Walder shrugged. He was very old. Five-and-sixty, I think. Too old for battles. He was always saying he was tired.” (Bran V, ACOK)

Big Walder was last seen on-page describing how he found his cousin Little Walder dead, who was seeking coin from White Harbor men. Big Walder was covered in his cousin’s blood; many readers believe he was the murderer.

Big Walder at the Big Battle in the Ice

Big Walder’s presence at the battle in the ice is plausible. He is a squire, and squires fight; he has nice armor and a shield and surcoat to use. Now, he is Ramsay’s squire, so one might think he will fight alongside Ramsay. However, squires being separated from their masters in the series is not unusual. Furthermore, we see the Freys leave the hall together after the fight with the Manderlys, and considering Big Walder went in with Hosteen, it makes sense that he left with him:

As he began to play—a sad, soft song that Theon Greyjoy did not recognize—Ser Hosteen, Ser Aenys, and their fellow Freys turned away to lead their horses from the hall. (Theon I, ADWD)

Hosteen may want to keep his half-nephew close given the murder of Little Walder. Hosteen may name Big Walder as his squire or perhaps a banner-bearer for the battle; even though squires can fight, being with Hosteen will minimize danger for the 9-year-old.
An aside: the Asha Fragment, includes the leader of the Frey army, with two banner-bearers and one man holding a head on a spear. Some people theorized that Big Walder is the leader of the Frey army, based on his armor being similar. This doesn’t make sense; someone that young would never be in charge (Daeron the Daring was 15 and a dragonrider and yet not the official leader of the green army after First Tumbleton). The man in the Asha Fragment is almost certainly Hosteen Frey, though Big Walder may also be present as one of the banner-bearers.

Big Walder’s Big Winterfell Betrayal

Though the Night Lamp will decisively defeat the Frey army, Big Walder will survive, possibly by staying on the edge of the battle. It seems unlikely that Stannis’s knights would kill him; he’s a child squire, more useful as a hostage and presumably easy to capture. Big Walder may be clever enough to yield to Stannis’s men when it goes bad. In any case, Big Walder will be captured and brought to Stannis, a valuable hostage and source of intelligence.
Now, let’s pause on Big Walder for a second. On principle, the Trojan Horse of Winterfell — Manderlys and Karstarks and possibly southron knights dressed as Freys, bearing Lightbringer and some frozen heads, with messages from Tybald confirming the story — seems doable, but there are some specifics that would make it more convincing: someone recognizable besides the Manderlys writing the letter to Winterfell and showing up at the gates.
Throughout the northern plotline of ADWD, we are reminded of the importance of seals and signatures on letters. The signatures of northern lords on Ramsay’s letters are an endorsement of the trustworthiness of their contents:

"Ramsay Bolton, Lord of Winterfell, he signs himself. But there are other names as well." Lady Dustin, Lady Cerwyn, and four Ryswells had appended their own signatures beneath his. Beside them was drawn a crude giant, the mark of some Umber. (The Wayward Bride, ADWD)

Someone like Roose Bolton would get suspicious if the letter announcing Stannis’s defeat and the death of all the Freys was signed by Manderlys alone. Stannis and the Manderlys (specifically their likely leader, Wyman’s cousin Ser Marlon Manderly) should be clever enough to realize this. They will need more signatures from the Boltons’ allies to make the letter credible. Hosteen Frey will likely be killed, so no good there. Arnolf Karstark and his brood could sign it, as a condition of not being executed by fire; as a secret ally to the Boltons, Arnolf’s seal and signature would lend credibility to the letter.
But just signing the letter is not enough, because for the ruse to be credible, the signers will also have to appear leading the army back to Winterfell.This is where Arnolf or his brood being involved could be problematic; if these men led an army back to Winterfell, they could rat out the entire ruse. Stannis could strongarm them — keeping the grandsons as hostages — but given that the Karstarks already played Stannis false, I doubt he risks it. [Note: this is a reason why Stannis would glamor Theon as Arnolf, so that theory could be onto something]. So, who else can Stannis turn to ensure his Trojan Horse is successful?
Enter Big Walder Frey, the linchpin of Stannis’s capture of Winterfell. Consider these three points that Big Walder uniquely offers as a tool of deception:

• As a Frey, one of the few houses legitimately allied to the Boltons, Ramsay’s squire, and a helper in the cover-up of the Bolton sack of Winterfell, Big Walder’s credibility will not be in doubt.
  
• If the Frey leadership died in battle, it would not be shocking that Big Walder, the only trueborn Frey left in the host, to write announcing the battle’s outcome and the deaths of his kin, especially if he was squiring for Hosteen.
  
• Arnolf Karstark’s planned treachery is not well-known by the northern lords like the Manderlys or even Hosteen Frey. However Big Walder was present when Ramsay feasted Karstark at the Dreadfort. It would seem that someone as clever as him would be aware of the plot. Thus, Big Walder could accurately describe it happening in a way the Manderlys or even Stannis could not, detailing how Arnolf and family were killed, but the Karstarks filled their role.
  

Big Walder will write a letter to Winterfell describing Stannis’s defeat and the death of much of the leadership of the Boltons’ allies (Hosteen, Arnolf) which the Manderlys will sign. Roose Bolton will receive a message via the Dreadfort maester brought by the Karstarks, written by a Frey, and signed by a Manderly; the makings of a perfectly cromulent and credible letter. Then, when the army returns to Winterfell, it will bear the banners of Tommen and the Manderlys, Freys, and Karstarks, carry heads, and Lightbringer (maybe carried by Big Walder). Stannis’s “defeat” will be confirmed, and the army will be welcomed inside to massacre the Boltons. Big Walder, the little man with a big shadow, almost singlehandedly wins Winterfell for Stannis.

Why would Big Walder Cooperate with Stannis?

Good question. There are two scenarios: coercion or cooperation. Let’s consider coercion first. Big Walder is a child, already easily intimidated, who may have been coerced to write a false letter in the past.

My nephews are young, I grant you, but they were there. Big Walder wrote the letter, though his cousin signed as well. It was a bloody bit of business, by their account. (Catelyn IV, ASOS)

That letter, written by Big Walder, blames the sack of Winterfell on Theon and paints Ramsay as a savior. We know this letter is false, but it is not actually clear how much Big and Little Walder witnessed when the Boltons sacked Winterfell; they may have not seen the Bolton army betray the Stark one, but it is hard to believe they did not realize that the Boltons set Winterfell aflame and certainly that the Boltons “saved” the women and children, taking them back to the Dreadfort. Big Walder coerced to write the Winterfell letter? Was he convinced? Unknown, but given that Big and Little Walder should be aware that “Reek” was Ramsay, they knew what they were writing was at least partially false. Scary Ramsay coercing a pair of 9-year-olds into writing a letter seems reasonable. If Ramsay coerced Big Walder, so can Stannis via his torturer knight, Ser Clayton Suggs.
But even if Big Walder is coerced to a write a letter, he still needs to go to Winterfell and present himself. That’s a risk, Stannis would no doubt know; Big Walder could give away the ruse, just as Arnolf could. However, unlike Arnolf, Big Walder is a child, so the odds of him resisting intimidation or figuring out a way to let the ruse slip to Ramsay would be lower. Big Walder could try something clever, like slipping in “mayhaps” like in the game Lord of the crossing, but I doubt anyone except readers would notice. I also find it likely that Stannis will dress his men as Freys escorting Big Walder, with orders to kill him if he screws up. If the choice for his messenger is either a greybeard Karstark who tried to betray him and a Frey child, Big Walder will do.
What if Big Walder was cooperative with the Boltons and their false letter? If he was (and even if he wasn’t), Big Walder could prove cooperative again with Stannis. Walder wants to live, and Stannis can protect him. As a Frey, a persona non grata in the north, he is a likely target of northmen seeking revenge for the Red Wedding. Another reason: Big Walder wants to be lord of the Twins, but there are dozens of people ahead of him. How can he jump the line? Bending the knee to Stannis. Stannis does say that "we will make new lords." (Davos IV, ASOS), why not Big Walder?
Would Big Walder betray his kin? For some, the answer is yes: he killed Little Walder. But even if he did not, it is clear he cares little about them. He does not mourn for Ser Stevron and is largely dismissive of his fellow Freys. Moreover, amongst the Freys “only full blood siblings could be trusted” (Epilogue, ASOS); Big Walder is the only Blackwood-Frey in the north. Hosteen and Fat Walda are Crakehall-Freys, ahead of him in succession. Plus, Ramsay’s behavior was disturbing him. I do not believe it is that large of a jump for Big Walder to betray the people he hardly cares about.
Now, Stannis might be skeptical of Big Walder, for good reason. But there are some ways Big Walder could tell Stannis to earn his trust: the truth of the Bolton sack of Winterfell, for one, and (if he did it) his murder of Little Walder. Theon could support the veracity of these claims. Moreover, it could be Big Walder, based on his previous false letter, who suggests that he write the letter to Winterfell.
Personally, I believe that Big Walder will willingly swear fealty to Stannis and partake in the Trojan Horse in exchange for his support of his claim to the Twins. However, as detailed earlier, Big Walder being coerced into the plot is plausible. In any case, Big Walder should play a big role in Winterfell’s capture.

Big Walder’s Big Rhyme

Let’s examine some “rhyming” (parallelism) associated with Big Walder and the Trojan Horse of Winterfell. The Trojan Horse already has rich parallelism, and Big Walder further enhances it. First, Big Walder already wrote a letter incorrectly stating the events of a battle at Winterfell:

My nephews are young, I grant you, but they were there. Big Walder wrote the letter, though his cousin signed as well. It was a bloody bit of business, by their account.
"I cannot speak to that. There is much confusion in any war. Many false reports. All I can tell you is that my nephews claim it was this bastard son of Bolton's who saved the women of Winterfell, and the little ones. They are safe at the Dreadfort now, all those who remain." (Catelyn IV, ASOS)

In both cases, Big Walder writes about a bloody nigh-on-implausible affair, but his authorship gives a false report credibility. The trick the Boltons played on the Starks via Big Walder will be inflicted upon the Boltons via Big Walder.
Another fun one. In AFFC/ADWD, Wyman Manderly faked Davos’s death, using the Freys as unwitting pawns to “confirm” it:

"Wyman Manderly has done as you commanded, and beheaded Lord Stannis's onion knight."
"We know this for a certainty?"
"The man's head and hands have been mounted above the walls of White Harbor. Lord Wyman avows this, and the Freys confirm. They have seen the head there, with an onion in its mouth. And the hands, one marked by his shortened fingers." (Cersei V, AFFC)

So shall the Manderlys fake Stannis’s death — but this time, with a Frey as a willing accomplice. It is worthwhile to mention that Manderly’s deception allowed his son Wylis to be released from captivity. The only reason Whoresbane Umber is fighting for the Boltons is because he worries for his nephew, the Greatjon. But because of Big Walder’s deception, King’s Landing, which will have the Greatjon captive (Jaime ordered the transfer of the Freys captives to Tommen), may believe the Umbers are loyal and release the Greatjon (the same may happen with Harrion Karstark).

Epilogue: Big Walder, Little Squire

Stannis takes Winterfell, thanks to Big Walder. What’s next for the big little man? There will be no sideplot of him leading an attack on the Twins; at best, GRRM will pocket Big Walder taking the Twins until the story’s dénouement. What is the point of this character, who happens to be descended from one of GRRM’s favorite houses?
There is a position that Big Walder can fill. Stannis left his squire Devan Seaworth with Melisandre, and his other squire Bryen Farring perished from exposure. A king must needs have a squire. What better way for Big Walder to remain in the story and serve Stannis than as his squire? It seems very GRRM-like for the same kid to squire for both Ramsay Bolton and Stannis Baratheon. Also, incidentally, because his grandmother is a Blackwood, Big Walder is (likely) a third cousin, once removed of Stannis, so Stannis may take pity on a kinsman.
TL;DR Just as Big Walder was instrumental in concealing the Bolton’s sack of Winterfell, so will he prove instrumental in fomenting misinformation allowing Stannis capture of Winterfell, by writing the letter to Winterfell announcing Stannis’s defeat and then marching to the castle with a host of Manderlys, Karstarks, and Stannermen dressed as Freys as a Trojan Horse for Stannis’s army.

This old website has a very extensive list of hidden sounds in Smashing Pumpkins songs. I would like to get this info added to the SPCODEX with updated info for studio tracks released more recently. I know ATUM has a bunch of hidden stuff that this sub has identified but if there is anything from other albums please call them out in this thread.
https://www.angelfire.com/bc/smashingpumpkins0/songsecrets.html

