Even at the time, the concept of Neat Records releasing a 12″ EP called “One Take, No Dubs” confused me no end. Because the implication of the title surely involved other Neat releases having had a) more than one take and ii ) some dubs. And that couldn’t be right? Surely not? I mean, we’ve all heard some of them over the last few months on GHMI. But that was the conceit of this release. It was going to be instant, electrifying and mesmerising. And if by that, they meant ropy, out of tune and mesmerising (but not in a good way), then they were right.

So, what did 1982 have in store for us?

Well, first up were Alien. Not Sacred Alien, not the US glam band, this lot were just plain Alien, and resolutely not glam. And not very good either, although Ron Anderson did seem to know his way around a guitar. Their one take, no dub was the sum total of their Neat career.

MP3 one – ALIEN – Could Have Done Better

Next up are the much better known Avenger. I absolutely loved their ‘Too Wild To Tame’ 7″, and predicted big things for them. Naturally, I was wrong, and it was back to McDonalds for Brian Ross (V), John Brownless (G), Mick Moore (B) and Gary Young (D), despite two actual album releases. Naturally, they reformed a few years back, although I think only Mick and Gary are still there. They’re doing a Greek tour next year, so you may want to plan your holidays around that. However, they rawked their rawk. Respect.

MP3 two – AVENGER – Hot and Heavy Express

Next up are another band who shoulda, coulda done better. Black Rose.

Their 1984 album “Boys Will Be Boys” is a much played item at Mr H Towers. But the usual inability to keep anyone in the band for more than about a week, and the general demise of the NWOBHM pretty much put paid to them. They packed it in about 1988. Shame.

MP3 three – BLACK ROSE – Knocked Out

Last, and very close to being least, are Hellenbach.

People actually praised them, claiming that their debut album “Now Hear This” is a lost classic. These people are liars. DO not believe them. All you need to know is that Hellenbach “developed” their style, and became a rockabilly band called Bessie and the Zinc Buckets. This is not a lie.

MP3 four – HELLANBACH – Full Scale Emergency

Next time out, we’ll be taking a break from the mighty Metal. Seeing as how it’s December, the next edition of GHMI will be devoted to the Magic Of Cliffmas, as we present our Cliff Richard special.

Even though I’ve posted this blog previously, I thought it deserved another home. Originally posted on October 20, 2009 on MySpace.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

For the past 9 months, since losing our dear friend, we have been waiting for the closure that was very much needed. Unfortunately, his only remaining family couldn’t make it to the area until this week, due to heart surgery and knee replacements, and relocating from Hawaii to Florida.

Finally, on Saturday, they flew into the area, and we were able to get things accomplished that we’d all waited for a very long time to happen. We all braved the monsoon-ish rain and freezing temperatures so we could finally meet in person over dinner. Before now, we’d only talked by phone, and although that was great, it wasn’t a face-to-face visit. We exchanged pictures and stories and memories. Afterward, we went shopping for things for the Celebration of Life service; a whiteboard and tape to make a collage of pictures, and a stop at the photo department for some pictures that had been printed out.

Sunday, we gathered at the Strasburg Railroad to take a ride on the train. Our group consisted of myself, my Husband, my Son, our friend’s ex-wife (with whom he remained close), the cousins (Husband and Wife) from Florida, and the funeral director and his wife. The train left the station at 3pm on the dot, and for the next 20 minutes, we traveled from Strasburg to Paradise. It was our friend’s last ride on a train that he loved so much. On the return trip, his ashes were scattered along the tracks amongst the country fields that he also loved. Afterward, we went to an early dinner, then back to our place. For the next couple of hours, we sorted through old photo albums that we’d salvaged from our friend’s apartment, as well as other items that we managed to save that we thought held some importance or memory. After the cousins left for their hotel, I started arranging the photos for the collage.

On Monday, the cousins and my Husband spent the morning running errands – closing bank accounts, making final arrangements, and purchasing food for the service, while I finished the collage at home, and took care of a sick child, while trying to tie up other loose ends. Monday evening, we gathered, along with the members of the Amish community that our friend provided transportation for (taxi service). There was plenty of food, friendship, laughter, tears and memories. Almost everyone there stood to speak about some special way our friend had touched their lives. It was the closure that everyone so desperately needed. We all had a chance to finally say goodbye to our dear friend.

Out of respect and remembrance, I am posting my eulogy to our dear friend.

Emory J. Zimmerman

April 3, 1940 – January 14, 2009

When we first moved into the apartment above Emory’s in 2007, we were told that he was “just a grumpy old man who hated life and everyone in it”. It took us less than a day to realize that that statement couldn’t have been further from the truth. Over the next year and a half that we had the pleasure of knowing Emory, we found out first-hand who Emory was. The truth was that Emory was all of these things and more:

•    Kind
•    Generous
•    Caring
•    Giving
•    Intelligent
•    Gracious
•    Warm
•    Accepting
•    Loving
•    Funny

To anyone who took the time to get to know Emory, they found these things to be true. I’m glad we took the time, or we may have missed out on someone who was a great friend, a confidant, and an all around wonderful person. He treated everyone with respect and kindness.

Emory went out of his way to help people. On several occasions, when we needed an item, or something had broken that needed replaced, he was always ready, willing and eager to help. Usually this consisted of him searching through his garage for items he already had from his contracting business. I can’t begin to say how many times we’d be heading out to the store, and Emory would stop us and say, “Don’t go spending your money on something I have that I’m not using anyway!”. Then he’d drag us deep into his maze of unused things – hefting boxes, rearranging shelves, wiping off dust and cobwebs and finally exclaiming, “There it is! I knew I had one!”. He was like a kid in a candy shop in his own garage. We finally learned that before we went anywhere else, we’d always stop in at “Emory’s General Store” and see what he had available. And he seemed genuinely pleased to be able to help us out. He was like that with everybody.

One night, I happened to be looking out the window, and I saw Emory get into his van, start it up, and pull out of the driveway. That wasn’t too unusual; he would occasionally make a late night run to the store. What surprised and confused me was that instead of driving down the road, he pulled back into the driveway, into my Husband’s parking spot. At first, I thought maybe he was trying to play a practical joke on my Husband, so I opened the window to ask him what on Earth he was doing. He said he was protecting my rose bush from the brutal wind that night, since he knew I’d just planted it and it was still a fledgling. That simple act of kindness brought tears to my eyes, and still does to this day, every time I think about it.

Almost every day, we would have some sort of conversation with Emory. Sometimes they were short conversations, but most times we would end up sitting for hours, discussing everything possible under the sun. We learned a lot about his life, and how he became the person he was. We got to know the dreams and goals he had for himself. We listened as he told us stories about his childhood, his marriages, the things he did for fun and the things he absolutely hated doing. When the weather was warm enough, we’d sit out in the driveway, or in his garage, or on our stairs and have long talks about current events. This was something we jokingly referred to as “Friday Night Politics”, even when it didn’t happen on Fridays. When a member of our family would disappear, the first place we knew to check was Emory’s, because what may have been intended as a 2 minute stop-over would usually end up as a 2 hour visit.

We treasured our friendship with Emory, and we believe that he treasured his friendship with us as well. He became like a second father to us, and like a grandfather to my Son. He shared many common interests with my Son – computers, trains, camera and video equipment, electronics, but most of all they shared a love of ideas. They, too, would sit in the driveway and exchange ideas for hours. Emory was very impressed with my Son’s intelligence, and told me so frequently. The most heartfelt compliment I’ve ever received about my Son came from Emory. It’s rare to find that kind of friendship between an old man and a young boy. In fact, my Son was the only person allowed to take a recent picture of Emory – anyone else would have been denied that privilege.

I wish we’d had time to give back to Emory all that he’d given to us. We certainly tried, that’s for sure! But he wouldn’t hear of it. He was a giver, not a taker! And he reminded us of that quite frequently. In his last couple of months, when his health was failing him, we did everything we could to make sure that he knew what he meant to us. We’re confident that he took with him our love, caring and gratitude. He’s left us with a hole in our hearts that can never be filled, but with memories that will last a lifetime.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

“What is the best tea for me to drink?” and then, “What is your favorite tea?”

These are two questions I am asked often when sampling tea at market or Selby Gardens. I find it extremely fascinating to explore and chat about the different taste and enjoyment experience people have when drinking a cuppa. Some thoughts to share on this often complex pastime of drinking tea.

My usual answer to the first question, “What is the best tea for me to drink?” is quite simple, the tea that you like the best!

For me, Green Tea is simply the best tea because of the powerful health benefits associated with drinking green tea. The truth of the matter is that if you really don’t like green tea, the chances are that you will not drink sufficient quantity of green tea to achieve the promised healthy enhancements.

If you prefer a Rooibos tea, then you should drink it because you are certain to drink much more of it. And you will benefit from the high anti-oxidant levels and the unique combination of vitamins and minerals found in Aspalathus linearis. You may prefer a combination of botanical tea and herbals or indeed all herbals. Each tea offers unique health benefits as well as unique flavors, and only you can decide the one you like the best.

Now the second question, my favorite tea, has become quite complicated. I have many favorites and drink different teas at different times of the day.

I describe myself as an Orthodox tea lover and almost exclusively drink loose leaf tea. I just love the taste of Camellia sinensis in all its wonderful forms and natural flavors. I do not need the addition of fruits, flowers or added flavors in order to make tea more palatable or enjoyable because, to me, they mask the true flavor. And I want to taste the true flavor of loose leaf tea. Why only loose leaf tea? See Think Out of the Bag.

That does not mean that I will not drink or appreciate a finely blended tea with quality ingredients such as our Black Rose or Earl Grey (thanks for snapping the fab pix, Alexis Z) which are both perfect for afternoon tea. Also, see my post on Early Grey, Are you Spellbound?

I am now much more sensitive to caffeine and find I must stop drinking true tea around 5.30pm otherwise find myself enjoying my tea all night long!

This has meant a shift to herbals for that time frame. Like Rooibos, Naturally caffeine free Organic Honeybush fits that niche perfectly for me because of soothing and calming qualities.

