Would you believe it, this morning, a lovely clear crisp sunrise of a morning, I left home a little bit earlier than normal. Happy as Larry I was. Less traffic, lights going for me, not that it would have mattered if they hadn’t, I was in such a good mood.

It didn’t last. there’s one particular road on my cycle in that takes me down a side street along a contraflow cycle lane. Now the set up is pavement, cycle lane, parked cars, road in opposite direction. Not ideal with the parked cars enclosing the cycle lane in but better than having to go round on the main road.

People walk across the cycle lane, fine I look out for them stepping out from behind the parked cars. People walk in the cycle lane, usually get round around slower walkers blocking the pavement, fine, I slow down and ensure they know I’m there and wait until they get out of the way. I’ve even come across a father and young son riding the wrong way up the cycle lane (As it’s clearly one way as well), fine, the fathers doing it for the safety of his son, so I got out of their way!

But this morning, I was unfortunate enough to come head to head with the most despicable jumped up mid-to late forties twat that I have come across for sometime. This guy was walking in the cycle lane towards me, initially to overtake slower pedestrians, but once he got past them he continued in the lane. Now he saw me and I saw him with plenty of distance between us.

I slowed down waiting for him to step out of the cycle lane, he didn’t, I did the old two tings on the bell just to make sure he had seen me, maybe he was day dreaming? He carried on. Now the only place I can go to get out of his way is onto the pavement or on top of a parked car.

I had to stop, he gave me the must dirty look you could imagine, stepped round me and carried on. I commented “f**k’s sake”. He took complete offence and started having a go at me.

Needless to say a slagging match occurred with him walking right up to me in a very confrontation manner. I tried to point out that this was a cycle lane put there for the safety of cyclists, he replied “what about my safety”. Hello! that’s what the f**king pavement is for!!

I really wanted to hit him, he just had an attitude of arrogance and one of those faces you really want to hit. Eventually he walked off. My morning spoiled. I assume he walks that way to work regularly, and I cycle it every day, so no doubt we’ll meet again. I’ll keep you posted.

Next blog entry will be about why, despite all the problems and dangers, I love cycling.

Until then,

VC.

MY REVERIE EVAPORATES at the chirrup of the Zephyr phone. I snatch it quickly from my belt, but otherwise remain defeated in my rickety office chair.
            “What is it?”
            “Is that Zephyr? It’s Hallory O’Hagan from MMI.”
            “Oh, Hallory, Christ, hello. Sorry. I was expecting someone else,” I lie.
            “That’s cool. Where are you now?” she asks in her ever-effervescent voice.
            “I’m, uh, actually outside some bad guys’ lair right as we speak.” I grin, pained, the expression unpleasant. “Talk about a Tarantino moment.”
            Hallory titters. “I guess it seems like a silly time to want to discuss figurines with you.”
            “Hey, I get fanboys wanting to talk about my figurine all the time.”
            “Well it’s definitely time we revamped your line. It’s been, what, ten years?”
            “Sure.” I shrug. “Those plastic fuckers last forever.”
            “Okay,” Hallory replies with enough trepidation that even I can discern it. “Did you manage to talk about the line of dolls with the other Sentinels?”
            “New Sentinels,” I correct her. I’m pretty sure I blew the rights to the old team name in a poker game, though it is equally possible it was Mastodon who walked out with the winner, taking with him the keys to Omeganaut’s Omegamobile (which he later crashed and sank in the bottom of the Bay) and the rights to Aquanaut’s first-born child. Boy was that a night.
            “Look,” I tell the hot redhead on the other end of the phone, “it’s still a little premature to discuss this. We haven’t actually finalised the team.”
            “Really? I thought we were booking media for the launch next Friday?”
            “Well, yeah. . . .”
            “I might have some interesting feedback for you, then,” Miss O’Hagan continues unperturbed. “Focus groups have thrown up a few names you might want to consider.”
            “For my . . . team?”
            “Well for the action figures, but yeah I guess they need to be on the team too so we can licence them, right?” she responds.
            “Okay,” I shrug, uncomfortable yet intrigued. “Who?”
            “Shade, for starters.”
            “Shade’s, like, British. From London.”
            “We’re getting some very good numbers for her at the moment, and beside you’ll need ethnic diversity, right?”
            “So they tell me.”
            “What about Paragon and Jocelyn?”
            “Jesus,” I hiss. “I don’t think so.”
            “Why not?” Hallory asks. “Have you even heard the figures they’re talking for wedding pictures?”
            “Let’s keep going down the list.”
            “Cusp? I don’t even know who that is.”
            “I’m working on it. Next?”
            “Okay. Red Monolith.”
            “He’s, uh . . . he’s dead.”
            “Okay well that’s not happening then. Do you think we could acquire a licence from his estate? Sort of a, ‘friend of the New Sentinels’ angle?”
            “Jesus, lady, I don’t know,” I stagger a sigh. “I’m beginning to think you could get a licence to kill if one really existed.”
            “I’ll take that as a compliment,” she says and I can practically hear her purring down the phone. She is so mine.
            “Do you actually have any suggestions I can use?” I ask.
            “Okay. Well how about Nocturne? If you can’t go with Shade, Nocturne’s another good coloured option.”
            “I don’t think we call them ‘coloured’ any more,” I remark.
            “I’ve got another idea, not sure what you’ll think about it.”
            I scratch at my mask and realise I am still not wearing one. “Go on.”
            “The groups were indicating boys from eight all the way through to thirty-five were pretty keen on a modular, kind of transforming robot sort of guy,” Hallory says and barely drops pace as she continues on with the spiel. “I’ve had production mock up a few costumes and the copy guys have suggested a few names: Contraption Man? Mr Roboto? Rocketman?”
            “But I don’t know any . . . transforming robots . . . I don’t think.”
            “I guess that’s the point,” Hallory says. “You could think of it like meeting your obligations to equally represent minorities on the team. Have you asked yourself, do you have the machine world covered?”
            “Honey, I don’t think the machines have a lobby group we need to worry about, unless they’re armed. . . .” I think briefly at this juncture about Think Tank. “Next thing you’ll be making suggestions for a fucking superhero with Down’s Syndrome or something. It’s not happening, okay?”
            “Zephyr, the numbers are really good.”
            “I’m sure they are,” I say.
            She waits a beat. “Even for a disabled person, we’re getting feedback that there’s a lot of angles as far as accessories go, there’s even a synergy between the robot guy.”
            “There is no robot guy!”
            “Only because you’re being so negative about it.”
            “Christ, Hallory,” I say, sounding spent. “You know I love you and everything, but you have to listen to what you’re saying here. The two members of my team you’re most interested in don’t exist, and maybe they’re having an affair together? The robot guy and the girl with mechanical legs?”
            “It’s not a bad idea.”
            “I’m hanging up now. I’ll fax you the final roster when I get the licences signed off.”
            A gravid silence hangs between us. I don’t know if I’m sympathetic just because I want to get into her pants, but I feel guilty about chewing Hallory out and there’s nothing but embarrassed, possibly sullen vibes emanating back down the phone line.
            “I’d green light the Red Monolith toy, though,” I say reluctantly. “He would’ve liked that.”
            “Cool,” Miss O’Hagan comes back. “I’ll courier you over some new concept art. Where should I, uh, do that?”
            “No concept art,” I snap. “He wore red and black, with yellow panels under his arms. And a motorbike helmet, damn it.”
            I snap the phone shut and jam it back into its purse hard. I am fuming with anger and yet mostly I’m just annoyed at myself. I consider annihilating the TV and instead exercise just a modicum of control, giving it enough spark to power it on. The widescreen resolves into a picture of British actors picketing the skyscraper where the Union Jacks have their base. Seeker’s vanishing fortress is certainly a better deal than a headquarters where even a bunch of freakin’ thespianoids can manage to find you. As the small crowds wave their placards, Protector himself appears – the third British super to bear that name – and tries to settle the crowd with an inaudible speech that soon turns to violence. It’s not a good look as he jets through the crowd bowling women and policemen over, bottles smashing the glass façade of the building lobby. I reflect on an image of his teammate Lionheart, last time he was in Atlantic City, with a beard of puke dribbling from his chin into some stripper’s lap.
            I glare at the screen throughout a twelve-minute commercial break, promos for American Hero, Celebrity Heroes, Heroes: Where Are They Now, You Can Be A Hero, Heroes Unlimited, Arena Heroes, Down And Out In Atlantic City and London and a cooking show with some raven-haired British bint who eyes the camera insouciantly and looks like she’s licking up cum as she devours a mess of chocolate cake and cream on a child’s-sized spoon.
            A newsbreak live from the NBN chopper shows some ridiculously buff dude with black hair and a gold cape fucking around the top of the Silver Tower, seemingly inspecting the array of antennae and digital receivers. NBN splices in some of the free-to-air feed Chancel himself provides, giving a fish-eye lensed view of the stranger up close, a furrow to his otherwise fine, completely unfamiliar features.
            It’s enough for me. I’m angry and already dressed. I press my mask into place and stomp through to the wallspace and the open window and basically throw myself out and plunge into the glimmering dusk.