Smashing Pumpkins Hidden Song Secrets

Smashing Pumpkins Hidden Song Secrets
17 -You can hear shuffling things in the middle of the song.
1979 (CD version) -2:07 you may hear what sounds like a helicopter. a DJ says the echoing is a burp that is reversed and then screwed around with. -The infamous drum beat at the beginning and the end. -Also, at 1:03, you may hear a jingle of a bell or something. -At 4:08 there's some beeping or something - -There is a "whistling" noise in the background at 2:55-2:58 (left channel). The Sad Wizard. -At 2:05-2:08 you can hear different drum beat.
1979 (Grammies '97) -At the very end of the song when the crowd is cheering you can hear Billy play the intro for Today.
- A - An Ode to No One If you play the "and coil my tongue around a bumblebee mouth" backwards, it sounds like: "I am evil".
-You can hear chimes 0:03 and 0:22, also 1:21-1:23 there is a wowowo sound. -The guitars squeak before they stop at 2:19-2:21. 3:01. -There is a crack in the background and another one at 3:18, 3:30-3:31. -There is an errie echo in the background at 4:04, 4:06, and 4:08. - In the left channel there is another click at 4:42.
Annie Dog You can hear a shaking noise along w/ the piano all throughout the song.
Apathy's Last Kiss At the end of the song, there is an "ooo eee ooo eee ooo eee" noise. could be some weird distorted guitar effect? .
Appels + Oranjes -At 4:05 you can hear someone drop something or put a gutar down.
Ava Adore -At 1:38 you can hear like a doorbell sound.
- B - Believe very soft beeping noise at 2:18... and throughout song.
Beautiful -Not really a secret sound, but if you listen carefully you'll notice that in the second verse, "wonderful, it's wonderful, to know that you're just like I", at the "just like I" on 'like' it goes too low for Billy, and he just speaks the word. However, D'arcy (who sings backup) is singing higher, and has no problem with the note. -You hear this best with headphones, but through out the entire song, theres a 'beatbox' that goes along with the drum beat, you know a 'beatbox' is when rappers make drum sounds with their mouths, like The Fat Boys did. So ya, i would guess Billy sampled some guy doing a 'beatbox' to the drum beat and and looped it for the entire song. It's there, when you hear it once, every time you hear the song after that, your ears will automatically focus on that sound. . -sounds like d'arcy singing an extended "aahhh..." from 0:07-0:11
Blank Before song, it sounds like Billy is setting up, opening a water bottle.
Blue -wind chyme sounds from 0:01-0:15
Bodies during the second "love is suicide" verse, Billy mutters in the background: "destroy, despise, distrust, disobey, distrust, disarm, destroy, dispise, dissect, deny, destroy, despise, distrust"
Bullet with Butterfly Wings - If you play the "rat in a cage" part backwards, it sounds like: "here are my abs!" - There is a sound sort of like a distorted guitar or a synthesiser making wooooooAAAAAAhhhhhhooooooo sounds from 3:42 to 4:11.
Bury Me Song opens with James saying something of continuous debate. Most popular ideas being "Boys, let's do it" and "Poised like an angel". Other ideas that have been sent to me are: "Boys, let me lead you", and "Boys, let's get in tune". .
By Starlight It sounds like running water in the background, most notable 0:26-30, and 0:35-1:11. These effects are caused by the flanger and reverb effects that Billy used on this song
Bye June -from :05 to :07 there is some fuzz interference in the background -at :18 it sounds like someone chimed in singing with Billy -at :25 Billy breathes into the mic when he sings "hope" -at :46 in the background there is a 'zzz' kind of noise from the guitar -at :53 there is a 'pop' sound in the background -from :54 to 1:07 there is a 'wooo' hum from the amp -from 1:13 to 1:20 there is the same hum, but higher in pitch -at 1:28 someone says "hey" in the background -at 1:38 there is a weird 'pop' sound, from the amplifier(?) -at 1:42 it sounds like the high string the bass was just played
- C - Cherry At beginning, you can obviously hear some studio talk: BC: "listen, just wanna start it?" JC: "Ready Flood?" F: "Yeah." BC: "1, 2, 3, 4." (and then the song starts)
Crestfallen -At 4:06 (practically the end of the song) you can hear a thump. -The 'thump' is the cover of the piano keys being closed.
Cupid De Locke -The shaking sound used for the drum part is actually an aspirin bottle. -At 0:52-1:04, and 1:37-1:49 there is a weird chime in the right channel. At 2:30-2:34 there is talking in the background. -At the end of Cupid de Locke, Billy Corgan recites the following lines: "..and in the land of star-crossed lovers and barren-hearted wanderers, forever lost in foresaked missives and satan's pull; we seek the unseekable and we speak the inspeakable, our hopes gathering dust to dust, in faith, in compassion, and in love."
Czarina -At the end of Czarina you can hear someone breathing.
- D -Daphne Descends -At very end of the song before D'Arcy and Billy sangs last time verse "You Love Him" 4:34-4:35 you can hear a wolf howling sound or another strange voice.
Daydream At 1:10 you can hear a click from the cello player's bow hitting the wood of his cello. Also, at 1:20-21, you can hear jingly noises, probably someone's bracelet.
Destination Unknown At about 3:16 you can here something like "I love my sister" coming from the right speaker.
Disarm -If you play "send this smile..." backwards it clearly says "send this" -At very end, you can hear opera singers (turn it up very loud). -"After listening to "Disarm" over and over again, i noticed a faint scream at 3:04 in the song."
- E - East (alternate) -You can hear towards the end after the final "if i had a way go id gather up my throwing stone" listen to the guitar parts you hear a squeak and Billy say something like "this song" or "please stop" or something youll hear it if you listen. -Lia
Eye -Somewhere in the middle of eye played backwards it sounds like "James James.. why did you go" -At second before entering another song there's a thumping sound which is familiar to Crestfallen's thumping sound at end.
- F -Farewell and Goodnight -Jimmy Chamberlin, James Iha, and D'Arcy all sing in harmony at 2:14, then Billy joins in at 2:27, and they all sing 'the sun shines/but i dont/the silver rain/will wash away...' At about 2:40, just after they sing the last note, 'away,' you can hear a wave wash over, and Jimmy sings quiety, 'rain.' Either that, or he holds his note too long. -It sounds more like James and it sounds more like he says "wash away the pain" instead. - G - Galapogos Billy mutters the following in the background, from 3:16-27: "Sorry I had to put you through this shit, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry, wishes."
Geek U.S.A. -During the first drum part, you can hear a man talking (turn it up).
Gish -On the earlier copies of gish, the liner notes have the songs listed under copyright control, since it was before billy had a publishing deal.
Glynis -At very beginning, there is a robot-like "hello", which comes from a Red Red Meat song.
God -Played backwards, it says: "love is lost to you make it feel if we want to lost never try behind the scene ooh, i win your..." (never finishes) -If you play the chorus backwards, you hear "I am helpless, I want to die." -You can hear D'arcy say something, sounds like "help". -You can hear guitar effects at 2:08, 2:09-2:10, 2:13, 2:15, 2:19-2:20. .
- H - Hello Kitty Kat At very end, Billy says: "Song's over."
-From 3:29 to 3:50, you can hear a kind of "sucking-wind" noise in the back. . -A siren in the background in the middle of a silent part and a heavy part. -Vince Horst
Here is No Why At 0:56 there is some clicking or cracking.
Honey Spider I On some versions, you can hear Billy say at the very end: "aha, that's everything, haha!"
Hummer -At the very end, you can hear a few notes of classical music. -In the quiet part of "Hummer" (the outro)...when he's saying "Ask yourself a question.." and so forth....if you play it backwards, it sounds like "You have no meaning"...and something after that, but I can't make out what he's saying.
- I - I'm Going Crazy (after Daydream) If you play the entire song of "I'm Going Crazy" backwards...he keeps saying something like "He is here...He is white" (not sure about the "He is white part" though)
In the Arms of Sleep There is a "woo woo" noise at 2:06, 2:12-14, and at 2:30-40, where it sounds like someone sobbing. Also of course the weird breathing at the beginning.
- J -
- K -
- L - La Dolly Vita You may hear: an "ooh" at 3:33, and a "cuckoo" at 3:44
Lily -Note that sounds like a "synth horn" at 2:34.5 -At 1:53, real softly, billy goes "yeah" or something to that effect.
Love -Whole song you can obiviously hear an twit-twit sound. -If you listen to "Love" (Mellon-Collie and the Infinate Sadness) a lot, then you have probably noticed that at 2:36 Billy says something that isn't printed in the lyrics booklet. Well, if you strain your ears, it sounds like Billy says,"When I lost my mind, I knew I was in for the long...." -Love missing lyrics (Very distorted) -Pat Laneri
When I lost my mind I knew I was in (aah!)for a long night Who are you to love? Who, yeah, who? You know you'll know in time
- M - Marquis in Spades In the beginning you can hear some studio talk: Mole: "Rolling." JC: "I was just on another planet for a sec." BC: "Run it back Mole. (amp on) ... Fucker."
-At about 2:44 (where Billy sings "let's see where we can go..") he growls right before the "go".. -Guitar effect at 1:42 (right channel). -At 3:13 there is a "click" sound. -At the very end of the song (3:16), there is a "zap" sound. -last 3 by
Mayonaise - I remember watching the MTV VMA in 1996, and they did a small 1 minute clip of an old interview they had with Billy Corgan- they asked him what made that strange "wheezing" noise in the song, Billy said that the guitar he used in recording that song was a piece of junk, whenever, he would stop playing for a second, the guitar would make a loud noise, so when they played Mayonaise and he had to stop strumming for a second, it would make that loud noise, so eventually that noise got incorporated into the song! - At 3:42, in the background you can hear someone say "eh?" or something to that extent. - When he says "pick a pocket full of sorrows..." and so on, if you play that backwards, it sounds like "i smell lovely".
Medillia of the Gray Skies You can hear a high-pitched noise at 0:16 (right channel). .
Meladori Magpie At 0:02, you can hear the slide object touch the strings of the guitar
Mouths of Babes -If you put the song on a vocal fader and during the distortion in the beginning you can hear billy or someone say something.
Muzzle During the verse 'for thinking that i'd last forever', right when Billy sings the word 'last' you can hear D'arcy sing 'die' in the background, also on the last line, when 'and i knew the silence of the world' is sung, you can hear a really high pitched voice sing the 'and i knew' part along with Billy. Also at the beginning, Billy takes a big breath.
My Blue Heaven -At 0:17 in the right channel, you can hear a slide sound (probably the cello). -At 3:16 there is a noise in the background. .
- N -
- O - Obscured At 0:11, Billy says "yeah" or "ooh".
- P - Pastachio Medley At 13:44-13:45, in the left channel, you can hear Billy who says "Yeah" and he also sings at 13:47 (I think the song at that time is Porkbelly).
Perfect -At 0:07-0:08 you can hear Billy take a big breath. -There is the sound that a truck or forklift makes baking up. -jon
Peel Sessions -One of the harder to find items is of the first pressing of the peel session ep (back when it was very rare and expensive). you can tell if you have it because on the typewritten track listing on the side there is a misprint. track two says "GIRL NAMED SANOOZ" instead of "SANDOZ".
Pisces Iscariot (album) -You can see behind Pisces Iscariot where the song's are named an blue "flame". So, open your Pisces Iscariot, take CD out and you'll see picture of Smashing Pumpkins. Now, look that blue "flame" against the light and look who's picture appears into the "flame"
Pissant At the very end, Billy yells "whooo!".
Porcelina of the Vast Oceans -At 0:09 there is a click. -At these times: 4:37, 39, 41, 42, 44, 46, 54, 58, and 59, sounds like a weird raygun effect. -Also at the beginning, the intro, from about 0:32-2:12, it sounds like steam being released from a tea kettle. -Starting at 2:05 up until the loud guitar rift, in the right channel there is a very faint rippling effect.
Pulseczar At the end, Billy whispers "I know what you mean" .
- Q - Quiet -At about 2:40 in quiet you can hear Billy mumbling in the background. It sounds like he says "Word Up". -At the very end, you can hear "cartoon noises" played sorta fast and warbly.
- R -Rocket When you play "i shall be free" backwards it sounds like "hail mutilation"
- S - Set the Ray to Jerry -At 2:36, you can hear what some are calling a "horn, or duck noise". -There is a kind of bip noise at 0:35. There is muttering at 1:01-1:03 (left channel). .
Siamese Dream (the cd) -The first pressing of siamese dream has the really nice booklet with each picture with lyrics on a separate page while the booklet in the later pressings only have a fold out with tiny thumbnails for the pictures.
Siamese Dream (the song) At the beginning: Jimmy: "Flush the toilet?" Producer (Butch Vig?): "No, it's done by now. Go ahead." (song starts)
Silverfuck -At very end, Billy says "Alright, this take, don't give a fuck" and plays a few notes. -If you listen to Silverfuck carefully (you can hear it best on headphones), you can tell (it's just as well) that anytime that Billy's voice is echoed (such as the 'bang, bang, you're dead..' part) the sound starts in the middle, goes to the left channel, and then ends in the right channel.
Siva (Peel Sessions) -At 4:09, D'arcy says "Wait, I just stepped on my ?" then Billy counts to four for the loud re-entry. -On the Peel Sessions version of Siva near the end Billy screws up and says "I don't live, I unvade" like he started to say unveil and then realized his mistake and finished saying invade.
Slunk -Pat Laneri -at :02.5 you can hear the amp turn on -from :03 to :09 you can hear a "blowing wind sound" (close to speaker) -from :08 to :09 Billy says, "why don't we just start from here?" -at :12 there is a click from the drumsticks -from :13 to :15 there is something jingling -at :30 Billy says "yeah" in the background -at :38 it sounds like someone says "huh?" in the background -at :40 there is a 'blip' sound -at :46 there is a 'bip' sound, and another one at 1:07 -at 1:08 and 1:53 there is a 'whoop' sound -from 1:18 to 1:19 there is a guitar sound that sounds like whispering -at 1:22 there is a 'whop' sound -at 1:56 there is a 'whip' sound -at 1:58 there is a 'wheeoop' sound -at 2:08 there is a 'rurr' sound -at 2:15 there is a 'beoop' sound -at 2:22 there is a 'rurrr' guitar effect
Soothe Lyrics clarification: this is old but its a response to something some guy had on his site saying it was hung me, but it really is hungry. If you stick your ear right next to the speaker you can hear the faintest trace of his tongue reverberating off the r.
Also you can hear "the 7 am buses slithering by" from the liner notes at 2:18-21.
Soma -You can hear crickets at the beginning, and the weird TV voice at the end that says: "And you need to resist the devil, so that he will flee."
That TV voice was used at the 6/18/94 Starchilderen show and looped throughout the song "War Jam" which they played live. - There is a sort of high pitched squeek which is wobbly-(echoed?) from 2:05 to 2:27
Spaceboy There's an odd conversation at the end of Spaceboy... On some CDs, it appears at the beginning of Silverfuck, although the Siamese Dream tab book makes it clear that it belongs at the end of Spaceboy...
"Now it's, uh, kind of strange, and, uh, kinda hard for me to talk about, but I thought maybe you could help- um, when we start getting physical, rather than having intercourse, he ends up just masturbating himself, and I end up feeling very alienated and unsatisfied, and it's really come between us"
Well, that's a rather candid monologue... [!] This seems to be from some talk show or something- in the tab book, Billy said it was from an anonymous source, and that he couldn't say where it was from, for fear of being sued. I hear from that this dialogue came from HBO's Real Sex program.
-In this interview I recorded from 107.7 The End in Seattle, Billy said that the conversation at the end of Spaceboy...well here I'll just write it word for word: Guy:asks what it is Billy:(Chuckles) Um,it's just this weird thing I found.It's just this woman talking about her husband masturbating himself...I thought it was funny. (Laughs, audience laughs) Its really that simple
Spaced At 1:44.5, in the background, you can hear James cough (turn it up).
Starla 5:27-5:30 "listen for the police car go by" as mentioned in the liner notes.
Stars Falling At the end of the song, Billy says "Okay". .
Stumbeline -At 0:03 Billy licks his lips or something. -I believe that at the end of Stumbeline, if you turn it up very loud and put your ear up to the speaker, you can hear people moving insterments, and Billy begin to say something, but then it skips to the next track. -Everytime billy makes an "S" sound, the noise is amplified many times louder in the left speaker. try listening to it on earphones, you'll see.
- T - Tales of a Scorched Earth -At 0:17 there is an "uh" -At 3:36, the "Dragon Noise" is actually another sound effect from DooM, the effect when the player is hurt. - -The "missing lyrics" are: "'cause everyone's lost just waiting to be found, everyone's a thought just waiting to fade." ... or are they? check the next secret. -There are some miss lyrics in TOASE, but they are not "cause everyones...fade" those are listed in the book...I can't tell you what the real "missing" ones are, but those are NOT them... -Shannon -Tales of a Scorched Earth missing lyrics (very distorted, this part sounds sort of different from the rest of the song) I'm scared Don't leave me on my own behalf It shouldn't be Could it ever be? It shouldn't be me So now I'm gone In time is everything that I don't know!!! Also, after "I die just to feel", "Why do the same old things keep on happening", and "Cause beyond my hopes there are no feelings" Billy says "yeah". -Pat Laneri
Tear -"OK, this is a tricky one. Here in Finland, there's an band called CMX and their singer is called A.W.Yrjänä. (Note those capital letters *AWY* ) Look about part "i saw you there". OK, that's ok? No. Let's write it again with same letters and same order. "Is AWY out here". Understood? Hehe...My friend said that CMX and SP got an conspiracy or something.=)"
The Aeroplane Flies High First spoken part: -I really don't wanna look stupid when I'm sleeping. I never really liked sunny days. The black wings just reach out to me over a distance... and i can feel the wind from the wings... I see the clouds, i feel the ocean with my feet, and I'm home again. It requires an ability to judge distance. The aeroplane flies high, turns left, looks right.
Second spoken part: -If i knew where I was going, I would already be there (laugh). I wish I had more time--- judicious, beautiful, augmented, whatever. I've always been afraid to die, but I think now I'm more afraid to live.
End: -And in my heart i know you're there. And in my heart i know you're here. And in my heart i know you're gone.
-During some chorus, you can hear a very loud noise in the background: 2:31-2:36 and 4:14-4:17. -During the "I've always been afraid to die..." you can hear strange voices in the background. -There is a little bip noise at 3:16 (be close) -You can hear Billy talking in the background from 4:54 to 4:57 (be very close). -At 7:32-7:35, there is a strange "ooooohhhhh!" sound. -At 8:28-8:29 you can hear voices in the back. -i think last 6 from
The Beginning is the End is the Beginning -At end before "the final boom" Billy says few times "Strange" and then he growls or says something I can't understand.
The Boy At 2:57-59 (pratically the end of the song), the producer (maybe even billy) is talking in the background. Sounds like: 'person': "you really love her don't you? [something something] (starts laughing)"/font>
The End is the Beginning is the End -At 1:28 there's an click.
The Ethers Tragic -At 2.37-2.47 there is some weird noise. Maybe it's from guitar or maybe not.
Thirty-three -That's not really a secret thing but throughout the whole song, the main melody is oddly echoed in the background. -There really isn't any percussion in 33, but at 1:09, you can hear someone start to do/shake something that sounds really familar to the "asprin bottle effect" from Cupid de Locke. (This noise continues throughout the rest of the song).
To Forgive At 0:59 there is a wail in the background. The "stormy" ending to the song is due to a broken amp.
To Sheila - There is a weird high-pitched noise in "To Sheila" most noteable in the beginning, but it goes throughout the whole song. - also, you can hear Billy breath or take a breath at 0:03. - and at the end of the song, 4:38, you can hear a thumping sound, like a guitar being put down or something.
Today -In Today there is a "sucking" sound coming from the left speaker at 2:39. -If you listen very closely, you can hear the sound start in the right speaker at about 2:37, and gradually grow a bit louder and fade to the left speaker.
Tonight, Tonight If you listen to the song backwards, this is what you may hear:
"ask master vegsley (all i could get) what am i my little aeromaid oh i been dreaming sleepily slash the rope that ties yes we win the battle be home if we sell against been believe in me it'll be yes who are you now are you i aint much dare to survive me aeromaid ahhh yeah i just need it was eeee (and on) ahh yeah i was... honey i still love you while you sit ill be there now you believe me too much i love you never lie to (your) baby that ill be this never said all the world believe believe in me (run together) it'll be will you marry me says not if i eat fashion arms'll be with me i'll just be yeah it was i deny this i deservei just necessary (sounds like necessie) guards the men that i just wanna believe you forget (?) yeah when i i want all of my i want you for all my life it just wont save me your decision wont defy i just wont defy cause i believe in me believe in me i dont want this stand behind this i lose it hurts night"
-At 0:07, 0:13, and 0:19, there is a very noticeable click from the drums.
Transformer -You can hear guitar slides effects at 0:14-0:15, 1:35-1:36, 2:40-2:41, 2:56-2:57. -At 1:42-43 in the left channel, it sounds like "baby" sounds. .
- U -
- V -
- W -We Only Come Out at Night -There is a high-pitched noise in the background throughout the whole song. -Bats can be heard flapping near the end im notsure if its the high pitch or not.
Where Boys Fear to Tread -You can hear an explosion from the computer game DooM mentioned in the liner notes at 1:20, 1:55, 2:29, 3:01, 3:44 -1:58, 2:03, 2:07, 3:06, 3:10, 3:14 there is some backup vocals by either James or D'arcy?? At 3:03 Billy groans. At 3:15 Billy says "uh". At 4:17 there is a very loud high-pitched noise in the right channel that probably makes your ears hurt! -There is a laser sort of sound at 00:45 and one at 4:19 and a high pitched squeek at 00:49-00:50
Window Paine -In the acapella part of "WindowPaine"...when he's saying "Do what you gotta do", and all that....played backwards, he says "God is not safe", and some other stuff that I'm not sure of....my girlfriend and I thought he was saying "I wish I was pissing in a shower"...but that isn't it =)
- X - x.y.u. -There is a siren that sounds like it's at 6:50 till the end. -Another sound effect from DooM is the prolonged roar of a demon which can be heard on X.Y.U from 4:46-50.
- Y -
- Z - Zero Played backwards, says:
"i always knew(lose) if ever all my life shed the burners (something "burn".not quite sure) it would not save me god says this not send me life send me life send me love send me love or descend me high descend me high descend me low descend me low"
-At some parts it sounds like "she is god." -During the "emptiness..." part, when the instruments pause, you can hear them ring. there is a "rocket" sound from 2:26 to 2:28 (right channel).