Since I have been sampling tea to so many tea lovers each week I have come to realize that no two people are alike, regarding their taste in tea. Selby Select is by far our best selling tea and people absolutely love it. Though some people do not care for the flavor of this amazing Rooibos, no matter how high the praise.

MY POINT IS? There is a favorite tea out there for everybody. There is no good excuse for not drinking tea. As I have said before, find what you like and drink lots of it.

Cheers,
the Tea Lady

Olá meus leitores! Talvez vocês não acreditem mas vou contar uma história fanfic do jogo Grand Chase que acabei imaginando em apenas uma música. Isso, meus leitores é um dom! A habilidade de ouvir até mesmo o que os mudos dizem ou as palavras que ninguém nunca disse. Pois bem, saibam como tudo começou: ewl estava ouvindo Black Rose do Trapt. Bom começo não? Pois bem, ouvindo e entendendo a música vi imagens de um coração gritando por socorro, alguém querendo ser ouvido, advinhem quem era? Shadow! Talvez pelo fato de gostar dele, ewl esteja mais próximo dele não importanto mais nada. Agora, ele me apareceu todo infantil, como um bonequinho, sua personalidade continuava a mesma visto que ele queria parecer “foda” entre suas roupas vermelhas e pretas. Esse Shadow está preso em Vermecia, o continente de um jogo chamado Grand Chase (ótimo jogo sem lag), ele tem uma história pra mim e pra vocês. Não é bem a cara dele, mas continua sendo “foda”.

Antes de começar a história Black Rose, gostaria de dar alguns esclarecimentos e um extra:

Tempo e Espaço

A história se passa no continente de Vermecia supostamente depois do esquadrão Grand Chase ter derrotado o mal nos continentes de Xenia e Terra de Prata. O esquadrão estaria dividido, aproveitando “férias” dos combates, cada integrante fazendo o que bem entender até que seriam convocados pela comandante Lothos.

Personagens e suas classes

Alguns personagens como Ronan e Elesis possuem duas armas, cada uma representando uma forma de luta, escolhendo uma delas para uma melhor batalha. Elesis por exemplo pode usar a espada Amizade Celestial embainhada na cintura enquanto leva o Montante de Ferro nas costas, escolhendo uma pra lutar, finca uma das armas do chão e luta apenas com a outra.

Outros personagens que venham a aparecer podem ou não receber um nome para suas armas e classes, assim como ter mais de uma classe (provavelmente informado num arquivo especial).

Mercyful Fate (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Melissa
Roadrunner, 1983

Discovery: Today was one of those days where I really couldn’t face listening to new music. I have these days maybe once a month, where all I want to do is either listen to artists I’m really familiar with or watch bad TV all day. Unfortunately, I promised myself I’d see this project through — plus it’s only day seven — so to skip one now would be truly pathetic. I searched all my most treasured sources of music recommendations — RYM, last.fm, Stereogum, Brooklyn Vegan, etc. — none of which seemed to turn out anything I particularly felt like listening to.

Using the tried and tested method of closing my eyes and pointing the computer screen, I picked out a random year and number, which happened to be 1983 and 4. Melissa by Mercyful Fate is the album that came up — the 4th best album of 1983 according to RYM users. I’m going to be honest and say I had never before heard of this band or album, yet it seems as though they were a very important metal band. Time to rectify.

History: In 1981, the remaining members of Hank Shermann’s Brats and King Diamond’s Black Rose joined together with Michael Denner and his bass player Grabber Hansen — whom they had helped to record demos — to form Mercyful Fate. Several drummers played with the band until the position was permanently filled by Kim Ruzz, who played on Melissa.

The album was produced by Henrik Lund, who owned a studio with his brother in Copenhagen. It was recorded in 13 days and mixed by Lund in private. Lund refused to let the band members stay in the studio whilst he was mixing but allowed them to make suggestions intermittently.

Melissa is the name of a skull that was given to King and which was used as a prop at live shows. It was the real human skull of a woman who had suffered a severe head trauma. King invented a backstory to “put his mind at ease”, which was the inspiration for the final track on the album. The song tells the story of a witch who was burnt at the stake by a Catholic priest and documents the protagonist’s feelings of sadness which eventually turn into rage and a declaration of revenge against her murderer. Yeah…

Mercyful Fate are widely credited as one of the forefathers of black metal, alongside Venom (UK), Celtic Frost (Switzerland) and Bathory (Sweden).

Review: N.B. I opted to listen to 2005’s remastered version (minus the bonus tracks.)

Before I start, it’s important to understand that I have absolutely no authority when it comes to reviewing metal albums. It’s not the case that I’m constantly subjecting myself to something I dislike in the hope that one day it’ll stick, because there are a lot of aspects of metal that I love and that don’t exist in other areas of my music taste. What I find unappealing about the genre as a whole is that I often find it difficult to understand where the music is coming from. When I listen to PJ Harvey’s ‘White Chalk’, I can feel her aching nostalgia. When I hear Atmosphere’s ‘Dreamer’, I can relate to every aspect of the character he’s describing. I can’t imagine ever relating to lyrics like, “Now, now you’re into my coven / You are Lucifer’s child / Into the coven / Lucifer’s child.” That’s not to say my ‘understanding’ of a song is based solely on lyrics, but the instrumental side of things is often far too overblown and grandiose for me to imagine it being representative of any sort of emotion.

So as far as I understand it at the moment, most of the metal I’ve heard exists for the sole purpose of sounding good. It’s important to keep my severe generalisations in mind (and please understand this is a feeling I’d love to be able to shake) when considering how much weight my compliments and/or criticisms of this album carry.

The opening track ‘Evil’ (I only wish I were joking) is close to a perfect example of what I love in heavy metal. This is where I lose all ability to criticise and totally immerse myself in the crunchy riffs and the completely flamboyant guitar solo (which kicks off 2 whole minutes of brilliant guitar wankery). King Diamond exhibits incredible vocal control-  effortlessly switching between a polished belt to a howling, pitch-perfect falsetto throughout. It may not be my idea of the perfect song but there’s nothing in the 5 minutes that isn’t entirely enjoyable.

The album continues in the same vein, the only change of pace for a while being the Baroque-inspired intro to ‘Into the Coven’. By all accounts, this band know their strengths. Although every song seems to have a similar structure — almost always containing verses which build up to a chorus laden with falsetto, followed by a prolonged guitar solo — this never cheapens the effect of just how accomplished every musician is on their respective instrument. It’s not until the final track, ‘Melissa’, that there’s a real change in sound. It’s the softest song and, in a superficial sense if nothing else, the most emotional on the record.

To summarise, in a really lazy manner, there is not a song on this album that I do not enjoy. It lacks variation, but it doesn’t particularly matter when the band have managed to hone their sound so successfully. I’m not going to be picking any of these tracks to stick on a mixtape, but I’ll happily stick the album on whenever I feel like ripping out some truly ballin’ air guitar solos.

Perhaps in a year’s time I’ll be able to review an album like this with a lot more insight but, for now, I’ll continue to enjoy it for what it is, whether I can do justice to my feelings in words or not.

Practical information: Check out ‘Evil’ here.

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11

MINUTEMEN: THE CRUCIBLE

Chapter Twelve: “An evening with Rachel Lynch”

Black Rose Bar
City of Boston
United North American Protectorate
October 19, 2552
Night before invasion of Earth

It was illegal to look that good in the Black Rose bar. It was sacrilege. The establishment simply did not deserve the beauty that was casually strutting through the front door and over the bouncer’s jaw. Autumnal red hair, meticulously blown and teased with an artist’s touch, sashayed and swayed along the middle of her back. A short black dress drew attention to her figure without being obnoxious or desperately showy. Subtle jewelry caught the dim light of arcade games, a dingy vending machine, and a single fritzing holo panel that was doing its level best to broadcast the Boston Bruins game.

To the clutches of blue collar Bostonians gathered in islands of bar stools and the midday drunks hunched over the horseshoe-shaped bar, she was gliding over the dark stained hardwood floor. The three attractive girls at the top of the horseshoe turned around on their stools to stare at incoming Aphrodite. A petite young girl with short blonde hair and a look that screamed preparatory schooling took a courageous sip of her martini, spilling a few drops on her jeans and making her curse softly. After dabbing at the drops with a cocktail napkin, she turned her attention back to the gorgeous redhead.

“I thought you were going on a date.”

“I am,” Rachel Lynch replied, a sly smile forming in the corner of her lips. The bartender was already standing at attention when the Boston College Junior perched herself on her bar stool. She could not be sure, but Rachel could have sworn the barrel chested barman was holding his breath. She put her elbows on the bar and leaned forward, craning her graceful neck to examine the arrangement of bottles, even though she knew the layout by heart. The bartender looked like he was about to pass out.

“Vodka soda,” Lynch said, locking eyes with her server. “Make it cheap and hard.”

The bartender’s legs buckled ever so slightly as he turned to fetch the beverage. Rachel now turned to face her friends as they threw her mildly disapproving looks.

“That’s just not fair to the new guy,” the blonde said, swirling her olive around in the martini glass as the rest of the attractive girls in the group turned back to their conversations. “So when’s this date?”

Lynch glanced at the ancient clock above the bar. “Should be…any minute now.”

Each of the girls turned as one and gave their well-dressed “bestie” a collective sideways glance. Blonde spoke for the group.

“He’s coming…here.”

Rachel nodded, avoiding eye contact and draining her cocktail hastily.

“R. Lynch! You’re breaking the rules!”

Lynch spun in her bar stool and stared at the ceiling tiles with feigned exasperation. “Am not.”

A striking girl with long, wavy, raven black hair fixed pleading eyes on Rachel and reached to put a soft, manicured hand on her arm to get Lynch’s attention. “R. Lynch. We. Like. This. Bar. We like that no one else from BC comes here. We like that us girls can be ourselves where no one can find us, and no strange guys hit on us. We like drinking here for next to nothing. You’re breaking rule number one: no boys, and rule number two: don’t dress to impress.”

Rachel shot a look at Raven like she had just been stabbed in the back. “I am not that dressed up,” the Boston College Junior declared.