IT’S ONLY A couple of seconds across the city at the speed I’m travelling. Golden Boy hears me coming and turns as I use the concrete ledge as a brake and snarl, “Who the fuck are you?” as the news copter whirrs around for a new angle.|
            The other guy has about half-a-foot on me, which isn’t anything unusual as I’ve explained before, I’m just ordinary height. He has shoulders like a bull, black hair in a sort of Imperial Roman cast, a gold circlet around his brows matched by the cape and little sandals. His arms and legs are bare, the rest of him in a clinging reddish blouse, thick belt and trunks.|
            “A spiritu fornicationis, Domine, libera nos,” he chuckles. “This-a question, it is rhetorica, no?”
            “What?”
            The foreigner smiles and next thing I know there is immense pain in my chest as eye-beams lance through me. I lose all strength and drop from the air – not a good thing when we’re about forty floors from the ground – and it is only rebounding off the hard concrete ledge that jolts me back into awareness long enough to grab for a hand-hold. Meanwhile the dude in the cape gives a final once-over to the audio-visual apparatus on the outside of the tower, glances at me and then rockets heavenward.
            I’m a ruin. I only just manage to roll onto the ledge and lay there for long seconds with the smell of my own cooked bacon filling the air, even with the competing cross-winds. The news helicopter turns around and a megaphoned voice booms my name a few times before I manage to sit up and, gasping, actually trying not to break into tears of embarrassed, pained frustration, I probe the wound to my chest in disbelief.
            “Who the hell was that?”
            The leather is scorched and peeling and basically destroyed. Likewise for the top-most layers of my skin and pectoral muscle. It hurts like a bastard and if it wasn’t for my own persistent physiognomy I’d be winging my way to the ER right now. All I know is I need to get somewhere private and strip down. Victim of my own adventures as I have been so many times these past years, I am a veteran at this routine and manage to get to my feet without much more than wincing. I remember once seeing a Canadian hero called Manowar do the same thing after a few of Cogito’s goons triple-teamed us with some of these industrial lasers he’d whipped into weapons. Poor bastard didn’t realise he’d been nearly cut in half by the beams and stood only to watch his intestines and liver pour onto the ground. I think somehow he lived, though he’s been institutionalised ever since. I guess you don’t adjust easy to seeing your insides in the dirt.
            I give the chopper a little wave and a wan smile and shrug, oh well, for the cameras. I have to shake myself off a moment to ascertain that my powers haven’t deserted me completely and then I do the crouch thing and pretty much abscond from the whole disaster, avoiding the news loops for the next two days that show me getting my arse handed to me from pretty much every angle Amadeus Chancel could provide.
            Everyone’s happy enough to lend their own little comments to my performance, but they don’t even think to ask who the hell was my opponent. The only time anyone even thinks to address the matter – and to add insult to injury, it’s Nightwind – the panellists just shrug their shoulders and move on to the next schmuck.
            From my sickbed, with the wound healing nicely, I scrub Chancellor’s name from the ‘potentials’ list and work the phone, whittling down the final candidates via conference call as the big night comes ever closer.

Kick-Ass is the upcoming hero flick based on Mark Millar’s bloody tale of ikkle costumed vigilantes. The film is directed by Matthew Vaughn of apples and pears fame and stars Aaron Johnson, Nicolas Cage, Chloe Moretz and Christopher Mintz-Plasse.

The film opens April 2010 – Heres the trailer.

Dré

Every cyclist must notice the same thing day in and day out. Motorists just HAVE to get past the cyclist at any cost. Now, this is one of those things that you expect right? I mean, bikes are slower aren’t they? They cause delays to the motorists’ journey.

Wrong wrong wrong. When cycling in a city during rush hour, the cyclist is the second faster vehicle on the road (behind organ donors). We don’t get as delayed in traffic jams (they do slow us down as well) and we can move LEGALLY to the front at red lights.

So, why do motorist just have to get past the cyclist? Because they are idiots! The number of times that I could count where a car or van speeds up to try and pass me only to then slam on their brakes as they nearly pile into the traffic queue ahead. I would laugh if it wasn’t so dangerous to me and my fellow cyclists.

You see, the problem is that the motorist won’t take the road conditions into account when speeding past. The usual bad driving is over taking when there is a traffic island just ahead. The motorist will speed up to overtake, and some of them even pull out and give the bike room, but then the traffic island will loom suddenly in front of them and they pull hard in again and slam the brakes on, great! What you get is a cyclist suddenly with no room and has the choice of mounting the kerb or going into the back of the car.

To be fair, most times a sharp pull on the brakes and feet down will suffice, but not always, and certainly not in wet weather.

Let’s take this further, who are the worst offenders of this practise? Worst in terms of could cause the most damage? Easy, bus drivers. All too often I either myself or other cyclists are literally forced onto the pavement, if there are no railings, due to a bus driver just having to get past the cyclists and then finding either a traffic island, or queue or more often than not that surprising bus stop that suddenly jumps up in front of them. Now this is truly dangerous, put a railing in the way and you are talking serious injury or even death for the cyclist. And this isn;t a cyclist riding up the inside of a bus, this is dangerous driving and an offence.

Do they care? Do their bosses care? No is the answer. I think currently there is one borough in the city that gives bus divers a couple of hours cycling training. I have noted down times, route numbers and bus numbers of a few of the more serious incidents and reported them. I never hear anything back, even after following it up.

When I drive (yes I do, often and even pay my road tax) I look out for the situations mentioned above. It’s not hard, and against popular believe it doesn’t delay my journey to wait for a safe place to overtake a cyclist, safe for the cyclist that is! What slows down a car journey is the sheer volume of traffic, the queues to the badly phased traffic lights, the buses stopping every couple of hundred yards.

So, next time you’re driving to work or even driving for work. Before speeding past that cyclist in front of you, have a look, is it safe to do it? Is it worth it? Should you just hold back and wait? It’s not hard to do.

VC.

I AM DOWNTOWN. The air is chill and the traffic thrums and stalls around me like angry geese, horns going off in a cavalcade. My arms are full of things a man in my financial situation has no right to afford, but I have a cheque due from the management company for a bunch of voice-overs I did the previous week and they even paid me to sign a pile of forms I didn’t exactly read. I’m excited but nervous because I feel the change in the air and it’s not just the first flakes of winter snow.
            I ignore the incipient fender benders around me and step over a homeless guy lying in front of the department store asleep with his cock out and the biggest take-away mocha chill latte I have ever seen in my life spilled across the pavement beside him, a rich woman’s small dog lapping unseen at the edge of the puddle with its eyes going wide as it steps into a little of the human sensorium. The black guys at the entrance of the shop eye me like a rival gangsta, which I ignore because, you know, I’m cool with that shit, and I nod on the sly and make up some kind of fucking hand signal for a laugh that makes one wince and the other screw up his face in bewilderment. Oh yeah, and I have dropped about fifteen of these tiny little cute pills I found down the back of the couch, gagging on the lint, the pink hearts familiar to me and not actually candy as you might expect. They give me a fire in my belly and an iron rod I have to practically strap to the side of my leg as I amble into the big lit-up store, ignoring the more Christmassy decorations with my arms already half-filled with shit I shouldn’t be buying.
            I’m moving house soon. That explains the back-of-the-sofa foraging and also why I am not at home at 6pm without a good excuse, no-one to cook my dinner or give me the hairy eyeball when I turn up at nine smelling like woodsmoke or brine or ectoplasm or Asian pussy with no real explanation to offer to a family who apparently all knew about the ridiculous one-man play my life had become. It just lacked a title. Perhaps, Zephyr the Amazing Doofus. I could think of a dozen things more harsh if it wasn’t for my happy pills and I’ll be frank with you that it’s a nice surprise to get a little holiday from the black mood that has been following me of late.
            I have only just recovered from finding myself standing somewhere in the middle of the Eighth Century pushing corpses into a swamp with just a handful of unspeaking, black-cowled so-called priests as my accomplices. As Seeker glibly explained – troublingly so for someone who is practically a born-again-Christian – by the time Ash and the guy from the Jackass crew’s bodies turn up, they’ll have been decayed for centuries and unidentifiable. I thought I read or watched something once about peat bogs actually preserving people better, but I am not going to get into a slanging match with a bunch of Wallachians who don’t actually speak anyway, except among themselves, and even then in low whispers.
            I am buying the essentials: clean underwear, rewritable DVDs, disposable razors, cue tips, a new hairbrush, toothbrush, shoe brush, boot polish and five cans of leather refresher that makes the emo chick behind the counter raise her heavily-pierced eyebrow, an effort by itself, and she laughs gently and makes some joke about me having a fetish and because I’m a little high I just nod and leer and say, “Yes, Veronica, and that is not all I can do,” and successfully creep her out. If I had my mask on she would so be mine. I dig the purple highlights in her hair, the chalky face, the pubescent cleavage straining at the secretarial white button-up blouse the shop makes her wear. I think of Cusp and my daughter Tessa simultaneously and it’s not the most comfortable sensation I’ve had all week.
            In front of a display of the latest holo-projection TVs my Zephyr phone starts blurping and I look over my shoulder, knowing already I am going to risk it despite the mild shopping turbulence around me. I pile my things onto the carpeted step beneath one of the TVs that is showing news footage of the Pope setting down in Newark and whoever it is on the other end of the phone, I cannot hear a fucking word they are saying. I cut the line and realise I have five text messages, three of them from Seeker about “team business,” one from the guy who still manages my web forum and one from Streethawk, of all people, asking if the rumours are true that we’re putting together a new squad. Sorry Bruce, no homos allowed, is what I think to myself and then catch myself on the television suddenly, brows crinkled as I ponder how exactly I turned out to be such a homophobic beeotch given my upbringing – and it’s disorienting trying to work out why I can see myself on the holoscreen until I realise a salesman is demonstrating a handicam to a bunch of East China tourists who look like they have never seen an electric light let alone a DVD camera.
            The phone rings again. I put my finger in my other ear. It’s the guy from the web forum again, I can’t remember his name for the moment as he’s telling me something about an irate fan who keeps demanding he pass on a message about the end of the world. I give a good laugh – it’s not easy being Zephyr on the phone when I’m not in costume and I’m surrounded by other people – and I tell my little helper not to worry about it and I have a pretty good idea who it is. This is a lie, of course, but I am not about to go sweating the psychiatric foibles of every loser who finds himself at contactzephyr.com.nu(.)
            On the regular televisions I see shaky footage of a guy in a wrestling suit straining like someone with a blocked ass and then he swells and blisters and grows to about the size of a small elephant and goes all red and angry-looking and the words COALFACE appears as the surface of his body blackens and cracks open like the mantle of a volcano and I have to admit to myself, that’s one nasty-looking motherfucker, and that’s why I am glad it appears to be just a TV show. I pick up my purchases and decide to go buzz the perfume section and see about buying an early birthday present for Tessa, marvelling at my uncurtailed freedom and wondering where exactly it is that I am going to sleep once Beth settles on a date for taking back the apartment.