Hi all! I think for a few years I’ve been in denial/let lifestyle creep happen/bad mental health dictate my finances.
Graduated 4 years ago with -£3000 in the overdraft after university. Started a job where I was earning about £2400/month so with outgoing etc barely dented it.
Got a better job on £71k after 2 years, and moved in with a partner so finances improved significantly. Managed to get out of the overdraft and start saving, got to £6k savings (though always had the current account mostly empty, transferring money from savings for daily use). Relationship fell apart, and I blew all the savings on a campervan, and ended up back in the red. Also had to leave the high-paying job due to its impact on my mental health (anxiety/depression spanning years).
Went into a job where I was on £50k/year with a 10k bonus for joining (however after tax and getting paid alongside my wage it ended up more like £5k). This bonus has just been eaten up and I couldn’t tell you where it’s gone.
I’m now in another job, earning £52k plus working locum shifts where the rate varies, but I’d estimate I can easily get another £10-15k per year from this.
Writing it all down, it sounds good right? But I’m in the worst financial position I’ve been in for years.
Current finances (as of today) are: -£2500 current account balance
£750 in savings (aware this isn’t really ‘savings’ given the debt, but it’s something of an emergency buffer I know I have) £900 credit card debt
£250 in debt to electric company (only just got a letter outlining this today 🙃)
Current major monthly outgoings are: £820 rent
£130 council tax
£170 car finance
£60 car insurance
£160 van insurance (has been off the road for a year though)
£85 pet insurance (two dogs, left with me after relationship breakdowns)
£350 therapy (will be cutting this out this month as although I probably need it more than ever I can’t justify that cost!)
£100 electricity direct debit
These are just the ‘bigger’ ones off the top of my head. I admit I’m prone to an impulse purchase occasionally, though always less than £70 generally. Tax bracket also dropped this year due to my locum shifts last year, so I’m now on a 667L tax code which is hitting hard.
I’m just feeling extremely overwhelmed by it all, and exhausted by it. I am working most weekends as a locum this month to get some extra income (should work out to an additional £4200 on top of my regular salary if paid on time, but one reason this month is a struggle is because they forgot to pay me a shift from April and I now have to wait until end of June for it, so no guarantees.)
My current plans are:
Transfer CC debt onto a 0% interest card
Sell the van - it has been in a garage waiting for the slowest mechanic in the world to repair some bits though, and will have to hold off chasing it up until July when I will be able to pay for it now. I’m also unsure if I can cancel the insurance with it being at a garage for so long.
Continue picking up locum shifts - though I’d prefer in the long run to only do 2-3 a month as I still want to enjoy my free time!
I’ve accepted after payday June is still going to be a tough month. I feel like I just need some ideas from strangers on where I even start with the finances, the stress is taking it’s toll!
Thank you!

Long story short I got chaptered for a dwi. I owe like 6k. Can they garnish my wages if I don’t pay? I already know they’ll keep my tax return.