All the girls swivled on their barstools like a Broadway musical chorus line. Their eyes flitted across the bar and locked on to the only cute boy in the entire establishment: a moderately built bar back sporting a backwards Boston Red Sox cap with a shock of red hair slipping out from underneath it. He was casual to the point of scruffy and shier than a nun at Mardi Gras. He was the girls’ favorite target. Their voices turned to honey while his knees turned to jello.

“Seamus,” Raven and Blonde cooed, “Seamus Conner, come here.”

Seamus looked over his shoulder, a schoolboy being called on in a class he never studied for. He seemed to be taking a second to answer the Sirens’ call. Finally, he stammered, “Yeah?”

“It’s all right,” Rachel said in a reassuring tone. The Irish import flipped a bar towel over his shoulder, thought better of it too late, then grabbed it again and began nervously wiping his hands as he approached.

“Seamus,” Blonde took over, “is Rachel overdressed?”

Seamus looked over his shoulder, then quickly examined the other rough-looking patrons around the bar. He looked at the girls uneasily and responded as if he detected a trick question. “…We don’t really have a dress code here.” His face was doing its best to match his hair.

“When Rachel walked in,” Blonde prodded, “did you notice her?”

“Oh hell yes,” Seamus blurted out, realizing simultaneously that he had indeed said those words and he was indeed staring at the girl in question. These thoughts caused a four-car pile up in his mind, and as the mental conflagration blazed, the young bar back beat a hasty retreat to a phantom emergency that had to be tended to immediately. The rest of the girls turned to Rachel with serene satisfied looks on their faces. Rachel was quietly amused.

“It’s not nice, or fair, to pick on Seamus.”

“Rach,” Blonde said, perfectly plucked eyebrow raised, “we’re picking on you.”

“What’s wrong?”

Rachel jumped with a start, jerked out of her thoughts by Tim McManus’ voice. The handsome, brown-haired, hazel eyed Harvard Junior looked up at the tired girl from his position next to the Warthog and tilted his head in concern. Rachel shook her head, putting on the grey jeep cap that she had been wringing in her hands a few moments before.

“Nothing,” Rachel said with an unconvincing smile, “just zoned out, is all.”

“Must be nice,” McManus said, unconvinced. He tossed up a large white object to the now unencumbered Rachel. “Here, stow that for me, will ya?”

Rachel examined the large, white and red painted plastic octagon. “What is this?”

“It’s a medkit,” Tim explained, pulling himself up into the Warthog next to Lynch, “Cap wants them out and ready to use as soon as we hit the target.”

“That wasn’t a worrying conference at all,” Ron Parsons added as he tossed his Battle Rifle in and hopped aboard behind the pair, “there’s a pretty good chance that the gang could use our captured COMs to listen in on us. Maybe our tech guys’ll be able to block the compromised units, maybe they won’t. In the meantime, recon thinks the windows are boarded up so they won’t shoot out at us, and they don’t think Winter Hill has rocket launchers.”

Three more soldiers entered the vehicle with the kids as the transports activated their engines. Though not deafening, it was definitely a sound that got the students’ adrenaline going. The two Warthogs accelerated into combat turns and bounded back into the obliterated city of Boston. Ron sighed and checked the magazine in his rifle. “This should be fascinating.”

“All units be advised on updated coordinates,” Master Gunnery Sergeant Gus Reynolds said in a clipped tone, “Rendezvous point is now 1167 Commonwealth Ave. The, uh, Black Rose bar in case you need a visual.”

“What?” Rachel asked to no one in particular, bolting upright in her seat. “Why are we going to the Black Rose?”

“Uh,” Tim gave a sideways look at Rachel, “best guess, that’s where they traced the signal?”

“Well what are they going to do when they get there?” Rachel asked, eyes getting wider by the second.

“Calm down.” Tim said, putting his hand on Rachel’s shoulder. “What’s the big deal?”

“They—it—the Black Rose…I used to go there all the time.”

Ron Parsons turned around his seat and fixed a look at Rachel that asked if she was kidding. “You used to drink at Black Rose.”

“My girlfriends and I…it was like our secret place. No one else from Boston College went there.”

Parsons nearly guffawed. “That’s ’cause the Black Rose is a Winter Hill bar. I wouldn’t go in there.”

“They weren’t like that!” Rachel insisted, voice rising testily. “They were always nice to us, all the time.”

“Look,” Ron said, putting his hands up in defense, “don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re a good looking chick and you all tend to travel in packs. If a bunch of hot girls wanted to drink in my clubhouse, I’d make ‘em feel right at home, even if I was a bunch of murderers and drug runners.”

“Take that back!” Rachel yelled, startling Tim and Ron.

“Whoa!” Tim said, putting a hand on Rachel’s good shoulder and calming her down. “What’s with you?”

Lynch shook off Tim’s hand angrily and stared darkly out at the passing apocalyptic neighborhood, refusing to believe that the people who were so kind, sharing, and considerate could be capable of the things she had read in the news. “Just—just leave me alone for minute.”

“Captain,” One of the soldiers said over the COM, “In case we have to block COMs, what’s rules of engagement on arrival?”

“The Winter Hill gang was an organized crime group until they took UNSC Marines hostage. Protocol says they’re Innies now.”

“Innies?” Ron asked.

“Insurrectionists,” Tim explained, turning over his shoulder. “Rebels. Terrorists. Bad guys. You don’t read military thrillers?”

Ron shrugged. “Never enough character development.”

Captain O’Shea came back on the COM. “It’s full assault, weapons free the moment we get there.”

“Wait!” Rachel blurted out, instinctively joining in on the communications channel. “They’re not insurrectionists!”

“The law says otherwise,” O’Shea responded curtly.

“But, by law you’re all deserters,” Lynch said, disbelief creeping into her voice.

“I don’t think I like your tone, miss,” The Captain said coldly. “but if you think those sons of bitches won’t shoot the first thing that walks in the front door, then I’ll be happy to let you take point.”

“Christ, Jack,” Gus said from the lead Warthog, concerned. “Take it easy.”

“No, we’re not ‘taking it easy,’ any more,” Jack growled, glaring out his front windshield as though he were looking at his XO, “Everyone, listen up. I’m sick of playing by the rules and losing time and men every time we do the right thing. I won’t let Ibanez or anyone else die because they tried to help innocent people. If I have Innie supporters on my Warthogs, I want you off now. Switching COM traffic to command transmissions only. Cease chatter.”

The Captain turned over his shoulder in the passenger seat and looked hard at Rachel, who was nearly pouting at this point. “I can understand you might have some kind of rapport with these men, but they are not the people you think they are. I’m sorry. I know it’s hard to accept with everything else that happened today, but it’s the truth.”

Rachel retuned Jack’s look as the rushing wind whistled over their heads and chilled them through their body armor. “I think I need to stay out of this one,” Lynch said loudly, blinking against the wind.

O’Shea nodded, helmet bouncing slightly as the Warthog bumped over a crater. “Fair enough, but there’s an off chance I’ll need you to talk to these people. Wait for our all clear then enter.”

The girls had to hand it to Rachel; she had picked a winner. He walked into the Black Rose in a dressy but understated outfit. His square tie was tied expertly and hung at exactly the right length, the triangle lapels of his gray wool blazer stopped just an inch or two below his chiseled jaw. He looked every inch of the huge Boston College hockey posters hanging around the campus and the city. The senior defenseman looked slightly confused as he took in his surroundings and compared them to his getup, but once he saw Rachel at the bar, he brightened considerably and he put purpose back into his stride.

Rachel knew he had arrived the minute Blonde stopped speaking mid-sentence and stared behind Lynch. The BC Junior smiled out of the corner of her mouth and whispered, “He just came in, didn’t he?”

Blonde was still dumbstruck, “You didn’t tell me you were on a date with—?”

“Yep.”

Lynch’s friends forgot about their rules as he made up the distance between them. Rachel offered her cheek as he took a place at the bar next to her, taking an extra few seconds to shake hands and introduce himself to the rest of the group.

“James Madigan,” the hockey star said, offering a hand that only yesterday had pummeled Boston University in an exhibition game. Blonde did her best to affect disinterest, but her tongue betrayed her.

“I know who you are!” Blonde stammered, instantly realizing what she had done. She occupied herself with her martini as the rest of the girls followed suit, stealing glances with the subtlety of a fifth-grader.

Madigan turned to his well-dressed date with a look of amusement. “When you only told me the address,” he said, eyebrows up and making a show of looking around the faux wood paneling, “I thought it was some new trendy restaurant or something.”

Rachel laughed, and the room seemed to brighten. “James,” she said, patting the muscled arm of the athlete condescendingly, “I don’t know if you checked lately, but we’re college students. The last really good meal I had was back home on fall break, and my parents paid for it. This,” Lynch said, gesturing grandly around the meager furnishing and twirling expertly on her bar stool, “is much more my speed.”

“And it’s hard enough to keep up with these ladies,” a ruddy-faced, balding Irishman with multiple tattoos and the body of a longshoreman interjected, taking position behind the bar with a smile and refilling Rachel’s drink. He offered a large friendly hand to Madigan. “Frank Walsh. Owner; operator. Welcome to the Black Rose, Mr. Madigan.”

James shook hands with Walsh and glanced, surprised, at Rachel. “Thanks, Mr. Walsh.”

“Please! For a certain first round pick for my beloved Boston Bruins, it’s Frank.”

Madigan chuckled appreciatively. “It’s a long season, Frank. I’d be lucky to play for Boston if I’m not pressed into military service.”

Frank popped open a beer and took a generous swig, wiping his mouth with a bar rag and pointing the bottle at James. “Ain’t nothin’ in this world that’s luck. Don’t you worry about them jarheads stealin’ you from my Bruins. You’ll wear the black and gold, sonny,” Walsh slid a shot of Martian whiskey to the burly player with a wink, “don’t you think otherwise.”

The three clinked vessels and took a long drink, enjoying the moment and feeling the warmth of the alcohol course through them. “Now,” Frank said, popping another beer open and nodding at the gorgeous redhead across from him, “what’s it gonna be?”

“Did you eat?” Rachel asked her date, who responded no with a shake of his head. “Excellent!” Lynch said with delight, bringing her palms together as if to start a ceremony. “What do you say we go one for one?”

Both Madigan and Rachel’s friends all looked at the well-dressed girl with disbelief. James composed himself for a second before answering. “Not to be rude,” he said, still trying on the words for size, “but you…want to go drink for drink…with me.”