THE PHONE IS ringing while I take a dump and it’s not just my sullen alpha waves that mean I don’t move a muscle, letting it drone on and on and on, my thoughts a thousand miles away and the sky outside filling up with black ink.
            Eventually the phone is quiet. I shower, do my “ablutions,” which is a term I guess writers of Stoker’s era used to avoid describing the messy business I clean off my knuckles with tissue paper the consistency of gauze wrap as I sigh, filled with discontentedness, and then stand at the wide bank of apartment windows gazing across the cityscape as night descends like an inexpertly hung stage curtain, staggering down unevenly but eventually consuming the whole thing in darkness until the audience, uncomfortable in their seats, shift and wonder what purpose this development, how does the staging match the set design in bringing forward the central themes of the piece, assuming an author somewhere, intentionality, a coherent structure, the inevitability of climax and resolution, only to find the circus has moved on and run off with the price of their admission.
            My life, for the moment, lacks all of these details. When I go to dress, half-a-quart of milk gurgling in my stomach and a vague craving for Swedish meatballs unconquered, I realise my costume smells like a homeless man’s trolley. The comparative luxury of my situation affords me a clean outfit and the almost Japanese ritual of the process of costuming myself in leather and turning the old suit inside out and hanging it to air in the wallspace obscures the central fact I now have few reasons to dress like an ordinary person, that without those silently knowing figures so recently extracted from my life I am one hundred per cent superhero on call without much else to show for my existence.
            While I might long for a different kind of normal, the feeling of familiarity and safety brought by my leather encasement is a comfort I might find hard to describe if I had to, if there was anyone else with which to share my thoughts except you, my phantasmal darling. Briefly I think of Cusp, Seeker, Vulcana, Devil Betty, handicam footage of my daughter and Shade turning pirouettes at mach over the Silver Tower. While I admit I am feeling sorry for myself, and it might be the comedown from self-medication making it such a drag, the tomb of the apartment and the desecration of my sacred private life revealed by the bare refrigerator, strewn magazines and empty pizza boxes underlines the reality beneath my funk. I am no has been when I am Zephyr, yet even slumping on the sofa and staring at the disconnected television and I am already moving imperceptibly back toward being that person who, in a parallel life, declined to climb the maddening tower and went on to live a plain, inglorious and altogether unremarkable life. Perhaps I would’ve been happier. Perhaps I could’ve kept Beth, though it’s questionable I could’ve wooed her in the first place without my lightning trick and incredible strength to seduce the girl she so quickly ceased to be upon our graduation. More likely I would’ve met some girl behind the desk of a pharmacy, a library, a video store, raised a brood of weird-looking children and continued on through ignominy to the anonymity of death.
            Oh God.
            In the bathroom I contemplate my face in the mirror, my mask gone. Whatever fate awaited me – presuming the intersection of my life with that lightning bolt was anything other than fated – the very fact of my existence is underwritten by my paternity. Electrical storm or no, whatever else, they tell me I am John Lennon’s son. The Preacher Man. Yet we look nothing alike. Or, almost nothing alike, unless there’s something I’m missing.
           There is an iconic image of Lennon from the Summer Rebellion. I move through the apartment to my computer in the wallspace, many of my things in boxes in preparation for the move. Excel spreadsheets from Sal Doro’s disc about the Azzurro Corporation is open from my half-hearted review of the web of complex company structures and asset holdings that one of Sal’s journo colleagues had inexplicably to hand. It is quickly minimised as I pull up Firefox and perform an image search to get the picture I am after. It’s just a few seconds between this and that and then my alleged father’s face is staring out at me, the Preacher Man bearded and cross-legged in a white linen robe with heavy beads around his neck, floating in the air over the writhing hordes of protesters and London bobbies with Perspex shields and grimaces marring their moustachioed faces. He has one hand raised above him and the word “stop” nascent on his lips. Distracted that moment by a cameraman, perhaps an inherited trait after all, he turns his face sixty degrees towards the viewer and unintentional immortality. Put that in your cosmic peace pipe and smoke it, grandpa.
            I’m eating at my parents’ place tomorrow night. All will be revealed, I suppose.
            I sigh and wish I had a cigarette and my eyes drift down the initial table of thumbnails from the internet search and suddenly I find myself looking at quite a different, but nonetheless familiar face.
            My half-brother, Julian.

I was pretty upset a few months ago when the House passed the Cap and Trade bill. And then on Saturday night the House snuck through their Health Care bribery package. (I love their Saturday ram throughs) My knee-jerk reaction was to be upset about that, too. Anything that I view as a rights infringement, a government power grab, or a step toward socialism usually makes me throw up a little bit in my mouth.

I realized that my decisions were based on my gut reaction. Because of this I have developed a completely objective hierarchical system to determine what my reaction/feelings about issues should be. You just simply progress down the list until the reasonable answer becomes apparent.

Let me demonstrate: Health Care bill (aka thinly disguised socialism and bribery)

1)WWJD?

That’s right. What would Jack do. I’m pretty sure Jack Bauer would take members of Congress hostage and waterboard them until they confessed that they were, in fact, evil bastards who had ulterior motives about the passage of this bill. Since that’s not really an option for me, I’ll move on…

2)WWWD?

What would Wolverine do? Hmmmm. I’m really not sure what he would do in this situation. But whatever it is, I’m sure it would be awesome.

3)WWFD?

What would France do? Well, we know what they did. They have socialized medicine. It sucks. France sucks. They have contributed nothing to society, unless you count the several times they “donate” their country to maniacal dictators. Any non-Frenchie know that in every instance we want to do the exact opposite of whatever France does.

That solves it. If France is for socialized Health Care, I’m against it. See. Completely logical. I don’t know why more people can’t understand things that are so simple.

 Or vice versa as the sustainability wars begin.

I recently started a weekly column for ABC News which can be found at http://abcnews.go.com/Business/cokes-marketing-push/story?id=9046356. In the inaugural segment, I wrote about Coke’s new sustainability advertising. Coke takes a direct approach by talking about having products for every lifestyle and invites the reader to visit their website www.livepositively.com. Well, breaking news! It seems that Pepsi is trying to break out of the gate with its version of “We are the world.” Yesterday I saw a full page ad in the USA Today with the headline “Good Idea” The subhead asks what if instead of just refreshing people Pepsi helped refresh the world? The ad goes on to announce a project for 2010 in which Pepsi will ask for ideas to make the world a better place. The people will vote and Pepsi will fund an undetermined number of projects with grants. (millions of dollars according to the ad). The tagline for the ad is “Every Pepsi refreshes the world.”

I went to www.pepsi.com to make more sense of the project. It is currently a little rough. They are trying to combine aspects of social media like Twitter and pictures uploads as well as tap into consumer activity and thinking but they are clearly at the beginning. There are lots of pop-ups and my very fast PC froze a few times trying to deal with the flash (I think my brain froze a couple of times as well) but the gist of the idea is there.

It is interesting that 38 years later Pepsi is trying to take the most successful page out of Coke’s playbook. In 1971, Ad agency McCann Erickson created the iconic “I’d like to teach the world to sing” ad for Cole. Ad legend Bill Backer, then the Creative Director for the Coca-Cola account, saw a group of passengers who had been irate sharing stories over bottles of Coke and sought to capture the idea the world would be a better place if we could see our commonalities. The resulting commercial is widely considered among the best of all times. It is easy to take the small step from “buying the world a home” and “furnishing it with love” and teaching the world to sing in “Perfect harmony” to the idea behind today’s sustainability movement: shared responsibility.

Coke’s sustainability efforts feel very much like something they are doing for us while Pepsi, at least in theory, seems to being saying they want to do something with us. Maybe it’s just another short step for a company to begin to accept the fact it is us. That’s the point something might really start to pop.

*This title references a wonderful SNL skit from the late 70’s with John Belushi which can read in its entirety at http://snltranscripts.jt.org/77/77nolympia.phtml

So… yeah.

I’m 99% certain vampires have invaded my town. My tiny-ass middle of nowhere mountain town.

Believe me, I know how this sounds.

But it all fits. Human bite marks. Sensitivity to sunlight. Extreme aggression and violence.

Jude texted me earlier today to tell me that the doctors decided to give the first victim blood products because his body was rejecting the IV, causing a fluid deficit. Now he’s not dehydrated but he’s stronger. And more aggressive.

See? I’m not crazy. It all fits. So now that I have this information, what do I do with it?

I’ll tell you… Nothing.

It’s not enough. I need more proof if I’m going to convince anyone. I mean, you don’t even believe me, I’m sure. I wouldn’t believe me either. But I know I’m right.

I’m not even sure how to go about getting more proof. I’m not stupid enough to go out and get my vigilante on. I’m not Buffy, or Anita Blake, or whatever other supergirl vampire hunter you can think of.  Sure, I know all the vampire lore and all the various weaknesses and methods of killing them, but this is… unprecedented. Vampires are real. Who even knows which of these myths apply to real vampires? What if I shove a stake through its heart and it doesn’t even slow it down? What if I hold up a cross and instead of cowering it laughs and rips out my jugular?

So until I figure something out, I just have to sit tight. Act like nothing’s wrong. Fuck.

Yesterday before my little revelation I set up a double date for Ethan and I with Jude and Jess. That’s going to happen tonight. Trust me, if I’d known I was going to be faced with the task of proving the existence of vampires in this town, I would have scheduled it for another day.

But I’m not going to reschedule. Things have been going really well with Ethan, except where Jude is concerned, and vice versa. And assuming I figure out what to do and we live through this ordeal, I’d like for them to get along. Neither of them are quite comfortable with my relationship with the other. This dinner was supposed to get them to chillax a little and get used to the idea of one another and the roles they play in my life.

So I’m putting on a brave face (and some makeup) and going to dinner with the two most important men in my life and a crazy bitch who probably wants my head on her mantle.

Damn. When I put it like that, hunting vampires doesn’t sound so scary after all.

Wish me luck.