Continuing…
They all know who I am and as they say “RHIP”, or rank has its privilege. They’re all Oil Patch and know that I’ve been around the block a few times, handle explosives with the greatest of ease, and ran more rigs and drilled more meters than most of them have had hot dinners.
All salt of the earth types. I just lay a few ground rules; such as no firearms, no excessive drinking and if there’s a major problem, they come to see me first. These guys are true Oil Patch and guarantee me that all shall be done as I require.
Besides, I’ll be running the Bowling Ball Bingo show and the only one with access to explosives. They know all about field explosives and are as wary of it as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. That I can handle the stuff with deft and aplomb, they both respect and admire that.
“It’s good to be the king”, I think, recalling a line from a favorite Mel Brook’s movie.
I’ve got the guys off setting up the checkerboard for bowling ball bingo.
“Y’know”, I said after a week or so of farting around designing and building everything, “We’ve not had a shakedown on the punt guns (bowling ball mortars)”.
“That’s right.”, Kit agreed. I toss him my truck keys and he and half the guys take off to Madden’s place to pick-up the cannons so we might test them.
Earlier, I figured that each square of the 8×8 matrix I’m working on could be 1 meter square. However real BINGO numbers go to 75, so I’d have to use an odd shape, like 5×15 target area.
First, we need to see how the cannons are going to work.
Luckily, I’ve got a lockbox in the bed of my truck. In there I have a nice little selection of black and gun powder, dynamite (40-50-60-70% Herculene Xtra-Fast), some bricks of C-4, RDX, PETN and the usual assortment of blasting caps, cannon fuse, variable millisecond delay caps, blasting cap super-boosters, a couple of galvanometers, as well as a few handheld and floor-model detonators.
Some combination of these should put the bowling ball up in a ballistic trajectory where it’ll come down somewhere on the grid. That area will be flagged and the number read out by the guys who will be riding quads out in the field. I’ve researched the innumerable types of games one can play with bingo (remembering to order the Bingo Cards), and chosen 4 to be run, to keep it somewhat simple. We have to determine the cost of cards and the types of payouts.
I’ll run by and see Father Rivera at the local Catholic Church. He should be a fountain of bingo knowledge. He was helpful to the idea that each cash payout had to be larger than the last, so plan accordingly.
The guys show up with the finished cannons, all painted a different color (red, green, blue and black) and half a trailer full of slightly scorched bowling balls.
We use a boom arm off the Cat to pick up the cannons and site them sort of where we plan to put the ‘shooting gallery’. I walk back from my truck with an assortment of explosives and explosive paraphernalia.
“School’s about to commence, guys. Gather ‘round.”, I say to all present.
I go through about an hour’s worth of explanation and discourse on the care and feeding of explosivores. I show what small samples of every explosive I carry does in both confined and unreconstructed areas.
I do think I got their attention when I made a full 40-ounce beer bottle simply disappear with the addition of one of my home-brew binary liquids.
Don’t worry. It was just Old English Malt Liquor. No great loss.
I supervised the setting up of a cannon with some black powder. We could ignite electrically or just use some cannon fuse.
“Cannon fuse? What do you use that for?”
“My cannons.”
Obviously.
So, I estimated that a half-pound of Fourxxxx would give the first ball the proper trajectory. We aligned the thing the best we could (as it had no sights, this was being done solely by seat-of-one’s-pants trial and error), charged the cannon, added a projectile and made certain it was seated snugly, but not too tightly. We ran over the full-fledged Safety Dance, cleared the compass, tootled the area with our airhorns and at the count of FIRE!
I had Kit light the ceremonious first fuse.
“K-BLAMMMM!”
Not too bad. Except we overshot the grid by ~550 yards and the only way we could estimate the landing area of the bowling ball was by the splash and irritated trout of the Lower San Juan River.
“And that, my friends,” I said seriously, “Is why you have dry runs and an open firing range.”
The rest of the day was taken up with both testing different combinations of explosives and recording the results. We had a couple of quad bikes on loan from the local sand rail company, so I had the guys take turns going out, running down the ball’s landing zone and calculating the distance and accuracy.
Around ball number 12, we were getting consistent results with both C-4 and PETN. All it took was a bit of gimbaling on the cannon’s major axis and we had the problem well in hand and the cannons dialed in pretty damn well.
I figured to make a buck or two extra, we could charge folks a small donation to tilt the cannon one direction or another and maybe, charge them for upping or reducing the charge volume.
“Step right up, folks”, I can imagine, “Drop a dollar for a degree and a fiver for the charge.”
Thinking that if people were really watching their cards, they’d want any sort of edge to get that final number, especially with a growing jackpot.
We had contracted one of the electrical shops in town to build a tote-board 5×15 with the letters BINGO alight. That way, people could see where we were hitting, what numbers were officially “off the board” as we’d light a LED on that particular square and where they might shift a cannon to hit one or more preferred numbers.
We also devised a ruler, of sorts, that was divided into quarters. Any question of the bowling ball impacted in one number or another, we’d employ the divider. Whichever had the greatest coverage, well, that was the number.
This was set up in the rules beforehand and posted at the shooting gallery and other areas around the park.
Since this was to be a more-or-less charitable event, we had to figure out the cost for parking (turned out to be free), cost of various beers (between $1 and $4), our take from the food court (we decided on 25%), how much to pay security (the voted and did it for free beer of which my say was absolute), and various other things like “which charity?”
Most everyone was donating some time or effort or materials, so no one wanted any pay other than free admittance. We even had a couple of farmers almost come to loggerheads as to who could provide a more elegant petting zoo.
The organizers held a conclave and decided that the bulk of the funds accrued would go to the local kid’s sports collective. Another chunk of change was to go to the recently closed (for financial reasons) public natatorium in town to get it back up to specs and operating, as well as another portion going to the Oilfield Widows and Orphans fund, and the last going to the library to update their rather meager collections.
What we didn’t expect that once word got out about out little plan, that more of the local businessmen wanted space in the park to peddle their wares.
Their wares being CBD, pot, edibles, and other such botanicals in this most enlightened state.
We said “Sure, but we don’t have a lot of room. We never expected this sort of interest”.
To which, they replied that they don’t need a whole lot of room and would set up between the already established vendors.
The upshot was “Fine. Come one, come all. Just check to see if this is all legal and come on down. First come, first served.”
It was all taking shape, and we even found a printer in town that would print up posters for the soiree and help with their distribution.
We actually had to turn away vendors of such things as mobile phones, double-glazed windows and gutter cleaning services.
We had run down all the legalities when Zach mentioned that his cousin was a local police officer, and that we should let them know of out plans.
“Sure”, I said, “Why not?”
We still had a section of dying trees that needed attention so one bright and early Thursday morning, everyone assembled over by the trees and the old tree cemetery that probably extended back centuries.
I started in by knocking down a couple of ancient, though riddled, elms. These were big trees, some 1.5 meters in diameter, 100’ tall and heavier than a whore’s conscience. Even with the renovated Cat, they were just too massive and uncooperative to drop and get horizontal.
“Alf”, I said, tossing him my keys, “Go bring my truck over. We’re going to have to change tactics here a bit.”
He was back within minutes, and was wondering what I was now pulling out of my truck’s lockbox.
I produced a 2-cycle gas-operated SkilDrill, complete with Forestry Suppliers extendable drill/augecore bits.
It fired up almost instantly and I instructed where to drill on the old trees to best facilitate the reception of a few sticks of the detonating chemical persuasion.
Kit worked the dozer on some of the outlying trees, and even with its new overhaul, it just couldn’t quite muster up enough oomph to shift some of the larger trees.
While some of the still standing Live Oak were larger than the poor, afflicted elms.
“Better living through chemistry”, I snickered.
I charged and primed a couple of the larger trees and a couple of the more ancient stumps. I wanted shattering, detonating explosions, so I went with liquid binaries (an old Moldovan recipe) on the stumps and a combination of RDX and PETN on the still standing, though leaning, elms.
I decided that this was the place that fuses would be best used. I wanted the binaries to fire first and then, the elms and their charges.
Kit and crew took off in my truck and parked a good 750 meters away. I had an idling quad as I set to the business of lighting off various fuses in their proper sequence.
Just as I lit the final fuse, I jumped, well, got in a hurry, on the quad. I headed for Kit and the crew when I see a number of local constabulary and their new cruisers headed my way. If they didn’t abort soon, we’d intersect at a point less than 100 meters from ground zero.
Not good.
So, I drove at full tilt towards them and waving like a madman, convinced them to reverse and perhaps not park so close to a few hundred tons of afflicted, and smoldering, wood.
We rendezvous over by my truck, with Kit and crew hunkered down on the lee side. I yelled for the cops to do likewise. An errant 250-pound piece of dead oak or elm tree could certainly muss up one’s day.
There were 5 of them and they were all carping about how we didn’t do this or have that when suddenly, everybody standing lost their footing.
“Great!”, I exclaimed, “Those binaries work a treat!”
The police were just about to get up and dust themselves off when there was a series of mighty roars, all being liberated at over 19,000’ per second from my handy-dandy RDX-PETN mixtures.
“That’s six”, I said as I stood, “That’s all of them”.
I grabbed some binoculars and looked to the west. There were several large smoking holes, several huge hunks of tree stumps and not a single tree left upright.
“It worked great!”, I said to Kit and crew. “Beats hacking away with chainsaws, especially in this weather.”
“Who is responsible for all this?” one of the cops I didn’t recognize said apoplectically.
“That would be me”. I said and extended a hand for a manly handshake.
“And who the hell are you”, he asked.
Kit, the crew and the rest of the cops looked at him like he sprouted cabbages.
“I am Doctor Rocknocker. BS, MS, MS again, PhD, DSC and holder of International Master Blasters Certifications. Want to see the paperwork?” I asked, slightly huffed.
“Oh, ah. No”, He sputtered. “We were told to come over here and get a briefing on what you all were planning.”
“Or you could have gone to city hall and view the documents there.” I said, slightly perturbed.
“You plan to do this for your upcoming festival?” He asked.
“No”, I replied, “we’re using much smaller punt guns to launch bowling balls.”
“Then what was that?” he exclaimed as he pointed to the still smoldering pile of trees.
“That”, I replied, “Is my partial payment to the landowner here for use of his property.”
I stayed to chat with the police, as Kit and the crew took the Cat over to see what they could move around now.
Everything turned out fine, as they missed my red warning flags indicating that I was planning on doing some blasting.
“Gents”, I said, “Are you not trained in the finer points of high explosives?”
Then there was the issue of the SIDE TRIP.
Es and I were going to take a day or 5, go down to Mexico and procure the opening/closing fireworks
Dramatic carsone: My truck: 2023 Dark Red (Burgundy) Dodge Ram 3500. Cap for bed. AKA: “The Pig”.
Es’ car: 1997 Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet Value: AKA: “The Brown Bitch”.
Es was growing tired of her old Porsche. Especially when I was off in my truck doing oilfield things and she had to stuff 250 pounds of recalcitrant Khan into her car for a quick vet trip.
“But you always told me you wanted a Porsche.” I complained.
“Yeah”, Es replied, “I did, but that was then. This in now. You’re gone a lot and I need a bigger vehicle.”
“OK”, I replied, “Your call. What are you looking at?”
“Well”, Es smiled, “There’s this Old Cutlass that I’ve had my eye on...”
I looked at the Internet ad.
Oh, sweet baby Jesus...
Look, I may be a Boomer Gearhead, but my wife eclipses that many-fold.
She’s looking at a fucking serious muscle car.
I got over muscle cars when I blew the 401CI V-8 out of my ‘77 Gremlin years ago.
Now I look for heavy duty, relative large comfort, and ability to haul tons of stuff.
So, off we went to Erdemont, OK.
We found the owner of the car out in the depths of an ancient barn. It appeared he had lived here his entire life.
“You want to be looking at my Olds?” He inquired.
“Yeah”, I replied, “My wife wants to step up from her old Porsche.”
He went over and inspected Es’s car.
For some reason, it was a cream-puff he had to have.
I told Es to go look at his other cars. I needed room to schmooze.
He wanted $105k for the Olds.
He would give $85k for Brown Bitch.
He dropped to $90k and upped BB to $90k.
I lit a cigar and produced a bottle of Kentucky Rye whiskey.
An hour later, we swapped pink slips.
Es is still over the moon.
In case you’re wondering, here’s the details on Es’s new ride: 1984 Hurst/Olds Cutlass: Blocked and blueprinted 455 CI V8, Offenhauser heads/valve covers/blower riser, Jahn’s racing pistons, 4.526-inch bore and 4.75-inch stroke cam, Series 08/61 S/S Crager rims, Mickey Thompson Sportsman S/R 17130QT 325-50D-15 radial ‘RunHot’ DOT Tires, Holley Double Pumper twin 4-barrel carbs, twin Precision on-demand turbos, +36 psi boost, NOX system, and Wilwood racing brakes.
The car’s V-8 dynos at 873 horsepower and around 777 pound-feet of torque. Hurst Lightning Rods Triple Shifter: far right performs the shift from first to second gear. To get up to third gear, use the middle lever. Or leave the lever on the far left in either “D” for Drive or “OD” for Overdrive. One lever could get the job done with the four-speed overdrive automatic; but where’s the fun in that?
It sports “47 coats of hand-rubbed Candy Grape deep purple” lacquer. Button-tucked custom chrome-gray leather interior.
“Deep Purple”. Its new moniker.
Plus it sports an 8-track player.
It was the 8-track player that pushed me over the line.
So, we are now cruising from Oklahoma at near warp-speed towards the Mexican border.
“Are you really this tired of life or are you just seeing what this thing will do?” I asked as we passed a defunct Weigh Station at 123 mph.
“I’m just trying to sort this all out”, Es smiled a mile wide. “Hang on, I’m going to hit the blowers...”
Very much of the scenery between Oklahoma and Mexico passed as a painted blur.
“Pulled out of San Pedro late one night.
The moon and the stars was shinin' bright.
We was drivin' up Grapevine Hill
Passing cars like they was standing still.
Now I thought she'd lost all sense
And telephone poles looked like a picket fence.
I said "Slow down! I see spots!
The lines on the road just look like dots."
We passed an ICE immigration post at 147 miles per hour; the car purring like a Cheshire Cat with a deep, dark secret.
“Es, darling. Could we slow down a bit?” I implored.
“Well, OK”, Es replied. “Spoilsport. I never got the second turbo to kick in...”
Remind me to phone Geico when we return home and up our policies…
Down in Mexico, we purchased enough ordnance to stockpile a third-world nation. If fact, the trunk was so full, we put the spares in the backseat. We then lined the backseat with more aerials, ground effects and boomer-busters than should be allowed.
It took some serious talking and hand-outs to get back into the US.
“No, really”, I explained. “It for my research. Into seismic events. In the San Juan Basin.”
“No, really”, I explained, “I am globally fully certified Class-A explosives expert.”
“No, really”, I explained, “I’m just getting supplies for the Fourth of July.”
Well, that didn't work worth a shit, so I slipped them a couple of new Benjamins and the next thing you know, we’re in Truth or Consequences dawdling over a breakfast of enchiladas, burritos and smothered tacos.
Now, driving home from Mexico to New Mexico with fireworks can be a thrilling yet potentially risky endeavor. So what if you take a few risks? That’s where the fun is…
Anyways, it's more or less essential to be aware of the regulations regarding transporting fireworks across borders, as they can vary between countries and states.
Here are some key points to consider:
Legal Regulations: Make sure you're aware of the laws regarding fireworks in both Mexico and New Mexico. Transporting certain types of fireworks may be restricted or even prohibited. However, this doesn’t apply if you’re certified internationally and well known in this part of the world.
Safety Precautions: Ensure that the fireworks are properly secured and stored during transit to prevent any accidents or damage. Keep them away from any potential sources of ignition. Don’t leave them in the sun, near ashtrays or next to smoldering cigars. Words to live by...
Documentation: Carry all necessary paperwork, including receipts or permits for the fireworks, especially if they are large quantities or commercial-grade. Or, just be certified and pay bribes. Eh’. Either way.
Border Crossing: Be prepared for possible inspections at the border. Declare the fireworks to the customs officials and follow their instructions. Failure to declare or attempting to smuggle fireworks across borders can lead to serious legal consequences. More bribery. Or, as I like to call it, “pump priming”. “Benjamins, mis amigos!”
Transportation Vehicle: Ensure that the vehicle you're using for transportation is suitable for carrying fireworks safely. Avoid overcrowding the vehicle or storing fireworks in a manner that could cause them to shift or fall during transit. Make sure it’s runs like a raped ape. Speed thrills or something like that. Faster and faster ‘till the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.
Route Planning: Plan your route carefully, taking into account any restrictions or regulations regarding the transportation of fireworks. Avoid areas with high fire risk, especially during dry seasons. Or, just stick to the blacktop superslab when trying to establish new land-speed records.
Emergency Preparedness: Have a plan in place in case of emergencies, such as a fire or accident involving the fireworks. Carry fire extinguishers and other safety equipment in the vehicle. Or just jettison that which is smoking when it shouldn’t be. Scares the hell out of returning coyotes and nervous cartel members.
Local Regulations: Upon reaching New Mexico, familiarize yourself with any additional state or local regulations regarding the storage and use of fireworks. Or just drive like hell and get the car in the garage as soon as possible and avoid all the paperwork frivolities.
Remember, safety should always be the top priority when transporting fireworks. If you're unsure about any aspect of the process, it's best to seek guidance from authorities or legal experts to ensure compliance with all relevant regulations. Or just use common sense, drive mostly at night and carry large, heavy caliber sidearms. Equip your ride with ample cup holders and ash trays.
We blew past Socorro, Albuquerque and Bernalillo like they weren’t even there. We did slow down in Cuba to stop at the Cuba Cafe for Navajo Tacos, Fry Bread and Liver and Onions.
Best damned liver and onions this side of my kitchen.
Further north and somewhat west, Es lightly tapped the brakes, spun us in a slick 180⁰ degree Bootlegger Spin, and backed perfectly into our garage.
I was secretly thrilled when the garage door clattered closed as Es’ car rumbled down like the old Adam West-version Batmobile. Sure, it cost a ton in gas, but once I get this record ratified, we’ll have something else to charge after…
Khan was pleased once we got all of the ordnance out of the new car as he staked his claim on the Old’s back seat; something he couldn’t do in the Porsche Brown Bitch.
Also, someone once again borrowed my truck without telling me.
I hope.
Enough of this nonsense. Everything’s locked in my two back yard explosives sheds (Yes. 2 sheds…) and I need a stiff drink or seven, a new cigar and a few laps around our new Jacuzzi. Es and I designed one around a South West US fire-pit, bar-be-que, wet bar, and media center.
It’s already 0300 and we’re floating in our own personal worlds. Es has granted me the necessary time to complete our ball park-Bingo Hall mission, but that’s for tomorrow. And in the words of the famous philosopher Felix E. Feist, ‘tomorrow is another day’.
G’night, all. YAWN.
The dawn broke ridiculously bright and sunny as so often happens when there’s no mesotropical storms in the area. The sky was blue as a newborn baby’s veins and the dawn clear and uncluttered as a fake royal lineage.
I woke, looked out side and grumbled: “Bloody weather”.
I’m often a grumpy curmudgeon before my first coffee.
Bolstered by a large, black Kona, an equally large and black Camacho Triple Maduro, along with a phone call from Rick that he had my truck, the morning was shaping up to be something that might not only be tolerated, but potentially actually enjoyed.
Khan was already fed and had his walkies. Luckily our next-door neighbor’s kid Igor loved walking Khan.
Seems no one gave him the tiniest bit of shit when he’s out walking Khan.
Es had run into town to secure some floss or twine or barbed wire or something for her latest needlepoint project. This should keep her busy for hours.
The guys worked diligently while Es and I were out and about. Good thing, too, as the festival night was rapidly approaching.
I wondered about another coffee when my goddamned work phone began to warble.
“Shit, shit, shit!”, I growled. “Not now. Go call someone else...”
“Yeah?”, I said gruffly into the rap-rod. “What do you want?”
It was the County Commissioner.
“Yeah, Jerry?”, I said.
Well, some county employee had mown too close to a small gas well, of which there are about 800,000 in the San Juan Basin.
Clipped it, upset one or another metal-to-metal seals and the damn thing caught fire.
“Just what the fuck I need.” I groused.
“Where, when and how?”, I asked Jerry.
“Yeah. OK. I know the area. As soon as I can retrieve my truck, I’ll go out and handle it. What? No, this one I’ll handle alone. Get your check writing machine going, Jer, I charge triple for emergencies.”
As far as oil-gas well fires go, this one was a sparkler compared to some of the 48” Japanese shells I’ve handled. Got a hold of Rick and he hotfooted it back with my truck (after he cleaned out the empties and cleared the ashtrays). The fire was about 12 miles distant and after I dropped Rick off at the fairgrounds, I gave him orders for the day.
“I’m out of pocket for a few hours”, I informed him. “You’re in charge until I get back. You know the routine. Get everything up and running, I want a dry-run when I return.”
Rick appreciated that when I put someone in charge of a project, I mean it. I also me that if you do well, you’ll be handsomely rewarded. If you fuck up, however, then the 2,000-pound shithammer’s gonna fall.
I trust Rick and the rest of my crew. I fully expect everything to be standing tall and looking good when I return.
I jump in my truck, smell the inevitable aroma of some Mexican Agriculture (which is very legal hereabouts) and notice my truck has recently been run through the local Pep-Boys cleaning and detailing service.
Fair dinkum, mate.
On my way to the well, I made a series of calls. I let the operator know that I was on the job, I let Jerry know I was en-route. I let the others, whom shall remain nameless, sit and stew.
“Listen, Agent Rack”, I said into my brand new, Government issued cell phone telephone, “I know it’s been a while and you and Agent Ruin are champing at the but to get back in the field, but after that last little tadoo in Russia and Ukraine, I’m not so sure I want to be associated with you types.”
Both agents gasped in disbelief. They were well trained, by some of the greatest divas in the business, how to feign emotions and act all put out when they were really just bored and wanted out of the office.
“OK”, I finally relented, “This job is a doddle. Even if I dawdle, my pipe won’t even get to the dottle on this job.”
“OK, fine”, I finally relented. “If I’m not working on this little blowout, then you can meet me over at the County Fairgrounds and help me run through the exhibits and games. In fact, that’s be a good use of your time here. That way, I can write all of this off and have the Agency foot the bill.”
They readily agreed and noted they’d be seeing me in no less than 4 hours.
“I can hardly wait”, I replied to what I suspected was already a dead phone.
“Kids...”, I said in head-shaking amusement as Rack and Ruin, Senior Agents all, we fully 20 years my junior.
And I never let a moment pass when I could remind them of this temporal anomaly.
I knew just about where the fire was by the density ripple emanating off the smooth plain. I drove up to the wee little pumpjack and say it was still burning.
“Pfft.”, I pffted. “Only 400 pounds on the static gauge.” No oil. No condensate. Just a gasser that blowing out of a small orifice created when some county knothead mowed too closely to the thing and bumped it off kilter.
I decided that I could handle this by myself.
I got into my hot suit, the spiffy super-reflective silver one with the internal air conditioning, and picked out a likely-looking sledgehammer.
To be continued…

Hi, Everyone!
I'm starting to work on my query letter as I polish up my manuscript and would love some feedback on my first draft!
Dear (Agent Name),
When Calliope dives off the side of her father’s crowded yacht and Azalea tumbles down a sinkhole on one of her solitary hikes, Iris has been waiting for them for sixteen years. A TALE OF THREE WISHES is a 100,000 word fantasy novel that will resonate with fans of Shadow and Bone, and A Curse So Dark and Lonely.
Azalea longs for a happy, simple life, but is accused of murdering the Queen. Calliope wants the carefree and indulgent life she was accustomed to, but is left penniless on a sprawling port. Iris wants to reclaim the world’s throne that her mother sat on, but many of the other leaders did not wish to return the world to the way it was. These three lost sisters must navigate years apart and find their places in their wondrous world if they are to save it from the shadows that threaten every city, lurking behind every corner.
This good versus evil story twists wickedness itself into physical beasts that corrupt others with just a scratch, threatening to consume goodness entirely, and explores belonging, freedom, and purpose. With multiple narrative points of view and a diverse cast of characters, it will resonate with fans of character-focused fantasy such as A Tempest of Tea.
I am writing to you due to your interest in fantasy and (Personalize).
I hope you will consider representing A TALE OF THREE WISHES, and I am happy to provide sample chapters if required.
Thank you for your time,