Rachel nodded enthusiastically, smiling. The BC hockey star shook his head, then shrugged off his blazer and loosened his tie. “All right,” he said in a near-resigned tone, “but I warned you.”

Lynch absent-mindedly tossed her hair over her shoulder and downed her drink, slapping it against the sturdy wood and wiping stray drops with the back of her hand while signaling Frank with the other. “You certainly did,” she replied coyly.

The two Warthogs raced west down the street toward the gleaming, black painted façade of the Black Rose. A third ‘Hog fishtailed into view up ahead and flew along the deserted road to meet up with O’Shea and Reynolds’ vehicles.

“This is Delta,” one of the soldiers announced from the third Warthog, “are captured COMs blocked?”

Captain O’Shea put a hand to his throat. “Captured COMs are blocked. Go ahead, Delta.”

“Delta standing by for orders.”

“Move your team into position at the rear entrance, Delta. Wait for my signal, then breach and clear.”

“Wilco. See you inside.”

Delta’s Warthog then slipped out of sight, skidding expertly into an alley and continuing to the bar’s rear. The rest of the vehicles braked to a hard stop in the middle of the road, relieved to see that recon had been right about the boarded and blocked windows. They left the business end of a M41 mounted chain gun pointed directly at the front entrance.

“Quick thought, Jack,” Gus said as he and his driver jumped out of their transport and scanned the area, “we could ping the hostages’ transponders and get their location inside the bar and leave the heavy lifting to the M41.”

“No good,” O’Shea said as he and the others disembarked and crouched by their Warthog. “We can’t be sure they haven’t packed that place with refugees and I wouldn’t put it past them to use ‘em as human shields. Nope,” Jack sighed quickly, “this one’s on us.”

Gus nodded. “Copy.”

The COM chirped in the leaders’ ears. “Delta, in position.”

Jack put two fingers to his throat. “How’s the alley looking?”

“Clear. Waiting for your go.”

Jack nodded. “Stand by. We’ll give peace one shot.” O’Shea tapped a Private First Class on the shoulder to get his attention. “Open Ibanez’s COM unit for a second,” he instructed, hearing a quick tone in his ear to let me know the channel was opened. The Captain fixed his gaze on the façade of the bar and spoke loud and clear over the COM.

“This is Captain Jack O’Shea to all Winter Hill members holding my Marines. This is your first and last warning. Bring my Marines out, unharmed, and return the refugees to us immediately. If you do so, you will be allowed to leave peacefully. If you do not comply, you will be killed.”

A soft hiss of static followed the declaration. Rachel peeked over the cover of the Warthog with pleading eyes, deathly afraid of what was about to happen. The answering beep of Ibanez’s COM reply made her flinch.

“This is Frank Walsh. We killed your Marines five minutes ago,” the disembodied voice said very matter-of-factly, “you come in here and you’ll get the same.”

Rachel felt the air leave her entire body as she slumped against the side of the troop transport. She was looking through a tunnel, head down and in utter disbelief of what she just heard. The innocent faces of the men who poured her drinks, joked with her and her friends, looked out for her and hailed cabs so she would not have to go outside alone, all those faces were now shattered, marred with the red blood of murder.

For her, it was the final straw, the very last thing she held on to that had not been destroyed. With just that sentence, everything she knew had changed. All that was left were two boys she had only known for hours, and though they were closer than any of them had imagined, Rachel Lynch felt achingly isolated and alone. She looked off into space, sitting on the cold concrete as Gus Reynolds marched past her to lead the other half of the soldiers.

Master Gunnery Sergeant Gus Reynolds’ face was fixed with barely controlled raged as he held up his data pad to the soldiers in front of him. Rachel looked up slowly as Gus got his team’s attention. The imposing ex-Marine stabbed a finger at a pulsing red dot in the middle of a wire frame schematic. “Check your pads quick and memorize that signal’s location, that’s where this Walsh motherfucker’s hiding. Mind your corners, and don’t take chances in there. It’s one in the chest, one in the head, and you drop every single one of those Innie fucks ’cause you’re the best. You get me?”

Tim, Ron, and the rest of the men nodded gravely. Rachel could not find the strength or desire to protest. The life she led only hours ago had finally ended. All that remained was the present with no assurances about the immediate future.

Jack’s voice became low and dark as he opened the COM and pointed two fingers at the front door. “Stack up. Prepare to breach.”

There were no shouts, war cries, or vengeful declarations. The sheer efficient movement of eight men moving silently toward the building was scary enough. They broke off into two teams of four, Ron and Tim were at the rear of each team’s stack. The gunner at the M41 swiveled slightly to the left, fixing his sights on the hinges of the front entrance. He looked down at Rachel for a moment, aware of the shivering girl on the ground for the first time.

“You might want to cover your ears,” the gunner offered. Rachel never heard him; she was numbly crawling on all fours to the corner of the troop Warthog, watching what might very well be the end of every friend she had left.

From her spot, Rachel watched as one of the soldiers took what looked like an aerosol can and sprayed a light gray foam along the hinged side of the large, red, wooden door. The foam hardened into a bulging mold as the soldier jammed what looked like a stainless steel meat thermometer into the substance. The eight black and grey clad warriors pressed themselves hard against the wall as the COM chirped open.

“All teams, breach.”

The two gray molds exploded outwards with surprising force, making Rachel flinch and put more weight on her bad shoulder than she wanted to. She cringed with the shock of pain and fought to keep her eyes focused as the two teams moved in swiftly, staccato flashes of their weapons creating a strobe light effect and giving Lynch instantaneous snapshots of what little she could see of the interior. Cracks and bursts of weapons firing could be heard, accompanied in rhythm with muffled shouted instructions.

Rachel watched breathlessly, heart rate skyrocketing as questions flew through her brain. It was maddening to have to wait for the all clear; the redheaded Boston College student did not even know if the all clear was ever going to be called. Rachel rose up from her position and caught sight of a first aid kit stashed away in the back of the troop ‘Hog and stared at it for a moment, paralyzed with instructions to stay put and the voice in her head screaming for her to get into that building.

“Fuck it,” she said aloud, grabbing the bag and running as fast as she could into the firefight. The Warthog gunner’s surprised exclamation did nothing to keep her there. Her legs churned cement and she gripped the heavy pistol in her good arm as the gaping black hole of the Black Rose bar became ever larger. She squeezed the grip in her moistening palm and swung her arm to the left, recalling vaguely some trivia that right handed enemies would hide to the left side of a door to get the drop on intruders. She flew across the threshold and left the last of Boston’s sunlight behind as the darkness engulfed her.

“Wha’s yer trick?“

Rachel looked bemused at Madigan, who was now completely laying his face and chest on the surface of the bar, a sizeable pyramid of shot glasses, highball glasses, and beer mugs next to him. “What do you mean?” Rachel asked with a smile, her speech a little fuzzy but nowhere near as bad as the intoxicated hockey player’s. James pointed unsteadily at Lynch, seeing three of her and taking a guess at which one was talking.

“You…must haf a supah power.”

“Yep,” Rachel said, “I do. Do you want to know what it is?”

Madigan, head resting on the bar like a pillow, nodded slowly.

“I have super hearing,” she leaned over and whispered into James’ ear. “Do you know what my super hearing heard last week in the trainer’s room?”

Madigan only gurgled; an indication, Lynch assumed, to continue. She stroked the hockey stud’s thick brown hair reassuringly, her words dripping with honey.

“I heard you talking to your boys about how you could ask me out and fuck me on the same day. I believe the phrase you used was ‘no contest.’”

Lynch looked cheerily over her shoulder at her friends, who, just hearing this news for the first time, looked fully prepared to rip the jock apart. Rachel nodded calmly at her best friends and teammates, staying their hands. Madigan, deep in a haze of alcohol, did not seem to appreciate the point.

“Is ’cause…’cause yer hawt.”

“I know, I know,” Lynch said as she went back to her drink, still talking in a sickly sweet voice. She stared straight ahead, only occasionally looking over at James. “I clean up well, I like to hang out, and I’m a pretty great lay. That’s something you’ll never get to experience with me, and if you ask me out again, I’ll tell all your buddies about the time a hundred twenty pound girl drank you under the table, you got me, stud?”

James nodded as best he could, though it was more like dragging his chin toward his chest. Rachel smiled sweetly and reached inside her bag.

“Great! And just so you don’t forget,” Lynch took out a large black permanent marker and took off the cap with flair, “I’m going to write down a few reminders. On your face.”

For the next five minutes Rachel and the girls took turns signing the unconscious hockey player’s face with their names, slogans, and all shapes and sizes of male genitalia. Once they were done, Blonde stumbled for a half-step.

“Whoa,” she said, holding on to the bar for a second, “Rach, how are you still standing? I’ve never seen you do that.”

Lynch shrugged and waved at Frank, who jogged over from watching the Red Sox playoff game on the holo panel, bottle of vodka in hand. “What’ll it be?” Walsh asked with a half grin.

“We’re gonna kill the bottle,” Rachel replied with a mischevious look, taking the bottle in hand and upending it, taking a long pull. Her friends stared on, bug eyed, until one of them grabbed it and took a sip. They put the gleaming glass vessel down and wagged their finger at the gorgeous mastermind.

“There’s no vodka in this,” Blonde said, thoroughly impressed. “You planned this.”

“Yep,” Lynch said confidently. “You know me; I like to win.”

Frank poked Madigan and cleared his throat. “So what do I do with this piece of work?” He asked, tilting his head toward the back of the bar. The Black Rose was made up of the horseshoe shaped bar, assorted raised circular tables, and a pool table dangerously close to an old basketball arcade game in the back right corner. On the right side of the bar were the bathrooms, the left side had a door marked, “kitchen.” Frank Walsh pointed a meaty thumb backward at the kitchen door. “I got a private space we can stash ‘im in,” he winked theatrically at the girls.

The girls laughed. “Is that where you keep the bodies, Frank?” Rachel asked, egging him on.

“Under lock and key,” Walsh said, making a show of sizing up the BC defenseman, “he won’t bother you any more.”