I AM READING the Post with some disdain, my back to a girder in the otherwise fully translucent diner, trying to kid myself that I am flicking through the political and world news sections to get to the sports and not Nate Simon’s Tuesday column. The little fuck has been hinting at the breakdown in my friendship with Twilight for two weeks running now, but he hasn’t even tried to call to verify his information. Thanks to Christ he doesn’t know half as much as he could, even if he’s already spilled twice as much as I’d ever want the average Joe Public to know about how Twilight and I came to blows and sent half the city (actually just Rhode Island) into the Abyss. I am not presently accepting calls from the Mayor’s office for fear they might have some crazy idea about reparations.
            Fortunately the Post reporter has a new bag. Sal Doro covers the big fish (like me, normally), which is why I guess Simon is left speculating on the disappearance of some dude who works the south city and calls himself Crusader. Original. While I have barely heard of this guy before, I don’t think the fact some fruit in a costume fails to stop three daytime robberies and a laundry fire justifies a missing person report. If he’s anything like I was when I was starting out, a really bad zit was enough to keep me low for two weeks at a time.
            I flick through this trivia and check the other items. I see Eris has been at her own unique brand of chaos again, hospitalising a guard at the storage vaults attached to the State Museum of the Americas. Hebrew parahuman Allan Silverman has demanded an invite to an upcoming session of the City States Symposium in Atlantic City with predictable results. Mastodon and Cipher have teamed up to smash a Yardie drug den, which begs a far more interesting story given the old man’s pharmaceutical pursuits. An emissary from a parallel earth has apparently left Atlantic City in disgust after being refused entry to the Flyaway. The stock price for most major drug companies took a hit last week following rumours a German sorcerer had eradicated all strains of influenza. Turned out not to be true. Pity. Meanwhile a villain called Dragonmaster, a Brit, I assume, since I’ve never heard of him, has come out of the closet to a men’s mag. One look at the scaled leather costume the guy wears and you’ve got to wonder who was left to gasp in surprise at that particular revelation.
            Oh, and Windsong has been seen flying formations over Staten Island with a British super, the renowned bisexual beauty Shade. The thirty-something bisexual beauty Shade. I make a note to self and grit my teeth and barely look up at the sweet Minnesotan farm girl who delivers my espresso as a pizza delivery guy cutting up the sidewalk outside hits a dude in a suit and his moped goes hissing out-of-control toward a fountain. I snap the newspaper shut and patently ignore the chaos, my hand around the warm mug a pleasure to savour as I fight against the invisible forces that would otherwise suck my mood.
            Surprisingly the gossip pages have absolutely nothing about Seeker’s decision to form a new group of Sentinels. Considering it’s been the talk of the top end of town the whole week past, I find that amazing. Either someone has hushed the city’s reporters, they’re saving it for a special issue, or else Atlantic City’s costumed elite are keeping quiet for one rare moment in their lives, reasons unknown.
            Mickey Rourke enters the diner and I sink lower in my chair. I owe him thirty bucks and last time we got wrecked at Halogen I may have told him I’d pay him back with a hand-job. He’s just crazy enough to want to collect just so he can see me squirm. A disturbing individual.
            I snap the paper again to straighten the crooked columns and my phone, sitting on the table with more papers from my agent and my house keys, lights up and displays Seeker’s name.
            “Speak of the Devil,” I grin in answer somewhat inappropriately.
            “We need to talk.”
            “About the Sentinels?”
            “. . . yes, about the Sentinels. The New Sentinels.”
            I nod and smile to myself. “Where’ve you got that castle parked?”
            The door to the diner swings open and she is standing there with her phone to her ear in that ridiculous Paula Abdul outfit.
            “I brought a ride,” she says. “Come on.”

IT IS WEIRD in the cab, the feeling we’re both thoroughly disguised as we play-act in our secret identities. Seeker’s trying pretty hard to show she’s a street-smart and stylish broad, not at all the arch conservative, borderline religious psycho we’ve sometimes considered her over the years. Great jugs an’ all, but any time the old Sentinels tried to have the least bit of fun, either Seeker would blow up in a tirade reminding us of our higher calling, calling us all juveniles, or else she would go off in a sulk that managed to cast a pall over at least the majority of our worst excesses. Now if someone could explain to me why in the back seat of a yellow cab there’s more sexual tension than my junior high prom, I’d really appreciate it.
            “So, uh, it’s Loren, right?”
            “It seems like a million years ago, but yeah,” she replies.
            “You’re from . . . Atlantic City?”
            “Is anyone?”
            She gives a breathtaking laugh filled with only half the confidence she’s trying to project. I glare at the cabbie through the rear view mirror and make sure he’s got his eyes on the road.
            “My folks were from Willagee, Nebraska. Pa brought us to Atlantic City right after the Kirlians. He was a builder. Made his money in the upgrade.”
            “And so it’s here where you . . . ?”
            Seeker wrinkles her nose, acknowledging we don’t have the best privacy by giving just a curt nod. Adorable. Fucking hell. I nod to myself and stare out the window and am kinda surprised when she keeps talking.
            “I was fourteen,” she says. “The visions came first. Apocalypse. Death from Space. All very sci-fi. I woke up one night re-enacting that scene from Ghostbusters, you know, floating above the bed covers? Our family priest knew a pastor who knew a rabbi who knew a cardinal. I’m sure you can follow what I mean.”
            “And from there?”
            “Well, to cut a long story short: the Wallachian Brotherhood.”
            “The guys in the castle?” I ask.
            “Yes.”
            “The brotherhood.”
            “Oh, there’s women too. I never asked about that. . . .”
            “And they are, exactly. . . ?”
            “A fifteen-hundred-year-old secret society dedicated to keeping the doors closed between our world and the next,” Seeker says in a relaxed voice that does nothing to detract from her measured and careful pronunciation.
            “Okay. So they hunt monsters and stuff who sneak through?”
            “In the early days, that’s how it began,” she says. “It got complicated once they perfected their own technology on a parallel earth.”
            “And these are the guys who are offering to sponsor the New Sentinels a base?” I ask slowly.
            “Well we’ll need one.”
            “I thought Devil Betty. . . ?”
            “I don’t know, Joseph. As I said to you before, I’m not that comfortable with the, uh, demonic overtones of that name.”
            “So a kid makes a bad wish on a shooting star after listening to too many Marilyn Manson albums.” I shrug. “To paraphrase something I heard recently, just because she used to worship the Devil doesn’t necessarily make her a bad person.”
            “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Seeker replies.
            “Okay.”
            I stare out the window with the patented gaze of one of those small pampered lap dogs rich women like to take with them on trips across town. Through the glass of the taxi window the downtown area flicks past at a haphazard pace. Finally we get stalled in traffic again down near the harbour and for some reason I start chuckling about a joke in an email I got from Nautilus a couple of days back.
            “What’s so funny?” Seeker asks.
            “It’s nothing.”
            “Hmmm. By the way,” she says, “I meant to ask you, have you heard from Darkstorm in the past few days? I can’t get him to answer his cell.”
            “Hmmm no,” I reply. “Years ago he used to have this message drop at a laundry in Chi-town. That place secretly run by goblins or elves or whatever the hell it was. You want to stop by there?”
            “No,” Seeker replies. She stares out the window now, just in time to catch a homeless man introducing two tourists to his dancing chicken act. Loren’s pretty eyes flinch at the sight, making me wonder just how innocent can the girl be given some of the things we’ve seen in this life.
            “I’m sure he’ll turn up in the end,” she says, distracted.
            “How’s Vulcana doing, by the way?”
            The brightness re-enters Seeker’s eyes.
            “Better every day. This is one of the benefits of the Wallachian Fortress I want to talk about with you, Joseph. The Brotherhood’s clerics will have her fighting fit in no time at all.”
            “I wonder how Connie feels about that?”
            “Why in Heaven would you say that?” Seeker frowns. “Her arm was off. I’m sure she’s thrilled to get back to how she was.”
            I nod, inner turmoil defused as the frantically eavesdropping cabbie drives us to the rendezvous with the disappearing castle.
            It only takes Loren a moment to mindwipe the driver once we’ve parked, and since I’m a little short of change, I offer to pay and catch her up, leaving the disoriented cabbie parked in a tow zone as I scamper to eventually follow the hot brunette in the high-heeled boots disappearing into thin air outside the boarded up walls of the construction site.

Finest hobo vigilante you can find. I mean, aside from Rorschach.

This is Mrs. Satchel. She employs the use of tin foil wads. For JUSTICE.

watchmen, film superhero terbaik tahun 2009? tentu saja, tidak ada film superhero lain yang bisa menyamai kualitas watchmen baik itu dari segi cerita, sinematografi, bahkan score musik sekalipun, itu setidaknya adalah opini dari seorang yang sangat mendewakan film ini di tahun 2009, hahaha, orang itu adalah saya dan tidak bisa dipungkiri, film ini sekaligus menjadi film pelengkap bagi 3 best vigilante superheroes movies alltime versi saya, watchmen di posisi pertama, di posisi kedua adalah V for Vendetta yang masih sama bernuansa politik, ketidakadilan, kebrutalan, dan hati nurani yang dipertanyakan, dan kemudian posisi terakhir diisi the dark knight, versi batman yang berbeda dari yang lain, membuat saya terperangah ketika pertama kali menontonya, ini adalah batman versi christopher nolan terbaik setelah batman begins. kembali ke watchmen, sekarang pertanyaanya adalah apakah anda sanggup menontonnya???