“Questioning elicited the information that he feels almost as if there is a veil between him and other people through which they cannot reach him, but he prefers this veil to remain intact.”
—
Sometimes he looks around him, horrified by the weight of it all, the career of paper. He sits in the data-spew of hundreds of lives. There’s no end in sight. When he needs something, a report or transcript, anything, any level of difficulty, he simply has to ask. The Curator is quick to respond, firm in his insistence on forwarding precisely the right document in an area of research marked by ambiguity and error, by political bias, systematic fantasy. But not just the right document, not just an obscure footnote from an open source. The Curator sends him material not seen by anyone outside the headquarters complex at Langley, material that includes the results of internal investigations, confidential files from the Agency’s own Office of Security.
—
Knowledge was a danger, ignorance a cherished asset. In many cases the DCI, the Director of Central Intelligence, was not to know important things. The less he knew, the more decisively he could function. It would impair his ability to tell the truth at an inquiry or a hearing, or in an Oval Office chat with the President, if he knew what they were doing in Leader 4, or even what they were talking about, or muttering in their sleep. The Joint Chiefs were not to know. The operational horrors were not for their ears. Details were a form of contamination. The Secretaries were to be insulated from knowing. They were happier not knowing, or knowing too late. The Deputy Secretaries were interested in drifts and tendencies. They expected to be misled. They counted on it. The Attorney General wasn’t to know the queasy details. Just get results. Each level of the committee was designed to protect a higher level. There were complexities of speech. A man needed special experience and insight to work true meanings out of certain murky remarks. There were pauses and blank looks. Brilliant riddles floated up and down the echelons, to be pondered, solved, ignored.
The members of the committee would allow only generalities to carry upward. It was the President, of course, who was the final object of their protective instincts. … The White House was to be the summit of unknowing. It was as if an unsullied leader redeemed some ancient truth which the others were forced to admire only in the abstract, owing to their mission in the convoluted world.
But there were even deeper shadows, strange and grave silences surrounding plans to invade the island. The President knew about this, of course—knew the broad contours, had a sense of the promised outcome. But the system still operated as an insulating muse. Let him see the softer tones. Shield him from responsibility. Secrets build their own networks, Win believed. The system would perpetuate itself in all its curious and obsessive webbings, its equivocations and patient riddles and levels of delusional thought …
—
“The invasion failed because high officials didn’t examine the basic assumptions. They got caught up in a spirit of compelling action. They were eager to accept other men’s perceptions. There was safety in this. The plan was never clear. No one was ever responsible. Some of them knew a disaster was in the works. They let it ride. They put themselves out of reach. They wanted it over and done.”
—
“Some things we wait for all our lives without knowing it. Then it happens and we recognize at once who we are and how we are meant to proceed. This is the idea I’ve always wanted. I believe you’ll sense it is right. It’s the high risk we need. We need an electrifying event. You’ve been waiting for this every bit as much as I have. I believe that or I wouldn’t have asked you to come here. We want to set up an attempt on the life of the President. We plan every step, design every incident leading up to the event. We put together a team, leave a dim trail. The evidence is ambiguous. But it points to the Cuban Intelligence Directorate. Inherent in the plan is a second set of clues, even more unclear, more intriguing. These point to the Agency’s attempts to assassinate Castro. I am designing a plan that includes elements of both the American provocation and the Cuban reply. We do the whole thing with paper. Passports, drivers’ licenses, address books. Our team of shooters disappears but the police find a trail. Mail-order forms, change-of-address cards, photographs. We script a person or persons out of ordinary pocket litter. Shots ring out, the country is shocked, aroused. The paper trail leads to paid agents who have disappeared in Venezuela, in Mexico. I am convinced this is what we have to do to get Cuba back. This plan has levels and variations I’ve only begun to explore but it is already, essentially, right. I feel its rightness. I know what scientists mean when they talk about elegant solutions. This plan speaks to something deep inside me. It has a powerful logic. I’ve felt it unfolding for weeks, like a dream whose meaning slowly becomes apparent. This is the condition we’ve always wanted to reach. It’s the life-insight, the life-secret, and we have to extend it, guard it carefully, right up to the time we have shooters stationed on a rooftop or railroad bridge.”
—
Historic names, pen names, names of war, party names, revolutionary names. These were men who lived in isolation for long periods, lived close to death through long winters in exile or prison, feeling history in the room, waiting for the moment when it would surge through the walls, taking them with it. History was a force to these men, a presence in the room. They felt it and waited.
The books were struggles. He had to fight to make some elementary sense of what he read. But the books had come out of struggle. They had been struggles to write, struggles to live. It seemed fitting to Lee that the texts were often masses of dense theory, unyielding. The tougher the books, the more firmly he fixed a distance between himself and others.
He found enough that he could understand. He could see the capitalists, he could see the masses. They were right here, all around him, every day.
—
Pocket litter. Win Everett was at work devising a general shape, a life. He would script a gunman out of ordinary dog-eared paper, the contents of a wallet. … They wanted a name, a face, a bodily frame they might use to extend their fiction into the world. Everett had decided he wanted one figure to be slightly more visible than the others, a man the investigation might center on, someone who would be trailed and possibly apprehended. Three or four shooters would vanish completely, leaving scant traces of their affiliation. … Then one other figure, one slightly clearer image, perhaps abandoned in his sniper’s perch to find his own way out, to be trailed, found, possibly killed by the Secret Service, FBI or local police. Whatever protocol demands. This kind of man, a marksman, near anonymous, with minimal known history, the kind of man who surfaces in murky places, disappears, is arrested for some violent act, is released to drift again, to surface, to disappear. Mackey would find this man for Everett. They needed fingerprints, a handwriting sample, a photograph. Mackey would find the other shooters as well. We don’t hit the President. We miss him. We want a spectacular miss.
—
It was all so curiously funny. It was rich, that’s what it was. Everyone was a spook or dupe or asset, a double, courier, cutout or defector, or was related to one. We were all linked in a vast and rhythmic coincidence, a daisy chain of rumor, suspicion and secret wish.
—
Somewhere in his room of theories, in some notebook or folder, Nicholas Branch has a roster of the dead. A printout of the names of witnesses, informers, investigators, people linked to Lee H. Oswald, people linked to Jack Ruby, all conveniently and suggestively dead. In 1979 a House select committee determined there was nothing statistically abnormal about the death rate among those who were connected in some way to the events of November 22. Branch accepts this as an actuarial fact. He is writing a history, not a study of the ways in which people succumb to paranoia. There is endless suggestiveness. Branch concedes this. There is the language of the manner of death. Shot in back of head. Died of cut throat. Shot in police station. Shot in motel. Shot by husband after one month marriage. Found hanging by toreador pants in jail cell. Killed by karate chop. It is the neon epic of Saturday night. And Branch wants to believe that’s all it is. There is enough mystery in the facts as we know them, enough of conspiracy, coincidence, loose ends, dead ends, multiple interpretations. There is no need, he thinks, to invent the grand and masterful scheme, the plot that reaches flawlessly in a dozen directions.
Still, the cases do resonate, don’t they? Mostly anonymous dead. Exotic dancers, taxi drivers, cigarette girls, lawyers of the shopworn sort with dandruff on their lapels. But through the years the violence has reached others as well, and with each new series of misadventures Branch sees again how the assassination sheds a powerful and lasting light, exposing patterns and links, revealing this man to have known that one, this death to have occurred in curious juxtaposition to that.
—
“U-2 planes. The planes that spotted the missiles the Soviets were putting into Cuba. We used to call the photos pornography. The photo interpreters would gather to interpret. ‘Let’s see what kind of pornography we pulled in today.’ Kennedy looked at the pictures in his bedroom as a matter of fact. … Spy planes, drone aircraft, satellites with cameras that can see from three hundred miles what you can see from a hundred feet. They see and they hear. Like ancient monks, you know, who recorded knowledge, wrote it painstakingly down. These systems collect and process. All the secret knowledge of the world. … I’ll tell you what it means, these orbiting sensors that can hear us in our beds. It means the end of loyalty. The more complex the systems, the less conviction in people. Conviction will be drained out of us. Devices will drain us, make us vague and pliant.”
—
He would put someone together, build an identity, a skein of persuasion and habit, ever so subtle. He wanted a man with believable quirks. He would create a shadowed room, the gunman’s room, which investigators would eventually find, exposing each fact to relentless scrutiny, following each friend, relative, casual acquaintance into his own roomful of shadows. We lead more interesting lives than we think. We are characters in plots, without the compression and numinous sheen. Our lives, examined carefully in all their affinities and links, abound with suggestive meaning, with themes and involute turnings we have not allowed ourselves to see completely. He would show the secret symmetries in a nondescript life.
An address book with ambiguous leads. Photographs expertly altered (or crudely altered). Letters, travel documents, counterfeit signatures, a history of false names. It would all require a massive decipherment, a conversion to plain text. He envisioned teams of linguists, photo analysts, fingerprint experts, handwriting experts, experts in hairs and fibers, smudges and blurs. Investigators building up chronologies. He would give them the makings of deep chronos, lead them to basement rooms in windy industrial slums, to lost towns in the Tropics.
—
Life is hostile, he believed. The struggle is to merge your life with the greater tide of history.
—
Maybe what has to happen is that the individual must allow himself to be swept along, must find himself in the stream of no-choice, the single direction. This is what makes things inevitable. You use the restrictions and penalties they invent to make yourself stronger. History means to merge. The purpose of history is to climb out of your own skin. He knew what Trotsky had written, that revolution leads us out of the dark night of the isolated self. We live forever in history, outside ego and id.
—
Two weeks later he followed directions to a house in the Sanya district of Tokyo. He made his way through a ragpickers’ village built with material scavenged from other parts of the city. Old women jogged through the alleys carrying empty bottles, broken chair legs, pieces of indefinable junk. Houses were shoulder-high, made of old packing crates and strips of sheet metal, the walls stuffed with cardboard and rags. There were lines of people selling blood at mobile units, people who seemed hollow-bodied, so small, in such collapse. It would never bottom out. No matter how far down you went into the world, there were distances still to go, worse things to see and experience. He made it a point not to hurry through the area. He wanted to see what was here.
—
It produced a sensation of the eeriest panic, gave him a glimpse of the fiction he’d been devising, a fiction living prematurely in the world.
—
Nicholas Branch has unpublished state documents, polygraph reports, Dictabelt recordings from the police radio net on November 22. He has photo enhancements, floor plans, home movies, biographies, bibliographies, letters, rumors, mirages, dreams. This is the room of dreams, the room where it has taken him all these years to learn that his subject is not politics or violent crime but men in small rooms.
Is he one of them now? Frustrated, stuck, self-watching, looking for a means of connection, a way to break out. After Oswald, men in America are no longer required to lead lives of quiet desperation. You apply for a credit card, buy a handgun, travel through cities, suburbs and shopping malls, anonymous, anonymous, looking for a chance to take a shot at the first puffy empty famous face, just to let people know there is someone out there who reads the papers.
Branch is stuck all right. He has abandoned his life to understanding that moment in Dallas, the seven seconds that broke the back of the American century. He has his forensic pathology rundown, his neutron activation analysis. There is also the Warren Report, of course, with its twenty-six accompanying volumes of testimony and exhibits, its millions of words. Branch thinks this is the megaton novel James Joyce would have written if he’d moved to Iowa City and lived to be a hundred.
Everything is here. Baptismal records, report cards, postcards, divorce petitions, canceled checks, daily timesheets, tax returns, property lists, postoperative x-rays, photos of knotted string, thousands of pages of testimony, of voices droning in hearing rooms in old courthouse buildings, an incredible haul of human utterance. It lies so flat on the page, hangs so still in the lazy air, lost to syntax and other arrangement, that it resembles a kind of mind-spatter, a poetry of lives muddied and dripping in language.
Branch doesn’t know how to approach this kind of data. … It is vital to his sense of responsible obsession that everything in his room warrants careful study. Everything belongs, everything adheres, the mutter of obscure witnesses, the photos of illegible documents and odd sad personal debris, things gathered up at a dying—old shoes, pajama tops, letters from Russia. It is all one thing, a ruined city of trivia where people feel real pain. This is the Joycean Book of America, remember—the novel in which nothing is left out.
Branch has long since forgiven the Warren Report for its failures. It is too valuable a document of human heartbreak and muddle to be scorned or dismissed. The twenty-six volumes haunt him. Men and women surface in FBI memos, are tracked for several pages, then disappear—waitresses, prostitutes, mind readers, motel managers, owners of rifle ranges. Their stories hang in time, spare, perfect in their way, unfinished.
Photographs. Many are overexposed, light-blasted, with a faded quality beyond their age, suggesting things barely glimpsed despite the simple nature of the objects and the spare captions. ... But Branch feels there is a loneliness, a strange desolation trapped here. Why do these photographs have a power to disturb him, make him sad? Flat, pale, washed in time, suspended outside the particularized gist of this or that era, arguing nothing, clarifying nothing, lonely. Can a photograph be lonely?
This sadness has him fixed to his chair, staring. He feels the souls of empty places, finds himself returning again and again to the pictures of the second-floor lunchroom in the Texas School Book Depository. Rooms, garages, streets were emptied out for the making of official pictures. Empty forever now, stuck in some picture limbo. He feels the souls of those who were there and left. He feels sadness in objects, in warehouse cartons and blood-soaked clothes. He breathes in loneliness. He feels the dead in his room.
—
It was his goodbye to Russia. It signified the official end of a major era in his life. It validated the experience, as the writing of any history brings a persuasion and form to events.
Even as he printed the words, he imagined people reading them, people moved by his loneliness and disappointment, even by his wretched spelling, the childish mess of composition. Let them see the struggle and humiliation, the effort he had to exert to write a simple sentence. The pages were crowded, smudged, urgent, a true picture of his state of mind, of his rage and frustration, knowing a thing but not able to record it properly.
Always the pain, the chaos of composition. He could not find order in the field of little symbols. They were in the hazy distance. He could not clearly see the picture that is called a word. A word is also a picture of a word. He saw spaces, incomplete features, and tried to guess at the rest.
He made wild tries at phonetic spelling. But the language tricked him with its inconsistencies. He watched sentences deteriorate, powerless to make them right. The nature of things was to be elusive. Things slipped through his perceptions. He could not get a grip on the runaway world.
Limits everywhere. In every direction he came up against his own incompleteness. Cramped, fumbling, deficient. He knew things. It wasn’t that he didn’t know.
Even in the rush of filling these pages, he was careful to leave out certain things that could be used in legal argument against his return to the U.S. Yes, the diary was self-serving to a degree but still the basic truth, he believed. The panic was real, the voice of disappointment and loss.
He knew there were discrepancies, messed-up dates. No one could expect him to get the dates right after all this time, no one cared about the dates, no one is reading this for names and dates and spellings.
Let them see the struggle.
He believed religiously that his life would turn in such a way that people would one day study the Historic Diary for clues to the heart and mind of the man who wrote it.
—
Plots carry their own logic. There is a tendency of plots to move toward death. He believed that the idea of death is woven into the nature of every plot. A narrative plot no less than a conspiracy of armed men. The tighter the plot of a story, the more likely it will come to death. A plot in fiction, he believed, is the way we localize the force of the death outside the book, play it off, contain it. The ancients staged mock battles to parallel the tempests in nature and reduce their fear of gods who warred across the sky. He worried about the deathward logic of his plot. He’d already made it clear that he wanted the shooters to hit a Secret Service man, wound him superficially. But it wasn’t a misdirected round, an accidental killing, that made him afraid. There was something more insidious. He had a foreboding that the plot would move to a limit, develop a logical end.
—
He thought the only end to isolation was to reach the point where he was no longer separated from the true struggles that went on around him. The name we give this point is history.
—
“It’s the job of an intelligence service to resolve a nation’s obsessions. Cuba is a fixed idea. It is prickly in a way Russia is not. More unresolved. More damaging to the psyche. And this is our job, to remove the psychic threat, to learn so much about Castro, decipher his intentions, undermine his institutions to such a degree that he loses the power to shape the way we think, to shape the way we sleep at night.”
—
It was remarkable how often he talked to her about these things. The Agency was the one subject in his life that could never be exhausted. Central Intelligence. Beryl saw it as the best organized church in the Christian world, a mission to collect and store everything that everyone has ever said and then reduce it to a microdot and call it God. She needed to live in small dusty rooms, layered safely in, out of the reach of dizzying things, of heat and light and strange spaces, and Larry needed the great sheltering nave of the Agency. He believed that nothing can be finally known that involves human motive and need. There is always another level, another secret, a way in which the heart breeds a deception so mysterious and complex it can only be taken for a deeper kind of truth.
—
He’d stopped commenting on this oddness of hers. She said the news clippings she sent to friends were a perfectly reasonable way to correspond. There were a thousand things to clip and they all said something about the way she felt. He watched her read and cut. She wore half-glasses and worked the scissors grimly. She believed these were personal forms of expression. She believed no message she could send a friend was more intimate and telling than a story in the paper … Because these are the things that tell us how we live.
—
In the Old Senate Caucus Room they asked him to name the members of the Real Control Apparatus. This is like naming particles in the air, naming molecules or cells. The Apparatus is precisely what we can’t see or name. We can’t measure it, gentlemen, or take its photograph. It is the mystery we can’t get hold of, the plot we can’t uncover. This doesn’t mean there are no plotters. They are elected officials of our government, Cabinet members, philanthropists, men who know each other by secret signs, who work in the shadows to control our lives.
—
On his fourth day with Castro he shot a government scout, aiming through a telescopic sight. It was uncanny. You press a button and a man drops dead a hundred meters away. It seemed hollow and remote, falsifying everything. It was a trick of the lenses. The man is an accurate picture. Then he is upside down. Then he is right side up. You shoot at a series of images conveyed to you through a metal tube. The force of a death should be enormous but how can you know what kind of man you’ve killed or who was the braver and stronger if you have to peer through layers of glass that deliver the image but obscure the meaning of the act? War has a conscience or it’s ordinary murder.
—
The Curator sends the results of ballistics tests carried out on human skulls and goat carcasses, on blocks of gelatin mixed with horsemeat. There are photographs of skulls with the right cranial portion blown away. There are bullet-shattered goat heads in close-up. Branch studies a picture of a gelatin-tissue model “dressed” like the President. It is pure modernist sculpture, a block of gelatin layered in suit and shirt material with a strip of undershirt showing, bullet-smoked. There are documents concerning exit velocities. There is a picture of a human skull filled with gelatin and covered with goatskin to simulate a scalp.
—
He sends an actual warped bullet that has been fired for test purposes through the wrist of a seated cadaver. We are on another level here, Branch thinks. Beyond documents now. They want me to touch and smell.
—
The Oswald shadings, the multiple images, the split perceptions—eye color, weapons caliber—these seem a foreboding of what is to come. The endless fact-rubble of the investigations. How many shots, how many gunmen, how many directions? Powerful events breed their own network of inconsistencies. The simple facts elude authentication. How many wounds on the President’s body? What is the size and shape of the wounds? … [Branch] concedes everything. He questions everything, including the basic suppositions we make about our world of light and shadow, solid objects and ordinary sounds, and our ability to measure such things, to determine weight, mass and direction, to see things as they are, recall them clearly, be able to say what happened.
He takes refuge in his notes. The notes are becoming an end in themselves. Branch has decided it is premature to make a serious effort to turn these notes into coherent history. Maybe it will always be premature. Because the data keeps coming. Because new lives enter the record all the time. The past is changing as he writes.
—
“Signs that you exist. Evidence that Lee Oswald matches the cardboard cutout they’ve been shaping all along. You’re a quirk of history. You’re a coincidence. They devise a plan, you fit it perfectly. They lose you, here you are. There’s a pattern in things. Something in us has an effect on independent events. We make things happen. The conscious mind gives one side only. We’re deeper than that. We extend into time. Some of us can almost predict the time and place and nature of our own death. We know it on some deeper plane.”
—
“Think of two parallel lines,” he said. “One is the life of Lee H. Oswald. One is the conspiracy to kill the President. What bridges the space between them? What makes a connection inevitable? There is a third line. It comes out of dreams, visions, intuitions, prayers, out of the deepest levels of the self. It’s not generated by cause and effect like the other two lines. It’s a line that cuts across causality, cuts across time. It has no history that we can recognize or understand. But it forces a connection. It puts a man on the path of his destiny.”
—
The Agency forgives. There wasn’t a man in the upper ranks of the four directorates who didn’t understand the perils of clandestine work. They would be pleased by his willingness to cooperate. What’s more, they would admire the complexity of his plan, incomplete as it was. It had art and memory. It had a sense of responsibility, of moral force. And it was a picture in the world of their own guilty wishes. He was never more surely an Agency man than in the first breathless days of dreaming up this plot.
—
To Nicholas Branch, more frequently of late, “Lee H. Oswald” seems a technical diagram, part of some exercise in the secret manipulation of history.
—
Street by street the crowd began to understand why it was here. The message jumped the open space from one press of bodies to the next. A contagion had brought them here, some mystery of common impulse, hundreds of thousands come from so many histories and systems of being, come from some experience of the night before, a convergence of dreams, to stand together shouting as the Lincoln passed. … They were here to surround the brittle body of one man and claim his smile, receive some token of the bounty of his soul.
—
The media crowds collected and rocked in the corridors. They were waiting for the prisoner to come down to the interrogation room here on the third floor of the Police and Courts Building. TV cameras sat on dollies and there were cables slung over windowsills, trailing through the offices of deputy chiefs. Nobody checked credentials. Reporters took over the phones and pushed into toilets after police officials. Total unknowns walked the halls, defendants from other parts of the building, witnesses to other crimes, tourists, muttering men, drunks in torn shirts. It was a roughhouse, a confoundment. Every rumor flew. Disk jockeys arrived to fill in, blinking, flinching, wary. A reporter wrote notes on a pad he balanced on the back of the chief of police.
Hours going by. Blank faces arrayed against corridor walls. Men crouched near the elevators waiting. They sensed the incompleteness out there, gaps, spaces, vacant seats, lobbies emptied out, disconnections, dark cities, stopped lives. People were lonely for news. Only news could make them whole again, restore sensation. Three hundred reporters in a compact space, all pushing to extract a word. A word is a magic wish. A word from anyone. With a word they could begin to grid the world, make an instant surface that people can see and touch together.
—
Whenever they took him down, he heard his name on the radios and TVs. Lee Harvey Oswald. It sounded extremely strange. He didn’t recognize himself in the full intonation of the name. The only time he used his middle name was to write it on a form that had a space for that purpose. No one called him by that name. Now it was everywhere. He heard it coming from the walls. Reporters called it out. Lee Harvey Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald. It sounded odd and dumb and made up. They were talking about somebody else.
—
They took him back to the cell. He stripped to his underwear and sat on the bunk, thinking, feeling the noise of the assembly room still resonating in his body. A cell is the basic state, the crude truth of the world.
He could play it either way, depending on what they could prove or couldn’t prove. He wasn’t on the sixth floor at all. He was in the lunchroom eating lunch. The victim of a total frame. They’d been rigging the thing for years, watching him, using him, creating a chain of evidence with the innocent facts of his life. Or he could say he was only partly guilty, set up to take the blame for the real conspirators. Okay, he fired some shots from the window. But he didn’t kill anyone. He never meant to fire a fatal shot. It was never his intention to cause an actual fatality. He was only trying to make a political point. Other people were responsible for the actual killing. They fixed it so he would seem the lone gunman. They superimposed his head on someone else’s body. Forged his name on documents. Made him a dupe of history. He would name every name if he had to.
—
Lee Harvey Oswald was awake in his cell. It was beginning to occur to him that he’d found his life’s work. After the crime comes the reconstruction. He will have motives to analyze, the whole rich question of truth and guilt. Time to reflect, time to turn this thing in his mind. Here is a crime that clearly yields material for deep interpretation. He will be able to bend the light of that heightened moment, shadows fixed on the lawn, the limousine shimmering and still. Time to grow in self-knowledge, to explore the meaning of what he’s done. He will vary the act a hundred ways, speed it up and slow it down, shift emphasis, find shadings, see his whole life change.
This was the true beginning.
They will, give him writing paper and books. He will fill his cell with books about the case. He will have time to educate himself in criminal law, ballistics, acoustics, photography. Whatever pertains to the case he will examine and consume. People will come to see him, the lawyers first, then psychologists, historians, biographers. His life had a single clear subject now, called Lee Harvey Oswald.
He and Kennedy were partners. The figure of the gunman in the window was inextricable from the victim and his history. This sustained Oswald in his cell. It gave him what he needed to live.
—
If we are on the outside, we assume a conspiracy is the perfect working of a scheme. Silent nameless men with unadorned hearts. A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It’s the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and a daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act.
But maybe not. Nicholas Branch thinks he knows better. He has learned enough about the days and months preceding November 22, and enough about the twenty-second itself, to reach a determination that the conspiracy against the President was a rambling affair that succeeded in the short term due mainly to chance. Deft men and fools, ambivalence and fixed will and what the weather was like.
The stuff keeps coming. The Curator sends FBI surveillance logs. He sends a thirty-five-hour film chronology of unedited network footage shot during the weekend of November 22. He sends a computer-enhanced version of the Zapruder film, the 8mm home movie made by a dress manufacturer who stood on a concrete abutment above Elm Street as the shots were fired. Experts have scrutinized every murky nuance of the Zapruder film. It is the basic timing device of the assassination and a major emblem of uncertainty and chaos. There is the powerful moment of death, the surrounding blurs, patches and shadows.
(Branch’s analysis of the film and other evidence leads him to believe the first shot came much sooner than most theories would allow, probably at Zapruder frame 186. Governor Connally was hit two point six seconds later, at Zapruder 234. The shot that killed the President, crushingly, came four point three seconds after that. Even though he has reached firm conclusions in this area, Branch will study the computerized version of Zapruder. He is in too deep to stop now.)
The Curator sends a special FBI report that includes detailed descriptions of the dreams of eyewitnesses following the assassination of Kennedy and the murder of Oswald.
There are worrisome omissions, occasional gaps in the record. Of course Branch understands that the Agency is a closed system. He knows they will not reveal what they’ve learned to other agencies, much less the public. This is why the history he has contracted to write is a secret one, meant for CIA’s own closed collection. But why are they withholding material from him as well? There’s something they aren’t telling him. The Curator delays, lately, in filling certain requests for information, seems to ignore other requests completely. What are they holding back? How much more is there? Branch wonders if there is some limit inherent in the yielding of information gathered in secret. They can’t give it all away, even to one of their own, someone pledged to confidentiality. Before his retirement, Branch analyzed intelligence, sought patterns in random scads of data. He believed secrets were childish things. He was not generally impressed by the accomplishments of men in the clandestine service, the spy handlers, the covert-action staff. He thought they’d built a vast theology, a formal coded body of knowledge that was basically play material, secret-keeping, one of the keener pleasures and conflicts of childhood. Now he wonders if the Agency is protecting something very much like its identity—protecting its own truth, its theology of secrets.
The Curator begins to send fiction, twenty-five years of novels and plays about the assassination. He sends feature films and documentaries. He sends transcripts of panel discussions and radio debates. Branch has no choice but to study this material. There are important things he has yet to learn. There are lives he must examine. It is essential to master the data.
—
He believes people are distorting his words even as he speaks them. There is a process that takes place between the saying of a word and when they pretend to hear it correctly but actually change it to mean what they want.
—
He is miscast, or cast as someone else, as Oswald. They are part of the same crime now. They are in it together and forever and together.
—
The camera doesn’t catch all of it. There seem to be missing frames, lost levels of information. Brief and simple as the shooting is, it is too much to take in, too mingled in jumped-up energies.
—
There was something in Oswald’s face, a glance at the camera before he was shot, that put him here in the audience, among the rest of us, sleepless in our homes—a glance, a way of telling us that he knows who we are and how we feel, that he has brought our perceptions and interpretations into his sense of the crime. Something in the look, some sly intelligence, exceedingly brief but far-reaching, a connection all but bleached away by glare, tells us that he is outside the moment, watching with the rest of us.