Rachel patted Frank’s hand and smiled at him as she turned around toward the front door. “You’re sweet, Frank, but I think we’ll throw him in a cab. Wouldn’t be very ladylike to kill him, would it?”

Frank nodded amicably. “Reckon not.”

Rachel never even considered the slickness of the Black Rose’s floor, so she was surprised when she slipped on the blood pooling by the front entrance. Pure luck and a rush to turn an exam paper in was the reason the Boston Collegian was wearing sneakers and not heels, but the slippery surface of the hardwood and the energy of Lynch’s entrance would have made a mockery of any footwear. Luckily, the fall caused a soldier’s knee-jerk reaction shot at the girl to miss high and wide.

“Hold fire!” Jack O’Shea roared, looking like he was about to punch the nervous ex-Marine. His attention turned to the sprawled out girl and he marched across the space to give the intruder a begrudging hand up. “Rachel! You want to get yourself killed?”

This is blood, Rachel thought, frantically wiping her hands on the white med kit. I’m in the Black Rose and I just fell in blood. Lynch turned around and let her eyes adjust to the darkness. She immediately wished she had not run into the fray.

The fight was over. Jack O’Shea and his men had wiped out the Winter Hill gang. In front of, behind, and draped over the bar were the bodies of Boston’s last major criminal element; stolen and smuggled UNSC weapons lay by their limp hands and were being collected by various soldiers. Rachel saw several men she recognized and one or two she might have known had their faces been intact. Lynch was suddenly very afraid of the soldiers who had saved her life several times today.

“Rach?”

The redhaired college student looked up from the floor and into the face of Tim McManus, who looked just as spooked as she did. Rachel did not even think, she only felt so relieved to see one person she knew who was alive that she jumped at the Harvard Junior and smothered him in a vice grip of a hug. A perplexed Tim patted the attractive survivor on the back and looked at Ron Parsons with a look of vague panic. Parsons only shrugged and resumed stripping a gang member’s pistol of ammunition. Everyone stopped what they were doing when the Captain approached.

“Rachel,” O’Shea said, sliding a fresh magazine into his customized Battle Rifle and pulling down his balaclava, “I need your help for a second.”

Lynch put a stray strand of hair behind her ear, realized she had marked herself with blood in the process, then decided to deal with it later so she could answer the Captain who had killed every single patron in her favorite bar. “Yeah,” she said, swallowing hard, “what do you need?”

“We took a prisoner in the kitchen.”

Gus Reynolds looked up from stripping a criminal’s assault rifle, “Lucky fucking coward. Bastard was wearing Ibanez’s body armor.”

O’Shea silenced his XO with a raised hand, then returned his attention to Rachel, gesturing toward the kitchen door. “Winter Hill’s notorious for concealing their leadership. This guy wouldn’t be wearing armor if he wasn’t important, but he didn’t have Ibanez’s COM on him. I need you to identify him and see if you can get anything out of him.”

“I’m not gonna torture him!” Lynch blurted out, panicked. Jack immediately put his strong hands on her shoulders.

“That’s not what I’m asking you to do,” he said, his voice level and incredibly calm for someone who had just killed several humans in the middle of the invasion of Earth. “We just want to know his name and maybe he’ll talk to you instead of us.”

Rachel nodded, then looked back at Tim and Ron. O’Shea anticipated her question.

“No, they can’t come with you. I need it to be as few people as possible.”

“O—OK,” Lynch replied, following behind Jack as they disappeared behind the swinging door misted with blood. Everyone else was left to his own devices.

Ron Parsons motioned for Tim to follow him to the horseshoe shaped bar at the back of the room. Tim, eyes still on the kitchen door and wondering what was happening in there, slowly followed behind. Ron leaned against the bar and, struck by inspiration, reached behind the bar and grabbed two bottles of beer that were still somewhat cold. He passed one to a grateful Tim McManus and the two new soldiers took a sip in silence.

“You shoot any of ‘em?” Ron asked.

“Nope,” Tim said, trying not to look around the bar, “you?”

“Nope. Kinda glad I didn’t.”

“Me too.”

“Did any of you—?”

“One Delta wounded, one of Gus’ got hit, too.” Jack answered, never breaking stride as they entered the kitchen. “The one bit of luck we’ve had all day.”

The stainless steel kitchen area was a wreck. Pots, pans, and all sorts of utensils were tossed around, and pools of blood were collecting by drains, fed by splatters and mists of red on the clean white walls. As they turned the corner of one serving station, Rachel felt herself go rigid and she took a step back. She had been anticipating and preparing herself for this moment, but now that she was here, it was completely different. There, on his knees, wearing torso armor with a bullet deflection in the center of his chest, was Frank Walsh. As shaken as Rachel was, Frank was worse.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Frank demanded, his ruddy face almost bright crimson. This was not the same man that Rachel had conspired with not twenty-four hours ago. She hardly recognized him. Lynch felt O’Shea looking at her, and she turned to face him.

“You know him?” O’Shea asked. Rachel nodded, and Frank fought against his restraints.

“Don’t tell him anything! You don’t know who he is!” Walsh began shouting. “You don’t know what he and these fascist bastards are going to do to you! You owe me, Rachel Lynch! You owe me!“

For half a second, Rachel actually wondered whom to trust. Then, just as quickly as doubt entered her mind, she remembered that this man in front of her had killed five soldiers who were putting their lives in jeopardy so she and innocent refugees might live. Frank read the conflict playing across her features and played his last card.

“You tell him who I am,” the burly bar owner growled, “and I’ll kill you. I promise you that.”

Rachel took off her jeep cap and looked Frank in the face. It was time to show her friends that she was not afraid to put her life on the line, either. “His name is Frank Walsh. He owns this bar, and yesterday he mentioned something about having a room in here where he keeps bodies.”

Frank’s head quivered with rage. Rachel wondered if it would actually explode. Instead, the Winter Hill gang leader let out an animal cry of rage and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Kill them! You hear me? Kill all the refugees and the Marines! Do it! Do it now!”

The Captain did not waste a second. As soon as Walsh started to open his mouth, Jack marched over to the leader, grabbed him by the collar of Ibanez’s armor and began dragging him across the kitchen back to the bar.

Tim and Ron had moved on to their second beer as ex-Marines continued to search bodies and pilfer booze from behind the bar. They loaded material into sacks, packs, whatever they could stash provisions and supplies in. The two friends leaned against the bar, feeling weary and drained. Ron chuckled to himself.

“She hugged you.”

“What?”

“She hugged you. She was happy to see you.”

Tim took a longer pull from the beer. “I guess.”

“Cut the shit, Timmy. You got feelings for her. She’s hot and you came back for her when she was trapped in a burning building. Don’t have to be a professor to figure this one out.”

“Harvard seems like a year ago.”

“Yeah.” Ron finished the last of his beer and tossed it over his shoulder, listening to it smash on the floor behind him. “She likes you too, dude. Hold on to that one. She may be able to hold her own, but females are gonna be in short supply real soon. Protectin’ people now’s a matter of life and death.”

Before Tim could reply, the door to the kitchen slapped open and Jack O’Shea tossed Frank Walsh into the middle of the room. Gus Reynolds and the rest of the soldiers in the bar looked at their CO for instructions.

“This is Frank Walsh,” Jack said with venom. “Strip the armor, keep him restrained on his knees, but do not—do not—shoot him. Our boys might still be alive.”

“There’s no time,” Jack said as he gripped a piece of rope attached to the trap door. “Get ready to flash and clear.”

A member of Delta instinctively readied a grey cylindrical grenade in his hands, prepared to throw on the go order. In one smooth motion, Jack jerked the trap door open and the other man tossed the flash grenade inside. O’Shea immediately shut the door tight as the loud bang clapped against the planks and a flash of light escaped through two of the looser slats.

With no hesitation, Delta nearly jumped into the abyss, tactical lights switched on and yelling in their loudest, most intimidating voices for everyone to get down on the floor. It was over in seconds, and Rachel did not hear the sound of any gunfire whatsoever. She strained her ears to hear anything, having no idea how far down the room could be and unable to see anything underneath the kitchen. Suddenly, Jack’s voice echoed from what sounded like forever away.

“Rachel! We’ve got a prisoner! I need you down here now!”

Lynch nearly slipped on the moldy wooden stairs as she scrambled down to meet up with Captain O’Shea and the men. The vague odor of mildew invaded her nostrils and she sneezed instinctively, losing her tenuous grip on the ladder and falling the remaining distance to a hard packed earthen floor. She got up as soon as she could, shocked that such a large earthen cave could exist in this day and age in this city.

The ceiling was nearly ten feet tall, over thirty feet long and twenty feet wide. The walls were bare brick and the ceiling was some kind of wood, Rachel guessed pine. From what little should could see, a few wooden crates dotted the space, but with Delta’s flashlights moving rapidly across the wide space, Rachel could not get her bearings and felt very disoriented. The darkness was truly frightening, an inky void that covered Rachel from head to toe.

She could not shake the feeling of heat coming from nearby and took several hesitant steps forward. As one of Delta’s weapons moved with Rachel’s movement, it swept across the faces of the missing refugees, very much alive but trapped behind the bars of what looked like a rudimentary holding cell.

Lynch let out a shrieking yelp and fell backwards, tripping over something and landing hard against the packed earth. Immediately, four lights focused on her and she could hear O’Shea’s voice barely filling the acoustically dead space.

“Dammit,” the Captain grumbled, “that’s Alper.”

Rachel scrambled to her feet and stumbled backwards to the far wall. “Dr. Alper’s—she’s dead?“

“That’s frustrating,” Jack said, backlit from his comrade’s weapons. He leaned down and checked her vitals, sighing heavily. The leader of the survivors turned and walked away from Rachel, racking the slide of his suppressed M6C. “Tell me who this is before I kill him.”

As the beam of O’Shea’s tactical flashlight settled, Rachel was shocked to see the light fall across the terrified face of Seamus Connor.

“Wait!” Rachel cried out. “Wait! He’s not one of them!”

Jack did not even bother to look over his shoulder. “We found him with guns, and he hasn’t told me where to find my Marines, Rachel. This is how it’s going to go.”

Seamus’s face contorted in confusion as he squinted against the light. “Rachel?” Connor stammered. “Rachel Lynch?”