IT TAKES MASTODON a second or so to realise we really are going to have a rumble. Then he does his foot-stamping trick and if things were quieter you’d hear the leather straps of his chest harness strain with the stretch as he swells from just over six foot to a little over nine. Now his shoulders are the size of Christmas hams and his mutton chops loom about the size of small cats duct-taped to the side of his grinning, leering face.
            “Alright Zephyr, this is more like it.”
            “Take it easy, old man,” I say as I hurtle across the chamber. “Don’t break anything.”
            By that I mean anything of his own, of course. I’m quite happy for him to hand these guys their heads and we’ll just bury the corpses wherever the Wallachians suggest. Across the room I see Ash dragging himself away from the mound of disgustingness he has helped create, while the chick with the whip and the chick with the sword seem intent on looking scenic rather than helpful.
            I crash into the space previously occupied by Captain Jackass. In my wake another portal opens overhead and I should’ve seen this one coming, knowing this motherfucker plans ahead for all these sorts of things as metal shopping cart after metal shopping cart suddenly start plunging toward me and into the room. There’s something awkwardly painful about being hit by raining metal trolleys that I think the madman understands only too well. Even for me, as the first one rebounds from my forearms, head and knee simultaneously, it’s more than just my ego taking a battering.
            Pouring on a bit of super-speed, I manage to get out from beneath the metal rain, but Seeker and the Don aren’t so lucky. It’s only that I manage to wing Jackass with another lightning bolt that the portal sucks closed and the damned things stop coming. Moments later on the other side of the room there’s another sizzling noise and, through a hole no bigger than my fist, a shower of golf balls pour into the room. Ash and Madame Lash – there’s a good rhyming couple for you – go down on their arses and its only by the grace of her rubber-band teleporting trick that Samurai Girl gets to bitch-slap Jackass and force the latest wormhole closed as well.
            “Nice moves!” I yell. “Now watch your back.”
            The dude calling himself The Drill flies straight for Seeker, but there’s nothing I can do for her right now as the one with the kneepads starts unhooking goodies from his belt-pack and tossing them at me in the centre of the room. The first one is little more than a firecracker and then the next thing I know there’s tear gas flooding across the scene and I have to cover my nose and mouth with my hand and squint to get a good sense of his location. Perhaps Prankster has superhuman powers of regeneration to back up his gimmicks. If not, he may have a problem eating with anything other than a straw or perhaps a wet nurse after my tightly-clenched left connects with the side of his jaw and introduces him to the hard stone floor.
            Madame Lash does something lame with her whip. I suspect she’s trying to create a vortex to disperse the gas, which is a sweet idea except for Murderboy leaping from one wall to another and finally landing on her back and sinking his teeth into the side of her neck. To her credit, powers or none, the lady freaks out just fine enough to fling the weird-ass villain over her shoulder in a practised judo move. Just as emo-boi rights himself, she does a reverse spinning kick that sends him across the room and into the aforementioned pile of shopping trolleys.
            I am distracted by a right cross to my jaw. Spinning about, I can’t see anyone, and then fingers tap me on the shoulder and, like a total cad, I flip about and yet another punch snaps across my jaw. Their saving grace is there’s no superhuman strength in the blows. Across the chamber I see the so-called  captain give a little wave and then, through one of his teleport discs, his foot comes through and tries to get me in the jewels. No dice. I grab the good captain’s ankle and channel more than a handful of volts back through the portal. If he hasn’t fouled himself, I’d be surprised. The hole in space collapses taking his errant limbs with it.
            Time to get things moving.
            Through the tear-gas haze, Ash appears like a homeless man to grab The Drill either side of his helmet. The bad guy has put a few holes in Seeker’s shoulder and she’s laying on the floor looking uncharacteristically limp. It doesn’t matter. Ash is pissed. His fully unleashed power is lethal. The Drill’s head disintegrates into a hissing pile of white-hot dust and the helmet kind of falls apart as the silica of the dead bad guy’s skull and tissue pour from the front vent like sand from a broken hourglass. The still very rubbery and real headless body plops onto the floor next to Seeker, who screams shrilly, thereby drawing almost every eye in the room to the scene.
            Mastodon has been maced by Prankster. Samurai Girl has lines of drool hanging from her chin, two canisters of tear gas still gushing nearby. Madame Lash has lost her whip. She has a black eye and is bleeding heavily from a neck bite and another to one of her breasts, which has slipped free from her heavy corset. I direct a quick zap toward her assailant and the hair-dyed freak cartwheels away with the sort of noise I’d expect a cat to make.
            “Time to finish up, Don!” I yell with my eyes streaming, half-squeezed shut.
            I almost stumble over The Drill’s corpse, shield Seeker with my body as Prankster and then Jackass circle. I’m trying to do the maths and it won’t add up and that’s when I belatedly realise we’re missing someone.
            “Okay, where’s the other fucker?”
            If you thought Murderboy was creepy, it’s Kid Kaos who is the real psycho case on their team: Captain Jackass’s pet serial killer, which he keeps on a close emotional leash – except when he lets the leash go pretty long. And when he does, that’s trouble, because the Kid is a natural assassin. He can ghost as well as turn see-through, so you never know where he’s gonna appear.
            This time he wobbles back into view directly behind Ash, who is standing there in the white bodystocking I know his mum probably sewed for him, palms clawed and radiating their own dangerous vibe. Only he doesn’t have a clue about the danger immediately to his rear and the Don and I barely open our mouths before Kid Kaos slots into place, his turn to grab Ash by the skull and twist.
            Somehow amid his descent to the hard stones, Ash’s rolling eyes swivel around until they find mine; and they stay locked on me as Kid Kaos ghosts the young hero’s head into the stone floor and leaves it there, buried, fused, the corpse’s back painfully arched, arms splayed. And I swear, a hot white rage is building up inside me, but it’s tempered by a tiredness too, that everything has to end like this and that it’s not just Captain Jackass and his crew who have no respect for how things should be, but that it’s life itself that doesn’t respect the conventions of our particular genre. Ash was a nineteen-year-old hero just starting out in the world. He’d moved here from Detroit because he never had anything to do. Now he’s just a hundred-and-eighty pounds of pre-packaged meat going to spoil, or more likely wind up alongside the guy he killed in some nameless Wallachian garbage dump or swamp or unholy fucking backwater. I’m tired with the idea of payback, but until something better comes along, that’s the only option I have.

SO WE TEAR into them. Kid Kaos fades from view before I can blow a few thousand volts through his chest. Murderboy runs up one wall and vaults, something sticky about his hands as he crosses the ceiling like a monkey and comes down on Mastodon, who promptly throws him halfway across the room.
            Prankster pulls another weird-looking gun and fires at me and a net flops out, heavy little balls on the edges as it goes over. I put a scorch mark in the middle of his chest and he goes backward, adding to his bruise collection for today, but in the moment I struggle with the net, Jackass throws up one of his discs over my head and dusty red recycled house bricks suddenly pour down in their hundreds. Between the bricks and the dust I go down for a moment.
            I am relieved to see Samurai Girl run at just under mach around the room. She swings with practised swipes and cuts Murderboy and Jackass and bounds out of the way as Kid Kaos rematerialises. If I weren’t so angry I’d be amused by the sight of the hockey-masked freak picking up a pair of bricks and disappearing with them again. It’s not so funny when he materialises near Mastodon, phases the brick invisible and leaves it lodged in the big guy’s stomach. The Don twitches and drops as his system goes into shock and it’s really only blind luck that my own short circuit hits the fading assassin before he’s gone completely. Mask and all, Kid Kaos slides about ten feet and remains curled with a smoky residue overhead.
            I’m on hyper alert. When a teleport disc appears beside me, I throw myself into it and out the other end, grappling suddenly with the team leader before Jackass headbutts me with the helmet and I feel my nose break, no big deal, the blood running down my face unnerving as I blindly grasp his scarred, malignant face and start to squeeze. At the same time I hammer short right jabs into his ribs, feeling them break, and somewhere amid all that the laughter goes out of him and he begins to freak, thrashing wildly, screaming, clawing at my grimace as I ram my knee into his crotch and then make the mistake of hurling him bodily across the room.
            He bounces across the stone and comes up with his face bleeding almost as bad as the sword-wound to his side. Captain Jackass spits blood and shakes his head, face a mask of fury.
            “You can have this one, Zeph. Next time you won’t be so lucky. I’ll make sure of it.”
            I am left to ponder any hidden meanings in this as he throws teleport discs underneath his mates, including the unconscious ones, and they disappear in short notice from view.
            I wipe leather across my bleeding face without much satisfaction as Samurai Girl tends to Seeker’s pierced shoulder. Madame Lash isn’t going anywhere and that’s even more terribly true for Ash. Mastodon drops to his knees as well and gives me a nod with his grave face.
            “Could do with a few more hit points there, boss,” he says.
            I can only nod. “At least this time the little bastard didn’t dump me in the Himalayas when he was finished,” I try and grin and fail.
            The silent cowled figures of the Wallachian monks appear through a distant doorway bearing the now familiar sight of a floating stretcher. I hold up my hands for two more.
            “Not so crash hot, huh Zephyr?” Seeker says in a pained voice.
            “I guess we weren’t really geared up for that,” I say. “Any idea how the hell they found us here?”
            “I’ll have to ask the priests in charge of the cloaking device,” Seeker replies. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
            I motion to the dead kid. “Tell it to him.”
            “The Wallachians, you know. . . .”
            “Keep your fucking priests off him,” I say more harshly than I intend, but the vision in my mind’s eye is compelling and probably not completely inaccurate. “It could’ve been a worse death.”
            “Ash might have something different to say to that,” she says.
            “I’m not about to find out. Leave it be.”
            We exchange knowing looks, hers doe-like, mine taciturn, and Madame Lash gets up in the middle of our exchange and grabs her rig and staggers for the door like a drunk hooker in search of a payphone.
            I harrumph. “I’d better see the lady out.”
            And that’s that.

Chapter one

March 10th 2009

Dear Matista,

The world is in ruin, or what’s left of it. The sun is expanding and almost run it’s course – so says the “scientific community”. The ice caps have started to melt which has slowly been increasing the water mass of earth. We’re now at 78 percent water mass. It used to be 70 percent. So far the isle of Osceron has been completely wiped out. Padrugo and Sidon are close to flooding as well. The largest mass of earth left is Maltare, where the absidons live…or maybe exist would be a better term. Things started turning for the worst in 2007. The signs were subtle but not to those with extreme attention to detail. Unfortunately, the majority didn’t pay attention detail.

I am considered filth, along with 80 percent of the human population. The Opthalians as they’re now called are the “Elite race”. Two years ago they’d be considered human, just as I. I’m no longer afforded the privilege of being called human due to my pitch black eyes. The elite race or the true humans are classified by their opaque gray eyes. Ninety-eight Million people so far have died/been killed. The earth as we know it only has 3 billion people.