Hello Helldivers.
Helldivers 2 has impressed with its high quality, sophistication and polish since its release. You can tell that a lot of passion has gone into the game.
In the meantime, a few negative incidents have occurred that could give the community cause for concern about the future of the game. In such a polished game, every scratch shows.
Even before all these incidents, during the initial hype of the game, I realised that a huge component was missing from Helldivers 2. A well thought-out endgame.
The current endgame is problematic because it's like a dead end, similar to a story game. In the Helldivers endgame you reach the highest difficulty level, the "final chapter", so to speak. And you repeat this again and again. All content creators are at this level.
The repetition makes small problems look bigger than they are, but the casual player would probably never notice them. On the Helldive difficulty, everything that is suboptimal is noticeable, a meta is formed, spread by the content creators. On the medium difficulties, you can still feel useful through tactics, completing missions, team play, etc., and thus be noticed. Even with equipment that doesn't fit the meta.
An endgame would increase the tolerance for small changes, because they don't carry as much weight for content creators who will always be in the endgame.
This is just one practical reason to rethink the endgame in light of the current situation. Of course, extensions of any kind are always welcome.
In any case, I've been thinking about this topic for a long time. Below are my general visions of what such an endgame could look like.
The text is as of 15 May. I do not actively follow the Helldivers communitys. Any similarity to the works of others is therefore coincidental. I make no claim to realisability or integrability, but I believe that my suggestions fit the game and would achieve it. I just want to share my rough ideas with you. Thank you for your interest.
First of all, armour needs to feel more important. This gives an incentive to collect armour over a long period of time. In this context, it's probably better not to sell armour as a set in the shop anymore.
The armour effects will be reworked and there would be synergies for armour. There is only one effect per piece of armour.
To explain the principle, I'm using armour and effects I made up myself.
Scout set: Scout helmet 《Night vision》 Scout armour 《Stealth》 Both together 《almost invisible at night》 ^{Stealth reduces the distance at which the Helldiver can be seen by enemies; 'almost invisible' means an effect similar to stalkers. The Helldiver is not seen by patrols} Night owl helmet 《Night vision》 Scout armour 《Stealth》Both together also 《almost invisible at night》 ^{Night Owl Helmet looks different from the Scout Helmet, but has the same effect, so the synergy still works}
Armoured Set: Armoured helmet 《Imun against impaired vision》 Armoured armour 《Imun against slowing》 Both together 《Steadfast》 ^{Steadfast withstands devastating attacks} Armoured helmet 《Imun against impaired vision》 Heavy armour 《Immune against flies》 Both together nevertheless《Standing》 ^{Heavy Armour looks different from Armoured Armour and has a different but appropriate effect, the synergy still works. This principle allows a lot of customisation options}
A Helmet1 + A Armour1 = Synergy A B Helmet1 + A Armour2 = Synergy A
1 and 2 fit together -> result in a synergy -> independent of the equipment set
C Helmet3 + C Armour4 = Synergy B C Helmet3 + D Armour5 = Synergy B
4 and 5 are thematically similar -> still result in a synergy
^{capital letter = equipment set number = effect}
!■ As long as the effects of the armour match those of the helmet, the synergy works with any piece of equipment that has this effect. Of course, not every armour combination forms a synergy.
So both camps are served: - Players who pay more attention to appearance and want to combine armour freely still have both bonuses. - Players who pay more attention to the stats can also receive the set bonuses, but are still cosmetically free to choose one of several armours for the desired synergy.
Of course, this system still offers plenty of room for even more depth, but I think I've managed to get the principle across sufficiently.
Improved equipment like this prepares Helldiver for the new endgame, but that's not nearly enough.
There will also be an upgrade system for weapons. This will allow players to customise their equipment even more and will also give them a chance in the endgame. Every ordinary weapon can be levelled up twice, i.e. to level three, by gaining weapon experience. Each upgrade unlocks a skill slot that can be filled with a skill. These abilities can range from simple improvements such as less recoil or a faster rate of fire to very powerful, chaotic and fun improvements such as knockback or a larger blast radius. This creates variety in the weapon selection without having to add new weapons. One point of criticism from the community is that some new weapons are simply copies or direct upgrades to existing weapons. This could be remedied by giving similar weapons different abilities to choose from. Skills themselves have to be unlocked at the terminal. For example, a faster rate of fire at the robotics workshop, or better magnification for at command bridge.
The forge takes centre stage in the endgame. It gives samples a purpose in the endgame by sending them home to our beloved Super Earth for research and receiving blueprints for new weapons in exchange. And it allows us to tackle the insanely difficult and chaotic endgame missions.
The Forge is a new ship module that can be unlocked on the Helldivers' ship. It can be upgraded to unlock individual functions. One function is the forging of new weapons which require blueprints and must first be researched with samples from scientists on Super Earth. The special thing about forged weapons is that they can be improved with more skills. At regular global events, Helldivers, who inevitably have a lot of samples lying around in the endgame, can send in their samples to generate points. Rarer samples give more points. Once a certain number of points has been reached, research enters the next phase. Players who have sent in a certain number of samples are given the opportunity to test the new weapon. Literally, because this is where the developers can tweak the balancing. In addition, players who have generated enough points could unlock skins or somethings similar for this weapon to create a further incentive to send in samples. If the new test weapons reach enough points by completing missions or killing enemies, the blueprint will be unlocked for all Helldivers. This means that even casual players have the opportunity to forge the new weapons. Helldivers can buy a forge pass with supercredits, in which all blueprints are available. Similar to a war bond. There are forging materials that function similarly to samples in gameplay. Alternatively, forging materials can be purchased in war bonds, which helps the developers to fill new war bonds with content. These forging materials are also available in three rarities. Depending on the rarity of the forging materials used to forge the weapon, the weapon can unlock one, two or three additional skill levels. At the last skill level, weapons become "Familiar".
So these weapons can have up to five abilities, making them much stronger than their normal counterparts. This means that forged weapons don't necessarily have to be spectacular to be useful in the lategame. Perhaps it is possible to always change the abilities of weapons, alternatively this could cost supercredits. A more elegant option would be to integrate an item into the warbonds that can change the abilities of a weapon.
I've already announced it several times, but let's finally get to the nitty gritty of the Helldivers Endgame, the Prestige system. Prestige is essentially the ability to offer a lot of progression and replay value. If a player completes a mission on the highest difficulty, they have the option of starting Prestige. To do this, they start again from Trivial, but with a curse imposed on them. This could be something like more patrols, more environmental events, less life or stamina and many more. The player also loses all his ship progress and any warbond progress. However, he keeps every weapon that is Familiar, i.e. has reached the highest upgrade level. If the Helldiver completes a mission on the highest difficulty despite the curse, with the help of his now very powerful equipment, he has unlocked the curse. Now he can activate it on any mission at will. He can also earn prestige again to unlock further curses. Several curses can be activated during missions. This should be a real challenge even for the best Helldivers.
First and foremost, curses are designed to give experienced players an opportunity to put their skills to the test. Nevertheless, Helldivers who take on this challenge will not go away empty-handed. Missions with curses are the best way to obtain large quantities of samples and forging materials. For example, to experiment with different weapons with different upgrades.
So those were my, sometimes more, sometimes less rough, thoughts on what a proper lategame for Helldivers 2 could look like. It's not my intention to interfere with the development of the game, although it would of course be nice for me to see Arrowhead being inspired by some of my ideas. But I also have full confidence in the developers, and am confident that they will continue to deliver a very good gaming experience.
Thanks to everyone who has read this text.