“Seamus!” Rachel shouted, running to his side and squinting at Jack with pleading eyes. “Captain, whatever this looks like, Seamus wouldn’t hurt anyone. You’ve got to believe me.”

Jack was unconvinced. “Where are my Marines, Seamus?”

Connor was a nervous wreck, his voice breaking and on the brink of tears. “I’ve been trying to tell ya! They’ve put ‘em inside the wall with me brothers!”

“Where?” O’Shea demanded. Connor pointed a shaking finger over his shoulder, where a stack of crates stood, blocking the wall.

“F—Frank said if I didn’t do what I had to when the time came, he’d blow up my brothers and the soldiers.”

Jack and two soldiers immediately shoved the crates aside, revealing a large metal door in the middle of the brick wall. As Jack tapped on it, everyone in the secret basement heard a sound that made their hearts leap with joy.

“Cap?” Harold Ibanez called out, his voice muffled behind the heavy metal. “Anyone?”

An audible release of tension could be heard and the sound of hands clapping on shoulders sounded against the hastily constructed walls. O’Shea shut his eyes with a quick prayer of thanks. “Damn good to hear your voice, Ibanez.”

“You too, sir.”

O’Shea motioned for a Delta soldier to help him with the door. “We’re going to get you out of here.”

“Wait!” Ibanez shouted. “The door’s rigged. We’ve got three kids in here; brothers, last name’s Connor! They say they’ve got a guy on the outside!”

O’Shea looked behind him at the lanky figure of Seamus Connor. The boy looked two parts relieved and three parts petrified. Rachel put her arm around the former bar back and nodded at the Captain, vouching for the kid.

“It’s an amateur device, Cap!” Ibanez instructed him. “Any one of us could defuse it from outside.”

Two minutes later the heavy door swung open and both soldiers and brothers had a tearful, joyous reunion. Ibanez and the Captain shared an embrace as Seamus and his three younger brothers joined in a mass of tears and smiles. Despite all this, Rachel did not feel like she could keep it together. The extremes of emotions, the certainty that someone she had trusted had killed those who tried to save her and then threatened to kill her, the sum of the parts was just too much for the young college co-ed to process. The man was willing to let children die so he might get out alive. She turned in a circle in the dark and finally found Seamus.

“Why?” Lynch asked, tears forming in her eyes, “why did he do this?”

“Frank Walsh is not the person you think he is,” Seamus said, anger starting to glow in his eyes. “He doesn’t operate with reason. He kills indiscriminately. He could have stopped this whenever he wanted, but the only thing the man wants is death.”

Rachel shook her head, unable to come to grips with this. All her mind could do after so much strain was lock on to the fact that she had an outlet for the pain, loss, and fear she had felt today. She had a target, and that target was sitting right above her, going nowhere until Captain O’Shea said different. Everyone’s doing something about their problems, Rachel thought, now I can, too.

Without so much as a warning, Rachel marched to the kitchen ladder and began climbing it with rage-fueled energy. Jack caught it just in time.

“Free those refugees and get me solutions for getting them to South Station!” Jack shouted over his shoulder as he ran after Rachel. “Ibanez, you need to come with me right now!”

The trip up the ladder and through the kitchen took Rachel less than a minute. She nearly took the kitchen door off its hinges as she burst through it. It took her two seconds to find Frank Walsh on his knees in the middle of the floor, where the soldiers had him at gunpoint. They had just removed Ibanez’s armor and were about to cuff his wrists as she marched across the space with her fists balled and chest heaving with anger. Tim and Ron barely had time to react to Lynch’s sudden entrance before she was on top of Walsh.

“Why?” Rachel screamed, putting her weight behind a furious punch that connected brutally with the side of the unarmed prisoner’s face.

“You could have stopped this whenever you wanted! You stupid! Fucking! Liar!” The surprisingly strong girl had to be pulled off the man by Ron and Tim as the Winter Hill gang leader laid on his back, breathing heavy, blood running down his nose, forehead, and ear.

“Grow up,” the gangster muttered, glaring at the Boston College co-ed. “This ain’t a world to live in.” His eyes now flew around the room, staring at the soldiers with absolute certainty. “You think you’re saving yourselves? You’re never getting out of this city! You’re going to die here! For nothing!” In his vindictive declaration, he never saw Rachel wrestle her way out of the kids’ grip and he certainly never saw the raised leg coming at him at full speed.

“Shut up!” Rachel yelled at the top of her lungs, driving a leg full of anger into the criminal’s chest. All of the soldiers could hear the wet crack of the man’s ribs breaking as he tumbled into one of the ex-Marines. In the confusion, the soldier fumbled with his M6C side arm, and the last member of Boston’s last gang took his chance with zeal, snatching the weapon and leveling it at the completely exposed girl’s exhausted body.

Rachel had never had a gun pointed at her before. Even though she had witnessed unimaginable carnage first hand all day, seeing the bleeding, broken, crazed criminal point that gun was the scariest thing Lynch had ever seen. Her muscles locked up and she instinctively shut her eyes tight.

“No!” Tim shouted reflexively, bringing his modified Battle Rifle up and squeezing off a three round burst in no direction in particular. Luckily, he had been right next to Lynch and was facing the action as the pistol came up. Two of the three rounds smacked into the gangster’s exposed chest and pushed the pistol to the leader’s right. McManus’ lucky shot was immediately followed by a barrage of fire from the soldiers, tearing into the criminal with dozens of rounds and filling the room with a echoing blast of sound that faded away just as O’Shea and Ibanez reached the scene. Jack put a hand to the side of his head in disbelief.

Tim glared at Walsh’s body, enraged at the coward’s final act. Before he or anyone else could say anything further, McManus’s eyes flitted down to the M6C lying in the limp hand of Frank Walsh and noticed a very faint trail of smoke wafting lazily from the barrel. Confused and afraid, Tim jerked his head toward Rachel and visually scanned her body armor in a panic. Lynch returned his look with equal confusion until she looked past Tim, eyes opening wide in shock. The color left Tim’s face as he heard the unusually shaky voice behind him.

“Uh…guys…?” Ron Parsons asked hesitantly, withdrawing his hand from the right side of his chest and revealing his gloved palm glistening red with fresh blood. As the group rushed toward the blonde cafeteria worker, Ron’s legs went slack and he collapsed on his side, still looking at his hand in bewilderment, hitting the dirty floor with a heavy thud.

Chapter 13: “The Pride of Portland”

This is the outfit I wish I could on the first day of school.
Unfortunately I have a uniform…
It is also the first Set in my Collection on Polyvore called Blurrystars Personalized.

First Day School Wish by blurrystars featuring Loeffler Randall shoes

I hope you like it. It’s the 2nd thing I’ve made on Polyvore and the first I’ve shown you. I’m a little nervous. I could do better but I love it!
And I’d love this outfit! (okay so realistically I’d wear Chucks with this outfit instead of the heels but they look amazing!)

xoxo

I started playing around with flowers the other day.  I was loving the shadow they cast on the wall.  I could control the afternoon light with the drapes and the shape of the shadow with a twist of the vase.  My favorite is of the shadow alone.  It seems to have its own presence even though it’s simply a silhouette.

King Diamond es una banda de Black Metal liderada por King Diamond voz de las bandas Black Rose y  Mercyful Fate (la cual ha sido influencia y fuente de inspiración para grupos como Metallica).Tiene como caracteristica que cada album publicado por King Diamond son conceptuales (todo el disco habla sobre un mimo tema-historia),durante los años 80 y 90 publico grandísimos albumes tales como: Abigail,”Them”,Conspiracy o The Eye.

La característica voz de King con cambios en la entonación, su característico y estrafalario maquillaje, con ciertos tintes satánicos, los textos y los efectos especiales en sus discos lo hacen único en el género. Él ha declarado muchas veces que su voz “se debe a que gracias a un pacto con el Diablo, posee el don de las Mil Voces“.

Siempre se ha rodeado de grandes músicos como su escudero tras las 6 cuerdas Andy LaRoque, también Hal Patino, Mikkey Dee (Mötorhead), Roberto Falcao, Pete Blakk o Michael Moon.

K – lash your Rass Klart Nek Off!

We just caught this video from Harry Love & DJ MK’s “Hip Hop Kitchen” show on ustream…. Check out the link here:

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1739931/highlight/7378

Klashnekoff is always entertaining and always speaks from the heart, listen to the interview & learn. We’re glad to hear that he is returning to the game with a new project – Return To The Sagas, as he was one of our favourite MC’s during our time on Itch FM & we were lucky enough to meet him a few times when they passed through Mr Dex’s show & also performed at a few of the same shows too!

Check out on of our favourites from back in the day, the CLASSIC black rose here:

The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF) was formed in 1997 by a small group led by Susan Wright under the auspices of the New York SM Activists. The goal was to fight for sexual freedom and privacy rights for all adults who engage in safe, sane and consensual behavior.

The first five organizations who joined reflected our desire to be a nationwide organization: the National Leather Association— International, Gay Male S/M Activists, The Eulenspiegel Society, Black Rose and Society of Janus. Today, NCSF has 62 Coalition Partners who elect the board that runs NCSF, and establish our goals at the annual Coalition Partner meeting. Coalition Partners are groups and businesses who serve BDSM, swing and polyamory practitioners and also support NCSF by holding an annual fundraiser. NCSF also has 70 Supporting Members – groups, businesses and individuals that publicly support NCSF.

Over the years, NCSF has formed alliances with other organizations that defend sexual freedom rights: the Free Speech

Coalition, the ACLU, American Association of Sex Educators Councilors and Therapists (AASECT), Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and the Gay and Lesbian Activist Alliance, among others.

NCSF has 6 active programs and projects currently changing the world for kinky people:

1. Media Outreach

2. Incident Response

3. Kink Aware Professionals

4. DSM Project

5. Education Outreach Project

6. BDSM Survey

1. Media Outreach

As an advocacy organization, one of NCSF’s strategies has been to educate the media about issues facing the SM‐Leather‐Fetish, swing and polyamory communities. You can help by signing up for NCSF’s media updates list media@ncsfreedom.org. This weekly email will alert you to stories about alternative sexual expression in the news, and will give you contact information so that you can respond to an editor to let them know if you liked or disliked an article and why. We also give you tips on how to write a letter. Even if your letter is not printed, these letters influence how editorial decisions are made in the future.