We absidons as we’re called now, classed by our pitch black eyes are in grave danger. The sun is expanding and melting the ice caps and a continuously rapid pace. Soon, the world will be 100 percent water and the sun will explode. The Opthalians however, will survive. They’re safe in their underwater utopia while we absidons the low are stuck in our overland hell!

The entire continent of Maltare is powered by steam. Due to the increase in water it seemed like the smartest thing to do. We’re totally crippled and dependent on the Opthalians for nourishment. During the “Madlord control” act passed by our ruler – Lord Adrial the soil of Maltare was nuked with radioactive waves making the soil sterile. We can no longer raise our own food. Only the Opthalians are allowed to raise food now. Our water is still safe as far as we know, but what is water without food?

We’re weak. At least that’s what we’re told by the mad propaganda machine that is the Opthalians.

Who’ll save us?

-Styx

Historical timeline of planet Earth:

2007 – The Earth first starts showing major yet subtle signs of a turn for the worst. Global warming craze hits a high.

2009 – New fascist government rules and separates the Opthalians from the absidons. World is now 78 percent water

2011 – World becomes 85 percent water

2012 – The day of the “Broken visions” world is 92 percent water

©Sinficsation

Author note: So, I know msot of this was covered in the info, but I just wanted to show you from the first person point of view of Styx of how it began.

So, I’m taking up a new story, but I also plan to write “Silent Shouting” in conjunction with this one. However, this particular story takes more research and effort to write so, “Silent Shouting” might be riding back seat for a while.

Info

In the year two-thousand-ten a vigilante by the name of “Styx” rises in the city of Pasidon to bring down the corrupt fascist government of the Opthalians – an elitist race and to free the absidons – a sub-human race from their control. The world is in ruins and faced imminent danger. Three small isles of the new world had already been flooded due to the recent climate changes and the human race has been separated into two classes, The Opthalians: Elite, classed by their opaque gray eyes and live 2,000 leagues underwater in the continent of Tabrinon and the absidons: Sub-human classed by their pitch black eyes and live in the overland on the continent of Maltare.

The world’s water mass as of two-thousand-ten was eighty percent – ten percent more than the past worlds seventy percent. Five hundred million have died or have been killed out of the earths population of 3 billion and counting. The sun has been steadily expanding since two-thousand-seven. It’s dying and will soon explode leaving the overlanders to burn in the sun storm which could strike at any moment unless the rising water gets them first. The Opthalians have already secured their safety however in their pitch black underwater utopia.

Will Styx be able to overthrow the facsist dictation of the Opthalians alone? Or will he need help from a special garden and it’s Goddess, Maltista?

Or will he fail completely?

Rating: PG-13-R

Genre: Sci-fi, Drama, Thriller, Tragedy, Fantasy, Angst, Adventure, Original, Fiction, Mystery

I’ll try to post the first chapter soon.

©Sinficsation

THE CHANGE IS coming to Atlantic City, and at last those of us who spend our times in costumes and masks posing for the cameras and occasionally getting our heads kicked in before them can relax, knowing at least now, as the first snow comes, it is not because the harbinger of some alien god is preparing to walk onto the set and begin throwing cars and buildings around with gay abandon. It’s simply getting cold. Winter is yet to arrive, but here in the northernmost quadrants of the city that buried the ghosts of old New York, that first touch of frost seems to be coming earlier and earlier each year no matter what the boffins say about global warming. You can see and feel it on the streets. The cops spend more time blowing on their coffees than tackling the crime rate, the hookers have taken to wearing coats and the homeless people are drawing even less attention from the upwardly mobile than usual as the weather soaks into their weary metabolisms and those at the fatal ends of the population curve simply don’t move any more as the snow starts stacking up around them, the result being an unexpected burial with Miracle On 41^st Street trappings.
            It’s not all doom and gloom and hell we’ve really only had one day where the city called out the snow sweepers. The kids are still filling (new) Central Park without enough to toboggan, it’s never too cold for an ice-cold Coke – they’re considering me for a new ad campaign so I am practising my smile a lot and trying to look carefree – and the cold weather also means less street battles as a few of the more sensible bad guys decide to holiday somewhere warm and return to conquering the world when the weather improves.
            Being a child of this weird megalopolis I love it all, and it’s only the fact that cold weather means the inevitability of Christmas that some of the shine comes off my enthusiasm.
            It’s not like I have a lot to cheer about. For some godforsaken reason I am yet to quit my apartment and hand it over to my seemingly forever angry and increasingly estranged wife and our darling progeny, the superhuman prodigy you’d know best as Windsong. Beth has full custody, having threatened to gang up with her lawyer pals and cut off visiting rights altogether unless I agreed. She’s shitting in her LeCroix of Paris stockings that any time we spend together, Tessa and I are going to play dress ups and plan her future crime-fighting career. Funny that I was married to this woman for seventeen years and she can’t understand I don’t want our daughter dragged into this crazy life any more than she does.
            The bigger problem remains Tessa. I guess saving the city from Ras Algethi on her first outing has somewhat gone to her head. Sure we hardly talk about anything else on our walks, coffees at Gonzo’s, lunches at Ribaldi or Piccolo or that theme sandwich bar in SBSCC Tower where the waiters dress as mime artists and beatniks. God forbid we should discuss why her loving parents of fifteen years are seeking divorce. However I’m really only just learning now how filled with this costumed, larger-than-life world my little girl’s head is – she who, among so much of the world, I thought I knew so well.
            The diehard fans have discerned and may well even be pleased to know I have embarked on a minor costume redesign. The identical leather ensembles do little to change the previous version except my insignia is no longer red but gold. My publicist’s idea. I hear more from the disgruntled guy who maintains my online forum than the public relations queers I have allowed to siphon off ten per cent of my income, even from the marketing deals I made before I hired them (unlike Miss O’Hagan, I was fully aware just how little I was drawing in). Nonetheless when the Enercom phone flashes, or buzzes I should say, if it’s Hallory O’Hagan I always pick up. What the hell. Technically I am single again and its my inner Irishman craving a redhead.