Most are familiar with Cantuse’s Night Lamp theory about the battle in the ice in TWOW; Stannis defeats the Frey army by luring them into the ice lakes at the crofter’s village. The core idea is popular and accepted. What happens next is not as widely accepted. Stannis winning the battle in the ice still leaves Roose Bolton and his army occupying Winterfell. What is Stannis and his army to do to capture the castle and win the north?
There are a few ideas, but the ‘theory” lacks a universal name like Night Lamp. BryndenBFish may be the source of the original idea. I know u/The_Coconut_God, u/BaelBard, and u/bewildered_baratheon have written variations. I will dub these theories as the “Trojan Horse of Winterfell” for reference’s sake. The Trojan Horse of Winterfell is not only a corollary/sequel to the Night Lamp theory, but it is also a Pink Letter theory. Allow me to offer my explanation and take on it.

The Trojan Horse of Winterfell: A Little Summary

Per the Theon TWOW sample chapter, at the crofter’s village before the battle in the ice, Stannis orders Justin Massey to escort Tycho Nestoris and (F)Arya off to Castle Black; Stannis warns of potential false reports of his death. The same morning, for their planned treachery, Stannis arrests Arnolf Karstark and his family and disarms their army; Stannis plans to give the army, innocent of the plot, a chance to prove themselves. Stannis also arrests Tybald, the Dreadfort maester brought by Arnolf, but not before Tybald sends a raven with a map of the crofter’s village to Winterfell. Stannis seizes Tybald’s two remaining ravens, which fly to Winterfell. The battle in the ice happens as stipulated by the Night Lamp theory. The nominal Bolton vassals Manderlys will turncloak and join Stannis, and the secret Bolton vassals Karstarks will remain with him. Stannis will likely have Frey clothes and supplies seized from their baggage train.
Stannis has everything for the Trojan Horse of Winterfell: he will send Tybald’s ravens to the Boltons Winterfell to claim that the Frey-Manderly-Karstark host defeated Stannis. Yhe Boltons will believe it and send ravens to King’s Landing announcing the defeat. Then, the Karstarks and Manderlys and possibly southron knights wearing Frey clothes will march to Winterfell. In some variations (such as mine) Asha Greyjoy will be a “prisoner” of this host, which will also carry frozen heads of Freys (passed as the heads of Stannis’s men) and the sword Lightbringer. They will not have “Arya” or Theon (some theories have Theon disguised as Arnolf, but let’s keep it simple).
This “friendly” army will be welcomed to Winterfell. Its leaders will present Lightbringer and heads to the Boltons, but inform them that Theon and “Arya” were not found. Roose will order a feast to celebrate, but Ramsay will be furious. Likely without Roose’s leave (hence no signatures; no skin because the “friendly” army did not bring any), Ramsay will write the Pink Letter to Jon Snow boasting of Stannis’s [false] defeat. As he finishes the letter, Ramsay will hear a noise downstairs, and half-ass the smear and send the raven before investigating. There he will find the “friendly army” massacring the Boltons, possibly joined by Whoresbane’s Umbers. Stannis seizes the castle, wins the day.
TL;DR Per the Night Lamp theory, Stannis wins the battle in the ice against the Freys. He then sends fake news of his death to the Boltons; Ramsay writes the Pink Letter based on this false information. Stannis sends his men posing as allies to the Boltons to Winterfell, where they are welcomed only to massacre the Boltons, capturing Winterfell for the Mannis. That’s the popular conception of the Trojan Horse of Winterfell as I interpret it.

Big Walder in Little Winter Town

Now, I would like to contribute a new aspect of the Trojan Horse of Winterfell not part of the popular conception: Big Walder Frey. He is Lord Walder’s grandson by his son Jammos via his fourth wife, Alyssa Blackwood. Lame Lothar is his full uncle. Big Walder is clever boy, and, unlike his cousin Little Walder, is not cruel (and is even disturbed by his cousin’s behavior). He is also ambitious, somehow thinking he will inherit the Twins despite being behind dozens of people. Big Walder is very familiar with the line of succession and does not especially care about the deaths of his kin:

"We're cousins, not brothers," added Big Walder, the little one. "I'm Walder son of Jammos. My father was Lord Walder's son by his fourth wife. He's Walder son of Merrett. His grandmother was Lord Walder's third wife, the Crakehall. He's ahead of me in the line of succession even though I'm older."
"Only by fifty-two days," Little Walder objected. "And neither of us will ever hold the Twins, stupid."
"I will," Big Walder declared. "We're not the only Walders either. Ser Stevron has a grandson, Black Walder, he's fourth in line of succession, and there's Red Walder, Ser Emmon's son, and Bastard Walder, who isn't in the line at all. He's called Walder Rivers not Walder Frey. Plus there's girls named Walda." (Bran I, ACOK)
"My lords, your uncle Ser Stevron Frey was among those who lost their lives at Oxcross. He took a wound in the battle, Robb writes. It was not thought to be serious, but three days later he died in his tent, asleep."
Big Walder shrugged. He was very old. Five-and-sixty, I think. Too old for battles. He was always saying he was tired.” (Bran V, ACOK)

Big Walder was last seen on-page describing how he found his cousin Little Walder dead, who was seeking coin from White Harbor men. Big Walder was covered in his cousin’s blood; many readers believe he was the murderer.

Big Walder at the Big Battle in the Ice

Big Walder’s presence at the battle in the ice is plausible. He is a squire, and squires fight; he has nice armor and a shield and surcoat to use. Now, he is Ramsay’s squire, so one might think he will fight alongside Ramsay. However, squires being separated from their masters in the series is not unusual. Furthermore, we see the Freys leave the hall together after the fight with the Manderlys, and considering Big Walder went in with Hosteen, it makes sense that he left with him:

As he began to play—a sad, soft song that Theon Greyjoy did not recognize—Ser Hosteen, Ser Aenys, and their fellow Freys turned away to lead their horses from the hall. (Theon I, ADWD)

Hosteen may want to keep his half-nephew close given the murder of Little Walder. Hosteen may name Big Walder as his squire or perhaps a banner-bearer for the battle; even though squires can fight, being with Hosteen will minimize danger for the 9-year-old.
An aside: the Asha Fragment includes the leader of the Frey army, with two banner-bearers and one man holding a head on a spear. Some people theorized that Big Walder, is the leader of the Frey army, based on his armor being similar. This doesn’t make sense; someone that young would never be in charge (Daeron the Daring was 15 and a dragonrider and yet not the official leader of the green army after First Tumbleton). The man in the Asha fragment is almost certainly Hosteen Frey, though Big Walder may also be present as one of the banner-bearers.

Big Walder’s Big Winterfell Betrayal

Though the Night Lamp will decisively defeat the Frey army, Big Walder will survive, possibly by staying on the edge of the battle. It seems unlikely that Stannis’s knights would kill him; he’s a child squire, more useful as a hostage and presumably easy to capture. Big Walder may be clever enough to yield to Stannis’s men when it goes bad. In any case, Big Walder will be captured and brought to Stannis, a valuable hostage and source of intelligence.
Now, let’s pause on Big Walder for a second. On principle, the Trojan Horse of Winterfell — Manderlys and Karstarks and possibly southron knights dressed as Freys, bearing Lightbringer and some frozen heads, with messages from Tybald confirming the story — seems doable, but there are some specifics that would make it more convincing: someone recognizable besides the Manderlys writing the letter to Winterfell and showing up at the gates.
Throughout the northern plotline of ADWD, we are reminded of the importance of seals and signatures on letters. The signatures of northern lords on Ramsay’s letters are an endorsement of the trustworthiness of their contents:

"Ramsay Bolton, Lord of Winterfell, he signs himself. But there are other names as well." Lady Dustin, Lady Cerwyn, and four Ryswells had appended their own signatures beneath his. Beside them was drawn a crude giant, the mark of some Umber. (The Wayward Bride, ADWD)

Someone like Roose Bolton would get suspicious if the letter announcing Stannis’s defeat and the death of all the Freys was signed by Manderlys alone. Stannis and the Manderlys (specifically their likely leader, Wyman’s cousin Ser Marlon Manderly) should be clever enough to realize this. They will need more signatures from the Boltons’ allies to make the letter credible. Hosteen Frey will likely be killed, so no good there. Arnolf Karstark and his brood could sign it, as a condition of not being executed by fire; as a secret ally to the Boltons, Arnolf’s seal and signature would lend credibility to the letter.
But just signing the letter is not enough, because for the ruse to be credible, the signers will also have to appear leading the army back to Winterfell.This is where Arnolf or his brood being involved could be problematic; if these men led an army back to Winterfell, they could rat out the entire ruse. Stannis could strongarm them — keeping the grandsons as hostages — but given that the Karstarks already played Stannis false, I doubt he risks it. [Note: this is a reason why Stannis would glamor Theon as Arnolf, so that theory could be onto something]. So, who else can Stannis turn to ensure his Trojan Horse is successful?
Enter Big Walder Frey, the linchpin of Stannis’s capture of Winterfell. Consider these three points that Big Walder uniquely offers as a tool of deception:

• As a Frey, one of the few houses legitimately allied to the Boltons, Ramsay’s squire, and a helper in the cover-up of the Bolton sack of Winterfell, Big Walder’s credibility will not be in doubt.
  
• If the Frey leadership died in battle, it would not be shocking that Big Walder, the only trueborn Frey left in the host, to write announcing the battle’s outcome and the deaths of his kin, especially if he was squiring for Hosteen.
  
• Arnolf Karstark’s planned treachery is not well-known by the northern lords like the Manderlys or even Hosteen Frey. However Big Walder was present when Ramsay feasted Karstark at the Dreadfort. It would seem that someone as clever as him would be aware of the plot. Thus, Big Walder could accurately describe it happening in a way the Manderlys or even Stannis could not, detailing how Arnolf and family were killed, but the Karstarks filled their role.
  

Big Walder will write a letter to Winterfell describing Stannis’s defeat and the death of much of the leadership of the Boltons’ allies (Hosteen, Arnolf) which the Manderlys will sign. Roose Bolton will receive a message via the Dreadfort maester brought by the Karstarks, written by a Frey, and signed by a Manderly; the makings of a perfectly cromulent and credible letter. Then, when the army returns to Winterfell, it will bear the banners of Tommen and the Manderlys, Freys, and Karstarks, carry heads, and Lightbringer (maybe carried by Big Walder). Stannis’s “defeat” will be confirmed, and the army will be welcomed inside to massacre the Boltons. Big Walder, the little man with a big shadow, almost singlehandedly wins Winterfell for Stannis.

Why would Big Walder Cooperate with Stannis?

Good question. There are two scenarios: coercion or cooperation. Let’s consider coercion first. Big Walder is a child, already easily intimidated, who may have been coerced to write a false letter in the past.

My nephews are young, I grant you, but they were there. Big Walder wrote the letter, though his cousin signed as well. It was a bloody bit of business, by their account. (Catelyn IV, ASOS)

That letter, written by Big Walder, blames the sack of Winterfell on Theon and paints Ramsay as a savior. We know this letter is false, but it is not actually clear how much Big and Little Walder witnessed when the Boltons sacked Winterfell; they may have not seen the Bolton army betray the Stark one, but it is hard to believe they did not realize that the Boltons set Winterfell aflame and certainly that the Boltons “saved” the women and children, taking them back to the Dreadfort. Big Walder coerced to write the Winterfell letter? Was he convinced? Unknown, but given that Big and Little Walder should be aware that “Reek” was Ramsay, they knew what they were writing was at least partially false. Scary Ramsay coercing a pair of 9-year-olds into writing a letter seems reasonable. If Ramsay coerced Big Walder, so can Stannis via his torturer knight, Ser Clayton Suggs.
But even if Big Walder is coerced to a write a letter, he still needs to go to Winterfell and present himself. That’s a risk, Stannis would no doubt know; Big Walder could give away the ruse, just as Arnolf could. However, unlike Karstark, Big Walder is a child, so the odds of him resisting intimidation or figuring out a way to let the ruse slip to Ramsay would be lower. Big Walder could try something clever, like slipping in “mayhaps” like in the game Lord of the crossing, but I doubt anyone except readers would notice. I also find it likely that Stannis dress his men as Freys escorting Big Walder, with orders to kill him if he screws up. If the choice for his messenger is either a greybeard Karstark who tried to betray him and a Frey child, Big Walder will do.
What if Big Walder was cooperative with the Boltons and their false letter? If he was (and even if he wasn’t), Big Walder could prove cooperative again with Stannis. Walder wants to live, and Stannis can protect him. As a Frey, a persona non grata in the north, he is a likely target of northmen seeking revenge for the Red Wedding. Another reason: Big Walder wants to be lord of the Twins, but there are dozens of people ahead of him. How can he jump the line? Bending the knee to Stannis. Stannis does say that "we will make new lords." (Davos IV, ASOS), why not Big Walder?
Would Big Walder betray his kin? For some, the answer is yes: he killed Little Walder. But even if he did not, it is clear he cares little about them. He does not mourn for Ser Stevron and is largely dismissive of his fellow Freys. Moreover, amongst the Freys “only full blood siblings could be trusted” (Epilogue, ASOS); Big Walder is the only Blackwood-Frey in the north. Hosteen and Fat Walda are Crakehall-Freys, ahead of him in succession. Plus, Ramsay’s behavior was disturbing him. I do not believe it is that large of a jump for Big Walder to betray the people he hardly cares about.
Now, Stannis might be skeptical of Big Walder, for good reason. But there are some ways Big Walder could tell Stannis to earn his trust: the truth of the Bolton sack of Winterfell, for one, and (if he did it) his murder of Little Walder. Theon could support the veracity of these claims. Moreover, it could be Big Walder, based on his previous false letter, who suggests that he write the letter to Winterfell.
Personally, I believe that Big Walder will willingly swear fealty to Stannis and partake in the Trojan Horse in exchange for his support of his claim to the Twins. However, as detailed earlier, Big Walder being coerced into the plot is plausible. In any case, Big Walder should play a big role in Winterfell’s capture.