NCSF’s Media Outreach Program has developed a package of materials that provide information about NCSF and the communities we represent. This program provides education and training to groups and individuals on how to effectively interact with the media. This includes training for spokespeople and website review to remove inflammatory language.

The latest big media incident was Winter Wickedness, when NCSF staff intervened with both the media and InterContinental Hotels to keep the corporate office from canceling the event’s contract, in part by organizing a successful call‐in campaign.

The religious extremist group, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, along with a local religious radio station in the Columbus, Ohio, area ran a smear campaign against this pansexual BDSM event. Peter LaBarbara of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality called the event “a freakish sadomasochistic perversion‐fest” and urges people to call the hotel’s corporate headquarters to pressure them into canceling “for the sake of decency and public health.” (www.aftah.org) Bob Burney, a religious extremist Talk Radio DJ, devoted an entire segment of his show slamming Winter Wickedness and attempting to link the event with non‐consensual and criminal activities. He urged his listeners to call and mount a campaign against the hotel.

(Tuesday, Part 3 starting at 10 min 42sec: http://www.home.wrfd.com/WRFDInsiderPage.htm)

Winter Wickedness was very grateful for NCSF’s help, stating: Although what it is that we do (WIITWD) is legal, safe, sane and consensual and had been given the go ahead by the local and state authorities; the radical right’s sensationalism, grassroots efforts and pointed innuendos implying inappropriate behavior, can create enough fear to jeopardize a venue. The NCSF has proven to us, beyond any doubt, that they are willing and able to

fight back the bias and discriminatory efforts against us. The NCSF is a valuable asset to the Kink, Leather, GLBT and Alt Sex lifestyles. Adventures In Sexuality (AIS) is proud to be an NCSF Coalition Partner and will continue to bring the NCSF to all our events.

Also, Folsom Street Fair 2007‐8 (NCSF’s Susan Wright continues to be the Media Spokesperson) Demetri Moshoyannis, Executive Director of Folsom Street Events says: “For over a year now, Folsom Street Events has been under attack by anti‐gay and religious right groups from across the country. The attacks have been relentless. They have threatened our major sponsorships, picketed our events, called upon public officials to denounce us, and rallied their troops against our community. As a small organization with only two staff members, we do not have the capacity to stand up and respond to these continuing assaults.”

“We contacted the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom to access the Incident Response program. Within hours, we spoke with a highly trained and knowledgeable media and PR consultant for support. In addition to her moral support, we received a meticulous training for our Board of Directors and staff, preparing us to better manage these attacks. Also, the program consultant was able to field all media inquiries ‐ and serve as a positive voice for our community ‐ during our events, so that we could focus on our production duties. We can’t thank NCSF enough for their good work and for being there when we needed them.”

2. Incident Response

In 2008, the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF) again took the lead in defending the rights of individuals and groups in the SM‐leather‐fetish, swing and polyamory communities. NCSF’s coalition of over 40 educational and social groups is committed to creating a political, legal, and social environment in the United States that advances equal rights of consenting adults who practice forms of alternative sexual expression.

NCSF’s Incident Response team is directed by Director Leigha Fleming. In total, over 500 individuals, groups, attorneys,prosecutors, and businesses contacted NCSF for help in 2008. Each incident sometimes required only one or two phone calls, but some evolved into much larger projects. NCSF received 489 distinct inquiries/requests for assistance. 317 required more than one contact/response to resolve, often requiring multiple contacts.

It is difficult to categorize many incident requests as clearly falling into one camp or another. Many overlap in categories. For example, many of our custody/divorce related issues involve at least 2 of our core constituent groups (i.e. SM/leather/fetish and poly for example). In trying to do a statistical breakdown of the requests, we placed it in the category it most clearly matched.

11% were requests regarding SM/abuse/domestic violence issues

27% were regarding criminal complaint issues

4% were regarding employment discrimination

31.5% were regarding child custody/divorce issues

15.5% were related to SM/leather/fetish group issues

1% were classed as non‐employment discrimination

5% were related to swing community issues

2.5% were regarding online obscenity issues

2.5% were classed as “other”

Of the inquires, 85.5% were driven by SM/leather/fetish issues, 9% by swing, 5% by poly, 0.5% by other. 2008 saw an increased number of requests around criminal and domestic violence or SM/abuse related issues. NCSF worked with more than 27 attorneys representing defendants in criminal cases. In addition, we worked with more than 11 district attorneys and prosecutors related to SM issues. The vast majority of these criminal cases revolved around domestic abuse or consensual sex/play issues. There is a clear need for education within our own communities about the role and limits of consent and for education to police authorities about the differences between SM and abuse. Employment related discrimination is increasing as well.

The implementation of KAP under NCSF’s administration resulted in fewer requests for referrals because we were able to refer the request to our site. As we improve the KAP administration, and resource, the number of requests for referrals that need to be handled by a person will drop since we’ll be able to refer people to the KAP database. The new administration tools for KAP in our website overhaul will also make the use of this tool much more efficient for both user and professional.

We continue to receive a number of requests for assistance from groups, businesses, and other support organizations who want information about how to operate legally, do law enforcement outreach, file for non‐profit status, deal with the media or the press, do hotel/event outreach, or do research around zoning or other legal issues.

We also continue to receive requests for assistance involving parents who were engaged in child custody and divorce cases. Parents continue to experience difficulties gaining child custody due to their interest in SM, swing or poly activities. NCSF worked with a number of attorneys representing parents accused of being unfit because of their alternative lifestyle interests. In many cases, because of information we were able to provide, the courts decided that alternative sexual expression alone was not cause to impugn a parent’s ability to be a good parent.

2009 incident response statistics are currently being compiled. As of the end of May 2009, more than 114 distinct requests for assistance have been processed.

NCSF is here to help you ‐‐ the SM, swing and polyamory communities. If you have a problem with discrimination, persecution, or harassment because of your sexual expression, please call NCSF for assistance. You can submit a request for assistance online or find a Kink Aware Professional (KAP) on our website as well at www.ncsfreedom.org. Emergency contact information is available by calling our office at 410.539.4824, 24 hours per day.

3. Kink Aware Professionals List

One of our big tools is the Kink Aware Professionals list, a service offered by NCSF dedicated to providing the community with referrals to psychotherapeutic, medical, and legal professionals who are knowledgeable about and sensitive to diverse expressions of sexuality. This saves kinky people time and money so they don’t have to educate about BDSM and poly while dealing with their problems. Hundreds of people use the KAP list to find a qualified professional. NCSF is actively recruiting more professionals for this list.

4. DSM Project

The Diagnostic and Statistic Manual (DSM) is the definitive resource on the Diagnostic Criteria for all mental disorders. Statements currently within the DSM Paraphilias criteria are contradicted by scientific evidence, therefore NCSF must conclude that the interpretation of the Paraphilias criteria has been politically – not scientifically – based. This politically motivated interpretation subjects BDSM practitioners, fetishists and cross‐dressers to bias, discrimination and social sanctions without any scientific basis. We call on the American Psychiatric Association to remove or drastically restructure the Paraphilias section in the DSM.

The DSM‐IV‐TR definition of a mental disorder is that it is “…a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual and that is associated with present distress (e.g., a painful symptom) or disability (i.e., impairment in one or more important areas of functioning) or with a significantly increased risk of suffering, death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom… Neither deviant behavior (e.g. political, religious, or sexual) nor conflicts that are primarily between the individual and society are mental disorders…” (p. xxxi)

Yet the Paraphilias section categorizes distress and dysfunction according to certain sexual behaviors, not psychological syndromes or patterns. Behavior itself is not evidence of psychopathology; compulsive hand washing may be a symptom of obsessive‐compulsive disorder, but it is not a hand‐washing disorder.

A distinction must be made between the cause and the effect. There is no data to support the Paraphilias as the cause of the distress and dysfunction in individuals. In addition, discrimination and societal pressure cause significant distress for a great number of people, in which the societal stigma is the cause rather than the sexual behavior itself.

There are no clear guidelines in the DSM that distinguish a Paraphilia from “healthy” sexuality. Can paraphiliacs be distinguished from those with “healthy” sexuality, except by differences in their sexual behavior? If yes, how? Can someone prefer those exact same behaviors without meeting the diagnostic criteria? Yes, according to the DSM itself (p. 568). So why not just define the abnormal preference instead of the behavior? Diagnostic criteria that pathologize everyone and do not distinguish pathology from normal variants are useless as diagnostic tools.

To find out more, read the NCSF & The Foundation for NCSF’s “White Paper on the DSM Revision”

http://ncsfreedom.org/index.php?option=com_keyword&id=305

Sign the “DSM Revision Petition” http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/DSMrevisionpetition

(you can make your signature anonymous on this secure petition site so it doesn’t appear on the Internet)

To get updates on the progress of the DSM Revision Project you can visit the DSM Revision Blogspot.

http://dsmrevision.blogspot.com

5. Education Outreach Project

Early in 2000, NCSF launched its Education Outreach Program (EOP). This program is designed to educate law enforcement officials about our communities, and educate members of our community regarding the risks of selective enforcement and how to minimize the risk of becoming a target. NCSF has published a number of pieces of literature for this program and has assembled and trained a team of individuals from across the country to deliver the educational presentations developed by the NCSF‐EOP. New presentations are always being developed by the EOP team. There are currently 10 presentations offered now:

SM Groups & Law Enforcement: Group Issues

It is important that SM‐Leather‐Fetish groups understand the relationship between the SM community and law enforcement authorities, as well as the numerous legalities that can affect group functions. Once this is accomplished, groups can dispel myths, educate members, and constructively interact with law enforcement as the need arises. This presentation will focus on three aspects: (1) interacting with local law enforcement, (2) avoiding legal trouble, and (3) group considerations.