SEEKER’S INVISIBLE FORTRESS has the crazy acoustics like you’d expect from any thousand-year-old castle. The frustration in my voice bounces vibrantly off the walls, coming back to us just in time to blend with the sound of my boredom as I throw down the clipboard with doodle marks all over the page, my micro tantrum getting pretty much no-one’s attention as Seeker and Mastodon stand in the enormous, austere chamber power-tripping on the three flunkies before them.
            “Try-outs have barely started and we’re already down to these nobodies?” I say more loudly this time.
            If at first you don’t succeed and all of that.
            Mastodon turns and gives me his best badass scowl, but I know he’s just playing school captain because he thinks he might get into Seeker’s pants with his responsible older superhero act. He didn’t spend three years on the same team with her as I did. No-one’s going there. The frigging Pope’s not getting any pussy from Seeker. Well you know, of course he’s not, but you know what I mean. If anyone was going to score with our perfect preacher and resident Cheerleader for Christ, maybe he’d be the guy to do it. Or maybe not. Hell, this is a lifelong habit of mine, speaking with no real good idea of what I’m gonna say next.
            The new kids on the block are Ash, a white kid in a kimono called Samurai Girl and, believe it or not, a dominatrix who speaks in the third person named Madame Lash. I’m not sure she’s got the whole ‘hero’ thing down yet. I could tell from the moment she walked into the room that Mastodon wanted her on the team. Only thing we haven’t told Mastodon yet is that we’re only offering him a Reserve position. It’s not the age. It’s more that Seeker’s not too comfortable with the old boy’s pharmaceutical interests and the faceless Wallachian monks who prowl the corridors down here stop and flatten themselves against the walls when Mastodon goes past. Perhaps its just those fucking horn things jutting out from his collar, but I doubt it.
            As my last outburst resounds from the walls, the teenager with the Asian sword suddenly appears in my face – a good trick, since I can still see her across the room out of the corner of my eye – and waggles her finger before slapping me and disappearing again.
            “What the –?”
            “Show some respect, mister,” she says.
            “How about you earn some?”
            “Easy, people,” Mastodon adds in the folksy tone he has assumed for the evening.
            “Hey, ‘Don, give me a frigging break here,” I start to say only to get cut abruptly by a hand signal from my offsider and nominal co-captain Seeker.
            “Everyone please try and remain calm,” Seeker says. “Zephyr, I know you’re impatient to finalise the roster, but please. We have a lot of people interested in the new team and I want to give everyone who applies the courtesy of a real try-out.”
            “Madame Lash thanks you, Seeker,” Madame Lash says and scowls at me.
            “Hey lady,” I add, ignoring Seeker’s ongoing implications. “I’ve never even heard of you before, so don’t go giving me all that ‘tude, okay?”
            “Jesus, you are like twice the arsehole Madame Lash has heard,” the corset queen replies.
            “Heh heh, sounds like she’s got you pegged, Zeph.”
            “No seriously, ‘Don,” I say. “Don’t you think we’re going to have a little problem with a bondage fetish on the team? And in this place, don’t you think that’s a bit bizarre?”
            “You’re in all that leather and you’re sayin’ I have a fetish? Madame Lash finds that rich.”
            “Zephyr,” Seeker warns.
            “Jeez guys, can’t we all chill?” the bald guy Ash says. His face is a mask of warring emotions. “I was really pumped about these auditions, but now I’m not so sure. Shit.” He sounds like he’s gonna cry.
            “Okay, okay,” I say and put up my hands and a little of the heat goes out of the room, but even though I am grinning I feel like a total ass because there’s no way I am letting this one go, even if the others think I’ve suddenly learnt a little diplomacy. “Just tell me what your powers are, Lash baby, and I’ll relax.”
            “Powers?” she says and blinks.
            “Yeah,” I reply. “We all see the whip and that’s awesome. Ditto the cleavage. Very nice. But what can you do?”
            The others look like they want to voice a protest – Seeker looks like she wants to boil me alive – except for the fact it’s a pretty good question and Madame Lash is a bit slow to answer.
            “We already had to kick Madrigal out of here, so, like, you know, we need to know who you are and what you do, since you don’t have a reputation of your own to trade in,” I say slowly, a wiseguy despite trying to be even-handed. “How else are we gonna know you’re not some plant, you know, a Cheese agent or something?”
            “Cheese agent?” Samurai Girl frowns.
            “K.A.A.S., you know, the uh European um, death to parahumans mob?” Mastodon shrugs.
            “Kaas is Dutch for cheese,” I take my turn to say. “It’s an old joke.”
            “I’ll have to remember that.”
            Eyes swivel back to Madame Lash looking increasingly infuriated.
            “If you’re not interested in the power of my lash, then perhaps Madame Lash should take it elsewhere,” she cries and pulls the handle of the whip from her belt and unrolls the sucker and gives it a whopping great crack. Mastodon flinches and grins.
            That’s my cue for another one-liner, but instead, the air above our heads sizzles with a faintly familiar noise and then a handful of costumed figures sporting enormous grins start dropping through. I recognise the leader of the cohort almost straight away, as well as the figure beside him, and I’m on my feet quicker’n you could shit.
            “Well well,” I say loud enough to make sure my colleagues hear clearly. “If it isn’t Captain Jackass. It’s been a long time, pal. I see you brought your boyfriend.” I gesture to the crouched figure in the black bodystocking, a hockey mask on his face: Kid Kaos. “Got some new friends too though, huh?”
            “Just like you, Zephyr,” the madman says and giggles and steps forward, only the jaw of his scarred face visible beneath the spray-painted gridiron helmet he wears. “We heard you was havin’ a party. Can’t do that without inviting the Kaos Krew, Mister Zephyr! You know what I always say: you bring the babes, I’ll bring the raging boners!”
            As if on cue Jackass’s allies scatter at his gesture as another one of his portals opens up over the young trio in the middle of the room and through the hole in space-time pour a few hundred pounds of decomposing crap including bones and a decaying treacle that may or may not be dog food. Ash immediately drops to his hands and knees and starts puking, while Samurai Girl uses super-speed to evade and Madame Lash just gets the fuck out of the way like any sensible person would.
            Jackass is one of the guys who gives the supers world a bad name. With no real agenda except proving himself above the law and out for his own brand of retarded laughs, the self-styled captain exists just to piss into the wind for heroes everywhere. He adamantly refuses to play ball with some of the standard expectations of the genre, including clear distinctions between good guys and bad. He doesn’t want to take over the world – just make the rest of us look like arseholes.
            I open up with an electrical attack, but the captain teleports out of the way and the charge hits his long-time accomplice instead. Kid Kaos kicks out wildly and lands on his back twitching like a frog in a biology experiment.
            Jackass pops up from another black energy disc just inches behind Seeker, leaning his diseased chin on her shoulder and tilting his head playfully.
            “Silly me,” he yodels. “I’ve introduced myself, but not my friends.”
            He sinks back through the portal before Seeker can properly turn and nail him, and moments later the caped fuckwit reappears on the far side of the room, his companions around him.
            “Guys,” he says, “meet Zephyr and his little team. We’re inviting ourselves over to play, but I’m sure they won’t mind. They look like sports. And Zephyr, these are my new recruits: Murderboy.”
            A preppy-looking but nonetheless Emo kid runs fingerless-gloved fingers through his dyed black comb-over and turns abruptly, striking a deliberate mock model’s pose.
            “Prankster.”
            Stockier than any of the others, this guy wears a kevlar vest and heavy skate armour. A slim backpack that may or may not be a parachute and an ordinance belt with a variety of grenades and canisters jingles musically at his deliberately bad dance moves.
            “And The Drill.”
            The fifth member of the team also wears a helmet, though its like the one Red Monolith wore, complete with a tinted face visor. He pulls a pair of power drills from holsters at his sides and crosses them over his chest in a clear imitation of the skull and crossbones. The bastard then levitates into the air, head touching the ceiling some forty feet up just to show us he’s got powers in his own right.
            “Well gosh, Captain,” I say and do my own fake chuckle. “Shame you didn’t let us know you were coming. Now we’re just gonna have to kick your ass!”
            I give a roar and blaze with energy that throws the room into an electric blue focus as I launch from the floor and power straight towards my grinning nemesis.
            Sure I know that wasn’t the wittiest line in history, but this is no comic book. I hate this guy, hate everything he has ever done and hate nothing so much as the total disdain he has for how we do things here on my patch – and by that I mean the whole of Atlantic City. So once again, it’s my turn to hand this guy his asshole and show him how to wear it as a hat.
            I figure it’ll be a good training exercise for the kids.

O Condomínio Jardim Shangri-lá terá que pagar horas extras pelo trabalho em turnos ininterruptos de revezamento a vigilante que prestava serviços na condição de “folguista”, ou seja, ficava à disposição para substituir outros empregados faltosos. A Terceira Turma do Tribunal Superior do Trabalho negou provimento ao recurso de revista do Condomínio e, com essa decisão, ficou mantida a condenação decretada pelo Tribunal Regional do Trabalho da 15ª Região (Campinas, SP). O colegiado acompanhou, à unanimidade, o voto do relator, ministro Alberto Luiz Bresciani.

O relator explicou que a questão, no caso, era saber se o empregado “folguista”, que trabalhava em vários turnos, tinha direito à jornada reduzida de seis horas aplicável ao trabalho realizado em turnos ininterruptos de revezamento, nos termos do artigo 7º, XIV, da Constituição Federal. Para o ministro Bresciani, como o texto constitucional não faz ressalva quanto à natureza das funções, o fato de o empregado ser “folguista” não impede o reconhecimento do direito.

O Tribunal Regional do Trabalho da 15ª Região (Campinas, SP) condenou o Condomínio ao pagamento como extras das horas trabalhadas pelo funcionário além da sexta diária, com demais reflexos salariais, porque entendeu provado no processo o trabalho nos três turnos do dia. Para o TRT, basta que o empregado trabalhe em pelo menos dois turnos alternados, ainda que estes compreendam, no todo ou em parte, o horário diurno e o noturno, para ter direito à jornada reduzida de seis horas.

No TST, o condomínio insistiu no argumento de que a classificação da jornada como turnos ininterruptos de revezamento seria inaplicável ao vigilante “folguista”. Apresentou decisão de outro Tribunal Regional no sentido de que empregado com essa função não se enquadrava no artigo 7º, XIV, da Constituição Federal.

O ministro Alberto Bresciani analisou a revista do Condomínio por reconhecer a existência de divergência jurisprudencial. No entanto, identificou outros precedentes no TST que confirmavam a sua tese de que, preenchidos os requisitos para a caracterização do turno ininterrupto de revezamento, a atuação como “folguista” era irrelevante.

Segundo o ministro, como o “folguista” estava sempre à disposição do empregador para quando houvesse necessidade de substituição, esse ritmo de trabalho era ainda mais prejudicial à saúde do empregado. A concessão da jornada de seis horas, portanto, segue o preceito constitucional, que tem o objetivo de reduzir o desgaste do trabalhador e protegê-lo de agressões a sua saúde. (RR-751/2007-089-15-00.4)

(Lilian Fonseca)

Fonte: TST.

I will detail my heroics at the restaurant at which I work!

Well, not so much heroics, but tales of my evening at work! I had 928.00$ in sales (my record).

But this isn’t a tale of my busy close. Just a tale of confusion.

So I must have had ten kids in that ’salad bar’ (the nickname for the two tables of 8 that are sectioned off from the rest of the restaurant), throwing paper airplanes, not listening to me, not ordering, using up my good note paper instead of their colouring sheets and tipping chairs over (while on them). I actually prevented a kid from bumping his noggin! I was pretty impressed with myself. My lightning quick reflexes, as usual, saved the day! Turns out the years of crime fighting has finally paid off.

Back to the point: they order burgers. Not all of them, but at least 5.

Burgers take forever, fyi. Our Burgers are handmade in the morning, and kept in the fridge all day. They are super thick, and take 20 minutes on the grill, not including serving time. They take time. I mean, it’s a restaurant. Food takes time to cook.

So Daddy comes and complains that the food is taking forever. I explain that her ordered 14 goddamn meals (not in as many words), and five of which were hamburgers, which take 20 minutes on the grill. He tells me that they should be precooked. I told him that he should have gone to McDonald’s.

And I still managed to get a good tip.

His food was ready within the next 30 seconds anyway. If he’d only patiently waited for two more minutes, I would have had the food out.

Of course, the circus left a huge mess for me to clear. If they hadn’t tipped me, I would have been put-out. I just don’t get how you go to a restaurant, and tell your waitress that the burgers should be precooked. Oh well, I suppose that’s the job I’m in. And if I’m planning on working in an elementary/Jr. High library, I should get used to it.

Customers have a way of mystifying even the most veteran of service personel.

The clouds were grey and the sky looked bleak,
Four kids in the park playing hide and seek
When a man approached and offered them sweets
From a bag which contained a sugary feast
Of sherbert and chocolate and lollies on sticks,
The boys gathered ’round and took their picks
Before carrying on playing, hiding and counting,
Skipping and running, screaming and shouting.

They told their parents about the man in the park
Who’d given them sweets as the day had turned dark,
Their parents all panicked and started to sob
Before banding together and forming a mob.
They went to the park with rage on their minds
Weapons in hand and a sexual predator to find
And find him they did ans one boy fingered him out,
And one by one they all gave him a clout.

The police arrived to find a bloody mess
And a gang of vigilantes ready to confess,
For they’d face this together not one by one
Protecting their kids they were proud of what they’d done.

The body was ID’s as Norman Braithwaite,
He was 40 years old but his mind was just 8.
He’d escaped from his carrers home up the street
And was swinging on a swing when he was brutally beat.

VIGILANTES MASCULINO E FEMININO

• Ao longo dos anos, a empresa vem se destacando pelo alto nivel de capacitacao de seus profissionais, treinados em escolas autorizadas pelo Ministerio  da Justica, vigilantes criteriosamente selecionados que passam por constante atualizacao e treinamento, estamos sempre preparados para garantir o maximo do desempenho das funcoes.
• A empresa tambem se destaca pela tecnologia dos equipamentos de seguranca.
• Dessa forma, a COBRASEG se mostra apta a atender todas as necessidades de seus clientes com profissionalismo e, acima de tudo, responsabilidade.
• Nao e so questao de eficiencia, e o compromisso com o que realmente vale… a seguranca de sua vida em toda hora.