Big Walder’s Big Rhyme

Let’s examine some “rhyming” (parallelism) associated with Big Walder and the Trojan Horse of Winterfell. The Trojan Horse already has rich parallelism, and Big Walder further enhances it. First, Big Walder already wrote a letter incorrectly stating the events of a battle at Winterfell:

My nephews are young, I grant you, but they were there. Big Walder wrote the letter, though his cousin signed as well. It was a bloody bit of business, by their account.
"I cannot speak to that. There is much confusion in any war. Many false reports. All I can tell you is that my nephews claim it was this bastard son of Bolton's who saved the women of Winterfell, and the little ones. They are safe at the Dreadfort now, all those who remain." (Catelyn IV, ASOS)

In both cases, Big Walder writes about a bloody nigh-on-implausible affair, but his authorship gives a false report credibility. The trick the Boltons played on the Starks via Big Walder will be inflicted upon the Boltons via Big Walder.
Another fun one. In AFFC/ADWD, Wyman Manderly faked Davos’s death, using the Freys as unwitting pawns to “confirm” it:

"Wyman Manderly has done as you commanded, and beheaded Lord Stannis's onion knight."
"We know this for a certainty?"
"The man's head and hands have been mounted above the walls of White Harbor. Lord Wyman avows this, and the Freys confirm. They have seen the head there, with an onion in its mouth. And the hands, one marked by his shortened fingers." (Cersei V, AFFC)

So shall the Manderlys fake Stannis’s death — but this time, with a Frey as a willing accomplice. It is worthwhile to mention that Manderly’s deception allowed his son Wylis to be released from captivity. The only reason Whoresbane Umber is fighting for the Boltons is because he worries for his nephew, the Greatjon. But because of Big Walder’s deception, King’s Landing, which will have the Greatjon captive (Jaime ordered the transfer of the Freys captives to Tommen), may believe the Umbers are loyal and release the Greatjon (the same may happen with Harrion Karstark).

Epilogue: Big Walder, Little Squire

Stannis takes Winterfell, thanks to Big Walder. What’s next for the big little man? There will be no sideplot of him leading an attack on the Twins; at best, GRRM will pocket Big Walder taking the Twins until the story’s dénouement. What is the point of this character, who happens to be descended from one of GRRM’s favorite houses?
There is a position that Big Walder can fill. Stannis left his squire Devan Seaworth with Melisandre, and his other squire Bryen Farring perished from exposure. A king must needs have a squire. What better way for Big Walder to remain in the story and serve Stannis than as his squire? It seems very GRRM-like for the same kid to squire for both Ramsay Bolton and Stannis Baratheon. Also, incidentally, because his grandmother is a Blackwood, Big Walder is (likely) a third cousin, once removed of Stannis, Stannis may take pity on a kinsman.
TL;DR Just as Big Walder was instrumental in concealing the Bolton’s sack of Winterfell, so will he prove instrumental in fomenting misinformation allowing Stannis capture of Winterfell, by writing the letter to Winterfell announcing Stannis’s defeat and then marching to the castle with a host of Manderlys, Karstarks, and Stannermen dressed as Freys as a Trojan Horse for Stannis’s army.

So in January the court here in NC ordered a new payment amount on my child's father and for it to be garnished from his wages. It has never gone through and I have never recieved the first payment (it's now almost june). I have emailed the case worker who says she sent the order to his workplace and she can send it again if I need her to, so I had her resend it again. His workplace is ignoring the order and not putting it in. The case worker is now ignoring my emails, and I'm not sure what I can do to get his workplace to put the court order in?

Amal Clooney, yes, wife of George, was one of the three “experts” that advised the ICC to equate Western democracy with Islamic terror.

Middle East heat indices aside, the truest hot spot on the planet is, always, wherever the Israel Defense Forces happens to be killing Muslims, no matter the reason.
Jews taking the lives of Arabs always commands the world’s attention. Muslims killing Muslims—such as the savage sectarian violence between Shi’ites and Sunnis, with a body count in the millions—is never newsworthy.
A cause of death brought about by Jews, however, is of special interest to the “human rights” community. Jews fighting for their survival after the Holocaust, Israelis facing unambiguous existential threats—that’s precisely when the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court all awake from their naps. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International re-enact the Maytag Repairman TV commercial—watchdogs over Jews alone, even before Israel has the chance to retaliate.
Remember how words like “de-escalate” and “ceasefire” entered the public discourse almost instantly after the Oct. 7 massacre?
For the entirety of Israel’s brief history, it has been forced to defend itself against Arab armies and Islamic terrorists—in Egypt, Syria and Jordan in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973; against Palestinians murdering random Israelis during the first and second intifadas in 1987 and 2000, respectively; against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006; and Hamas in Gaza in 2009, 2012, 2014, 2021 and 2023.
Each campaign was waged in self-defense. Not once was Israel the aggressor. Peace treaties were eventually negotiated with Egypt and Jordan—but Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and, of course, Iran have never retired the language denying Israel’s existence and promising its elimination.
And, yet, that’s not how Israel’s existential vulnerability gets reported. The public ignorance about the genocidal maniacs who are Israel’s next-door neighbors is truly astounding. Decade after decade and hundreds of thousands of rockets launched, indiscriminately, not at Israel’s army but its civilian population centers.
Why do you think the Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile defense systems, and roadside bunkers and bomb shelters, became a national priority? Suicide bombings, car rammings, knife-wielding assassins—that’s the reason for the shared-border security barriers and checkpoints.
Despite this backdrop of one-sided aggression, it is Israel that the world pressures into ceasefires. The tiny Jewish democratic state, surrounded by bloodthirsty theocratic Muslims, is always accused of disproportionate responses in its defense.
How do I know that Israel’s just wars against Muslim fanatics gets twisted in the public imagination, the moral lines blurred, the focal points unrecognizable? Name a single student protesting against Israel, and cheering wildly for Hamas barbarians, who is aware of any of Israel’s wretched history with its many warring neighbors. Name a single college professor who teaches this history rather than the antisemitic agitprop that goes by the names “settler-colonial enterprise,” “apartheid” and “genocide.”
I’ll wait. Take your time. Good luck.
Jews are simply not permitted to defend themselves in war, or against terrorism—no matter the cause or provocation—if it means the loss of a Muslim life. The world much prefers the Holocaust to a Jewish state preserving its sovereignty and existence.
No further proof is required than recent events. The carnage on Oct. 7—the beheading of Jewish babies, gang-raping of Israeli girls, kidnapping of Holocaust survivors—and the continued withholding of hostages are mere incidental news, of no special importance in explaining why the IDF must prevail.
And yet the Biden administration, which loudly declared its disapproval of any renewed Israeli incursion in Rafah, quietly now acknowledges that Israel somehow managed to evacuate 950,000 Gazans from the city. Its military operations have become more targeted and limited, too.
Still, that didn’t deter the ICJ from calling upon Israel to halt its military offensive immediately, just when Hamas’ remaining battalions, weapons stockpile and tunnel escape routes were being destroyed by the IDF.
How convenient—coming to the rescue of Islamist butchers, allowing them to reconstitute and live to kill more Israelis, gradually taking aim at the whole of Western societies.
It was a busy past few weeks for international tribunals. The ICJ had competition. The ICC prosecutor announced that he was seeking arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and the terrorists who head Hamas in Gaza. (The actual leadership is slumming in five-star Qatari hotels, scanning real estate listings, looking for new ways to squander the international aid meant for ordinary Gazans.)
That’s right: If the warrants are granted, an avowed terrorist responsible for the savagery of Oct. 7 will share the global Most Wanted List with the leader of a democratic country fighting a war of self-defense.
The ICJ and ICC are nothing but letters that spell antisemitism, along with BLM and DEI. Neither court has any jurisdiction over Israel. The endgame is Israel’s global isolation. The Jewish state has been in this position before; the Jewish people have been scapegoated and blood-libeled for thousands of years the world over. Yet another reason why a Jewish homeland, with a fearsome army, is so morally imperative—as if another reason was necessary.
International law is toothless. The United States and Israel purposefully refused to sign the Rome Statute in 1998, which created the ICC. To Bill Clinton’s credit, he knew that submitting to the court’s dubious jurisdiction would entail American officials forever apologizing for American exceptionalism, and risking incarceration by kangaroos not from Australia. Israeli prime ministers would have to ship them babka cakes with tiny saws baked in.
The arrest warrants were not a surprise. Amal Clooney, yes, the wife of George, was one of the three “experts” that advised the ICC to equate Western democracy with Islamic terror. Apparently her antisemitism runs so deep, she hasn’t learned much from her husband’s film career—she is unable to distinguish between good and bad guys.
Actually, hating Israel is one of her specialties as a “human rights lawyer.” In 2014, she was assigned a similar task by a U.N. commission investigating Israel after its last major war with Hamas. At the time she was engaged to Clooney. Doubtless his publicist pleaded with her to step down, and she did.
Nowadays, everyone feels more secure in their antisemitism. Why should she pass up an opportunity to demonize Israel and trivialize the barbarism of Hamas?
A man in love will do, and believe, anything, it seems. Danny Ocean, that quintessential con artist portrayed by George Clooney, always so heads-up, may have been hoodwinked into believing all kinds of nonsense about Israeli war crimes and passive Palestinians uprooted from a mythical nation called Palestine.
All of Hollywood—Jews and non-Jews alike—have been largely indifferent to what happened to Israelis on Oct. 7. The entertainment industry, generally, lives in terror of social media backlash placing paydays at risk. Wonder Woman, alone, remains fearless.
Clooney and his wife might, actually, share different views. If not, he is free to join the chorus of morally bankrupt A-listers chanting, “From the River to the Sea.”
'Ocean’s Eleven' may yet become 'From the River to the Sea' - JNS.org

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Buffout Supply s
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Bolton Greens Centerpiece
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Claim Token s
Commendation s
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I owe 2000 for rent. My husband is out of work and my wages are being garnished. We have 2 small children...anything helps. Thank youso much. @Kelly091820

What's good aspiring lawyers. Went back and forth about posting this as many of these esp on the other sub are insufferable egostroking eg 3.79/178 splitter success story, still debating b/t Ruby or Stanford...but while it was cathartic for me to write this I also honestly learned a lot through this sub so if this info helps anybody I consider that to be worth it. Apologies in advance for my long-windedness.
Stats: 3.0x, 169, Caucasian A's: Richmond $$$$ (attending), Duquesne $$, Pitt - WL's: Drexel, Temple, GW, American, St. John's, Marquette R: Wake Forest
Background: 10+ years of work experience, hated my job cuz of stagnation/low prospects for growth, presented "juicy" opportunities that you eventually realize have very low odds of coming to fruition (those in commission sales will understand), my wife signed me up for Jan LSAT bc she was tired of seeing me miserable and then I applied once I received my score knowing nothing about law school admissions. I applied many places on the literal deadline date in the assumption that I would get equal consideration with applicants who submitted earlier. Then I came on this and lsa sub and found out that was not the case. Ignorance can be bliss.
Personal statement: I think it was above average. I wrote about working menial jobs (janitor, commercial fisherman, door to door salesman, laborer) where there was a strain of anti-intellectualism and how I dealt with it. I alluded to but did not explicitly state that I worked and have lived as an adult in contact with people of diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds in the hope that it would distinguish me from younger applicants. I grew up in a lily white community so I know many kids go right from the cocoon to the bubble. Main thrust was conveying that at all my jobs I work my ass off. Advice: write about something that is not already apparent in your application but makes u distinct from other applicants and is something you are genuinely proud of. Also keep it to two pages. The first four apps I sent out it was two and a half, then one place required "no more than two". editing it down def made it tightebetter as I realized I had rehashed some stuff.
GPA: weakest part of my app, felt sheepish looking over transcript at some classes I just did not care about that should have been much higher grades Advice: take electives you give a shit about if u r in undergrad rn. Also I don't think adcomms have time to actually look at the transcript they just see the gpa. So maybe write an explanation/addendum if u only have a couple outliers. For instance as an English/pol sci major I got C's in calculus II (tbh this is the grade on my transcript of which I am the most proud as I failed the first test and absolutely grinded in office hours, etc with a prof who just flew through material, most exhilarating class of college career, math is amazing) and biology (curved against future doctors and shit, also grinded after bombing first test and having the professor tell me I should maybe drop). If those were my only classes that I did poorly in (they weren't) and pulled my gpa below a school's median I would want them to note that I should not be penalized for being academically adventurous and willing to go outside my comfort zone.
LORs: probably below average

1) from my boss, I had to edit this because the original was the most boring, boilerplate letter. chatgpt would have been embarrassed to have created it. Sample: he has worked on many projects and is skilled at sales and marketing. I had to be like maybe mention when I recouped $100k for a vendor by successfully appealing duplicate allowance charges from Amazon or salvaged the q4 sales season at Sam's club after vendor failed to deliver product for Labor Day by proposing replacement products, setting up new items and creating content that was up to spec. They want details damnit

2) from a client I worked closely with, it was pretty good, I did edit for clarity as she is from China and her English is not great

3) undergrad professor, reached out even though I am long out of school and surprisingly she was like pleasure to hear from you, happy to write a LOR. ended up not completing it - she is crazy busy with children, classes and publishing papers I assume so once I was in to Richmond I wrote her an email thanking her and saying not to bother. The fact she enthusiastically remembered me after so long was heartening tho (I'm not chummy with profs)

Advice: ask for these early and I think it is common practice to look them over before submission or at very least provide bullet points/outline of things u want them to mention. Don't assume that someone u have worked with for a long time will do a good job as they may be a terrible writer, busy or forgetful of anything productive you have done in your tenure with the company. For those significantly removed from UG, it can't hurt reach out to profs as I think this letter would actually have turned some of the WLs to As because most of the adcomms are academics and want to hear a fellow academic vouch for u in the classroom, esp if ur gpa is weak like mine
LSAT: I took 3 practice tests the week before the test date after my wife literally opened the practice book she bought me and started doing practice questions herself to get me to engage. Iykyk depression and procrastination/self-sabotage unfortunately go hand in hand. I planned to retake the test in April after I quit my job and studied more intensively. I thought this would be fine and boost my app (completely unaware that I was already extremely late in the cycle). Advice: make sure u time yourself on practice tests, don't keep going once time is up. Get used to marking all unfinished questions a default letter (I chose C) as this can't hurt u on test day. Although with removal of logic games I don't think it will still be as much of a time scramble.
Charactefitness addendum: I had to write one as I was suspended a month before graduation. I was drunk and passed out/asleep in public but then a campus safety officer used this as an opportunity to flex in front of a female coworker. Basically I was assaulted and then accused of assault. In regular court it basically became a fine for a noise complaint. In the private fiefdom of university justice where I was not allowed counsel, the officers told a tale in which the injuries they sustained after the confrontation necessitated an immediate trip to the hospital to acquire Percocet. Despite pointing out the farcical nature of their story and the obvious drug seeking behavior that undercut their credibility the conduct board found me guilty and I had to finish my education elsewhere (although through transfer credits I technically graduated from my original school once the suspension ended). Advice: it sucks to write these but first request your disciplinary record from the school so you know exactly what it says. Succinctly describe the infraction and take full responsibility, don't do what I did above. Then state how you moved past it. If you can't help yourself maybe throw in one clause like "although there were extenuating circumstances". I put a footnote to an op-ed that the head of the political science department wrote after he resigned as the faculty liaison to this conduct board following the initial briefing from the university's legal team. Basically he said he could not support a system that infringes on the basic rights of students. So I was calling the whole thing bullshit without saying it myself, but more like look at what this guy has to say about it. I thought law schools would respect that sort of legalese...
Miscellaneous: apply places you actually want to go to/think are feasible to get in. Applying is expensive and lsac "data release" or whatever is a racket.
Tl; Dr: I got lucky. Apply early. Get your materials together as soon as possible.
Conclusion: Shout out my wife for pushing me on this. I am excited to be a Spider. Best of luck to everyone in all your pursuits!

Thank you to whoever takes the time to read this. My husband has been out of work and my wages have been garnished due to am old medical bill. I have 2 little ones and need help. If you could donate to me I would more than appreciate it. If you can help me please message me.

My husband has been out of working leaving us behind on rent. I have 2 very small children and need help. My wages are being garnished due to an old medical bill and the county says we make too much. If you can help I appreciate it.. venmo: @Kelly091820 if you have the extra resources to help me thank you so much