The Alleged Domestic Violence Call

It is important for SM‐Leather‐Fetish practitioners to understand law enforcement and the numerous legal issues that can affect us ‐ specifically the response to an alleged domestic violence call. Once this is accomplished, you can constructively interact with law enforcement officers if the need arises. This presentation will focus on two aspects: (1)constructively dealing with officers, and (2) avoiding legal trouble. This workshop does not deal with the “cycle of abuse” or actual domestic violence; instead it is about consensual SM being misinterpreted as domestic violence by law enforcement.

Zoning for SM & Swing Groups and Businesses

Zoning and permit issues are commonly used by local governments to attack the businesses or parties of SM and swing groups. It is much more difficult for police, prosecutors and courts to prosecute crimes” such as indecent exposure, lewd conduct, etc. Therefore zoning and permit violations are used to either move or shut down SM or swing activities because these administrative issues appear to be unambiguous and non‐discriminatory. It is important for our communities to have an understanding of these administrative issues in order to safely organize and maintain SM, fetish, and swing events. Zoning and permits vary greatly depending on jurisdiction, so this discussion identifies and addresses the common issues in an overview fashion and suggests how to address the particulars.

Approaching Your Local Authorities

The purpose of this presentation is to help groups educate law enforcement, prosecutors, and other authorities about SMLeather‐Fetish or swing practices. NCSF’s goal in presenting this material is to encourage local groups to develop a positive relationship with their local authorities. The content and delivery method of the outreach presentation are designed on a caseby‐case basis. We suggest that local groups work together when presenting this information to officials.

Swing Groups & Law Enforcement: Group Issues

It is important for swing groups and businesses to have an understanding of the relationship between the swing community and law enforcement, as well as the numerous legalities that can effect group functions. Once this is accomplished, your group can dispel myths, educate members, and constructively interact with law enforcement as the need arises. This presentation will focus on three aspects: (1) interacting with local law enforcement, (2) avoiding legal trouble, and (3) group considerations.

Life & Death Issues for the Alternative Community

This presentation assists those who practice alternative sexual expression in understanding more about the legal issues involving their relationships. People who are involved in dedicated relationships outside of the traditional “heterosexual marriage‐ with‐children” often acquire property and incur liabilities together. Yet many fail to realize that these relationships will eventually end; either from separation, or as a result of death or disability. This presentation addresses some of the issues and problems that might be encountered, and gives guidance on how to prepare for them.

Traveling With Toys

While there have always been security issues involved in travel, the current political climate, as well as new legislation, has changed the procedures used to achieve security, as well as changing the allowable items to be carried with the traveler.

Security measures have been heightened as never before ‐ to the point of creating a legal risk to individuals who practice alternative sexual expression for traveling with items that are commonplace for us. This presentation will address these issues and provide tips for traveling with toys.

Protecting Yourself Legally

Members of the SM/leather/fetish communities have always had some level of concern regarding the issues of privacy, discretion, and personal security. The Radical Right, employers, ex‐partners, and others may pose threats to these concepts.

Many times their motivation comes from ignorance, but new motivations like custody of children, and revenge are also becoming commonplace. This presentation provides tips for protecting yourself legally for various circumstances.

Protecting Your Event

There are many considerations organizers must contend with when planning a large event. Large events include educational and social conferences, leather contests, weekend play parties, vendor markets, swing events and club run0s. In light of recent attacks by religious and political extremists, here are some suggested guidelines for protecting your event and attendees.

Doing SM Related Legal Research

The law is interpreted ‐ sometimes to our favor, and sometimes not. For example, while the NCSF firmly believes that consensual SM activity between adults is legal, there are those that have a differing opinion and will intentionally interpret the law in an unfavorable way. Therefore, it is extremely important for the SM‐Leather‐Fetish communities to have an understanding of the laws that may affect us. Knowing relevant laws will greatly assist our communities in safely organizing and maintaining SM‐Leather‐Fetish activities and functions. This presentation attempts to help those doing research navigate the sometimes complex waters that we find ourselves in legally.

6. BDSM Survey

Susan Wright conducted the Violence & Discrimination Survey of Sexual Minorities in cooperation with NCSF. The results will be released soon. There were also over 500 comments made on the survey that will be posted on the NCSF website.

Where appropriate, the data will be compared to NCSF’s 1998 Violence & Discrimination Survey Against Sexual Minorities which collected over 1,000 responses to similar questions during the course of a year. The 1998 survey did not cover business or event‐related experiences of harassment, nor did it ask about Internet experiences. The 2008 survey also included more questions about sexual activity and identity.

The 2008 survey saw a total of 3,058 responses collected. Of those, 2,412 respondents resided in the United States (83.4%). Of the remaining 480 respondents, a total of over 42 other countries were represented.

Table 3, Gender

2008 1998

Woman 51% 46%

Man 45% 51%

Transgender 5% 1%

Intersexed 1% 2%

Table 4, Sexual Orientation

2008 1998

Heterosexual 41% 40%

Bisexual 35% 36%

Gay/Lesbian 22% 22%

Intersexed 7% 4%

In 1998, the survey asked: “Are you completely ‘out’ about your involvement in sexual minority practices?” 62% stated they were not “completely out.” That is statistically almost the same as the 59.5 and 59.7% of respondents in the current survey who said they weren’t out to work and/or family.

A total of 1,146 (37.5%) respondents indicated that they had either been discriminated against, had experienced some form of harassment or violence, or had some form of harassment or discrimination aimed at their BDSM‐leather‐fetish‐related business. Of the respondents who reported some form of persecution, 476 (41.5%) identified as male, 615 (53.7%) identified as female, 9(.8%) identified as intersexed and 78 (6.8%) identified as transgendered. (Sexual orientation, like gender, was a question which required some answer, but allowed respondents to choose as many as they felt might apply, so the percentage totals more than 100%.)

Of the 1,146 respondents who indicated that they had either been discriminated against or had experienced some form of harassment or violence, 380 (33.2%) identified as heterosexual, 440 (38.4%) identified as bisexual and 292 (25.5%) identified as gay or lesbian. Another 97 (8.5%) indicated that they identified in some other way from heterosexual, bisexual or gay/lesbian.

(Sexual orientation, like gender, was a question which required some answer, but allowed respondents to choose as many as they felt might apply, so the percentage totals more than %100.)

The sexual orientation of respondents who were discriminated against or had experienced some form of harassment or violence is compared in Table 6.1 to the total percentage of respondents who identified their orientation. It is interesting to note that Gay/lesbian, Bisexual and Other respondents have slightly higher rates of persecution than their average percentage of total

respondents, while Heterosexuals are less likely to be discriminated against.

Table 6.1

Total % 2008 respondents % persecuted

Gay/lesbian 22% 25.5%

Bisexual 35% 38.4%

Heterosexual 41% 33.2%

Other 7% 8.5%

total 105% 105.6%

Volunteer and Donate

NCSF has lots of helpful information on the website: www.ncsfreedom.org. Go there and see all the work we’re doing with media outreach, incident response, and proactive initiatives on sexual issues.

Please support NCSF. The staff is all volunteers except for our Office Manager. There are many ways to volunteer to help NCSF.

You do not have to be “out” to help. Tell others about NCSF or distribute our literature. Initiate or help out at a fund‐raiser with NCSF as a beneficiary. Check out the rest of this website and you’ll find everything from Calls to Action to our Incident Response program. Every step you take helps us further the sexual freedom movement!

My fists clench into tight balls
Nails pierce into soft skin
Blood trickling down my hands
Whenever I’m with you
I blossom to my fullest
I turn my fairest
A glowing red rose that stands tall
You were the sun that let me grow
The light I needed to become strong
Then the weeds found me
They blocked the sunlight
Broke into my roots
Climbing upwards
To take everything you gave
Everything I wanted
Everything I needed
They left me with nothing
But the memories which I cherish
The weeds sucked the life out of me
They let me fall
They let me shrivel
Into nothing but a
Black rose.

The sickening displays of immorality taking place at our universities, even being called “Gomorrah festivals” in some cases, just show what a sinful, hedonistic nation we have become. When will Christians get the word from God to find the last few Godly people and leave before he destroys the country? That’s the path we seem to be on. As Mr. Buchanan says, we saved the country from the Godless hoards of communism at one point, but to what end? Godless is Godless no matter which way you slice it. And none of those slices are good.

Rendering Unto Caesar

by Patrick J. Buchanan (more by this author)
Posted 04/17/2009 ET

At the request of the White House, Georgetown University covered up all the symbols in Gaston Hall, before the Great Man spoke, including IHS, the millennia-old monogram for the name of Jesus Christ.

To love one’s country, said Edmund Burke, one’s country ought to be lovely. If this is not God’s country anymore, whose country is it?

Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, “The Death of the West,”, “The Great Betrayal,” “A Republic, Not an Empire” and “Where the Right Went Wrong.”

1. Kay L – Black Rose Intro (1:43)
2. Kay L – 2 Minute Murda (1:59)
3. Kay L – Like My Style (3:43)
4. Kay L – Cali Love (3:43)
5. Kay L – Flip It (3:30)
6. Kay L – Rockstar (2:53)
7. Kay L – Life (3:02)
8. Kay L – Beast (4:03)
9. Kay L – Go 2 Work (3:44)
10. Kay L – Fuck You Feestyle (2:10)
11. Kay L – It’s Over (3:24)
12. Kay L – Get Away (2:50)
13. Kay L – Lord I Forgive Em’ (2:31)
14. Kay L – Acapella (1:37)
15. Kay L – Smokin this Liquor (2:52)
16. Kay L Feat AMG – Flash Green (3:25)
17. Kay L – Its Over (Remix) (3:33)
18. Kay L – Black Rose Outro (0:52)

Download DJ Ill Will & DJ Rockstar Present Kay L: Black Rose

Vezi: Kay L/Dj Rockstar/Dj Ill Will .

I was rushing past a music stand today and the following CD cover caught my eye – to the effect that I stopped my mad rush, picked it up and turned it over – and I ended up buying it too.

It’s an older CD which was released in 2002 under the label Oceania and it boasts a host of classic Pacific songs – including Papua New Guinea’s very own Quakes’ smash hit Manam Island and O’shen’s Pacifican Herbsman.

Also included on the album is Black Rose’s My Fiji and what I’m guessing is a Solomon Island’s band Islands, which has a song I’ve never heard before called Bifo.