Profissionais Treinados e Qualificados

                

IT IS NOVEMBER 6^th, 1971. The footage is drab, so unlike the era, the shifting, turbulent crowds, the thrashing of the desperate as they choke London’s streets and their faces are a riot of the worst emotions. Anything you might care to name – horror, terror, fear, grief, anger – is stamped indelibly in the grain of the historical recording. Yet watching it, all I can think is, fuck, that’s my dad, that’s my dad and watch on in disbelief as the cavalry arrives in a psychedelic wash of lights that break like soap bubbles over the crowd.
            The four of them appear in a wave, Starkey in those terrible elastic pants he had to wear, all of them in their matching blue marching band jackets, the closest thing they ever had to a uniform since they grew out their awful fucking 60s hair, a long way from the leather-jacketed young hoods they had first been. In seconds the Wolfman transforms, hirsute top half practically hanging out of his sleeves and the open top, a feral grin on his face as he leaps from the tableau before St George has even lowered his arms from the teleport that brought them from their secret base on the Isle of White.
            Within a year, Ringo will be dead, but that doesn’t trouble him obviously as he powers through the crowd on all fours, people throwing themselves like the Red Sea out of his loping path. There had been a terrible mood in Britain that winter with the miners’ strikes and the government’s debt default and the renewed IRA bombings and the Manchester rail disaster and, like meat left in the sun, the public rage stayed cold and hard all winter and then boiled over once the warm weather arrived and the Beatles, along with the other loose change of British superdom found themselves at the front again, advocating violent social change as if by accident. And the Summer Rebellion was born, an inevitable expression of the twisted logic of metahumanity which, if not destroying them, would at least ruin any hope for the way things could’ve been.
            In the footage you can hardly see my dad’s face for the radiant smile and those stupid little glasses he wore. I can’t see that I really look anything like him. He lifts his hand to the cheering crowd as Paul shoulders past with what seems to be a look of unrestrained menace. George already has the moustache he wears today, whenever that was the last time I saw him on the news, anyway, and he and John lift from the ground and float towards where the wall of British policemen in their Saturday morning cartoon helmets are being slaughtered.
            No one seems to even remember the Spiders from Mars – Bowie’s term, if I recall. And even fewer remember what they were called until Bowie’s song came along. All anyone knew was these dark evil fuckers from outer space had been hatching inside members of Parliament for a lot longer than anyone would care to admit and it wasn’t until the Preacher, my dad, stumbled across their alien thought-waves that their conspiracy came unstuck. How much of the country’s woes at that time were down to their influence, no one could really tell. And even after the events of November 6, the people weren’t in much of a forgiving mood. The fact the ruling elite could even be vulnerable to such a threat inspired the fury of the common people, like their masters’ weakness was just a new form of an ages old betrayal.
            Ironically the news crews couldn’t get close to the action. The crowds and the retreating police, hopelessly under-armed to face such threats, carrying their dead and injured like from a terrorist attack and crying and moaning and bleeding and stoppering their wounds with little more than their handkerchiefs, they all blocked the path to the burning street where the Spiders were finally routed. There is little to see of the well-upholstered members of parliament with their heads burst open directing desperate and powerful attacks. There are white balance-destroying flashes of red as McCartney unleashes his eyebeams and another bang, the crowd reacting like a single flinching organism as a car explodes, but otherwise the cameraman’s testimony blurs softly in and out as he plays at the far extremes of his focal range.
            If you sit through the whole thing, eventually there’s this enormous ragged cheer and an hour later, a victorious procession as the four of them are carried on the crowd’s shoulders under the shadow of Big Ben, huge grins on their comfortably adored faces. I don’t have the patience for that sort of thing and my back is aching from sitting hunched at the computer and I switch off Youtube to spare my download limit and call up the web archive instead with the grainy Leibovitz photos from autumn 1972 – their last photo shoot as a powers team, taken for Rolling Stone.
            Outside the panorama windows, the city is quiet. I call it that even when I can hear the odd car horn, a distant siren, a drunk guy retching his heart out in the alley down the side. This is as close as the city ever comes to being at peace, four o’clock in the morning and the weather turning cold and sunrise still effectively a long way off and me without a cold woman to warm my bed or a child to do the same for my heart. Instead it is just me and Wikipedia as my hand trawls over the mouse sensor and the facts flick by.
            He wrote two books: one just before they went to India and one in ‘74, after the Wolfman died. And he fathered one child the world knew about. I guess I should call him my half-brother, Julian, but I can’t help wondering how many more half-brothers I have out there.
            It is a while before I realise I have closed my eyes, unconsciously asleep. That’s the mixed curse of total freedom in the postmodern. In track pants and a Starbucks tee, I stumble as far as the settee and let the darkness wash over me.
In the early premonitions of my sleep, I see myself as a baby, lifted up into the arms of a strange man with a hoary beard and small round glasses that reflect my innocent curiosity and mirror his own.

THERE IS SOMETHING appropriate about the bass throb of the wind turbines as my daughter and I land like two refugees from the postmodern astride the same Newfoundland coast on which mad Viking explorers once fumbled their colonisation so badly. Like the thirty-odd unit wind farm, we are on this squall-battered peninsula for the elevation and the isolation. And like the turbines, we are far enough from civilisation that not even the most vocal civic association could object to what we propose.
            Far to the north the land turns dark green with fir and spruce and I expect there are concrete barricades eventually as the crumbling Canadian highways head like a thwarted destiny to No-Man’s Land, the rusting watch-towers with their big-breasted, shaven-headed, woollen pullover’d guards forever on duty protecting the tiny principality from the patriarchal threats of the outside world. A cruel joke and a living irony in one breath. The pun on their name is a testament to what so many costumed freaks like myself discover: you can choose a dandy title (in the late 70s, the separatists declared they were Wimminsland), but the newspapers will ultimately decide whether or not it takes. Some grumpy sub-editor, or perhaps a legion of them, their ire multiplied, eyeing the gap in the headline or the cadence of some inferior cub reporter’s sentence and deciding to rewrite the course of history in a clatter of keystrokes.
            Here on this pulsing scarp we are safe from any threat and small enough not to present one on the separatists’ Cuban-supplied radar. If there are blobs, they do not tell the story of a father simply trying to do the best thing by his child.
            Windsong is a name the media have taken to with a fury. In her mask and vandalised leather jacket, Tessa is as much a stranger as any teenage daughter could ever be, the disaffected teenager par excellence. Yet she has a knowing wink for me and flushed cheeks that belie great expectations. We are both of us “leathered up,” as she put it, spare civvies in a Dulce & Gabana shoulder bag her mother bought as a surreptitious divorce present, a way of letting Tessa know things were only looking up with the deadweight dad out of the picture. I have mine stashed in the flat panel of the back of my jacket. The screwed-on plates of the stylised zed, now in gold, on advice from my new publicist, mist over with the cold, but I don’t feel it and Tessa tells me it’s the same for her. We are built to withstand such lesser things. We are in our environment.
            “You know, when I was a child –”
            “A child who knew I was Zephyr,” I say.
            “Yes,” Windsong slowly exhales. “When I was a child, when I was eight or something, I went through a long patch thinking you were gonna leave us.”
            “You must find this ironic.”
            “Dad,” she fumes.
            “Let’s practise,” I reply. “Zephyr, remember?”
            “Okay.”
            “Why did you think I was going to leave?” I relent and ask. “Because I was Zephyr?”
            “No,” Windsong replies. “You know I said it was never a conscious thing, understanding you were Zephyr. It’s only the past few years, you know, that I was hiding from mum that I knew.”
            “Just as well,” I say. “Being a kid, knowing that sort of thing? I dunno.” In my head I imagine a quick thousand-odd scenarios where my secret ID could’ve been compromised. Most of them are during the school Christmas concert.
            “It’s not a good thing,” I say at last. “A kid could spent their life worrying I wouldn’t come home, some of the things I’ve done.”
            Windsong bites her lip and says nothing. A light breeze stirs and I know it is my baby weather-controller testing out her powers, flexing her muscles, so to speak, now we are far away from prying eyes. My other super sense – the one attuned to my role as a parent – tells me I have stifled whatever point she was trying to make. I snap my mouth shut and contemplate for perhaps the hundredth time this morning that having a split life really is more than just a very obvious metaphor. I fear what a psychiatrist would think, observing that I could be such very different people with and without the mask. Tessa desperately needs training if she is going to persist in flying out her bedroom window at night looking to thwart bad guys. So ironic that we’re finally here, it’s Zephyr-her-dad she needs more than anything.
            So I peel off the mask. The spirit gum leaves gunky pores, but no actual telltale residue. If there’s someone gunning for me with a telephoto lens then I’m about fucked, right about now, though in all likelihood its just us and the seals down on the rocks. The air is cold enough it seems to congeal in the swirls and eddies Tessa makes rise up from the damp and silent earth, brief glimpses of shapes appearing and disappearing in the mist.
            “Is that you doing that?”
            “Yeah,” she says, seemingly as astounded as I. “Never tried before. Hell, I don’t even think I’ve been out in the cold like this with my, you know, powers before. I just wondered if it could be done and, well, there you are.”
            “Not sure it has a combat application,” I grin.
            She looks up and notices for the first time I have demasked. Her face contorts with caution, but she says nothing.
            “You were going to tell me why you worried I would leave,” I say softly.
            “Because of me.” The voice is small, the gaze turned away. Tessa removes her own mask and dabs at a sudden tear that has come from nowhere.
            “You?” I give half a laugh of surprise, confusion, affection. “You? Baby, half the things I did, back in those days at least, I did because of you. I wanted my little girl to be proud. It was one of the frustrations of my life that I couldn’t share this with you. I’m glad those days are behind us.”
            “Even if it means I have powers?”
            “Yeah,” I shrug, surrendering to the observation.
            I’m still not thrilled to see Tessa going into the wrong side of the family business. Judging by the chauffeured town car that comes and drops her off for her twice weekly visit, my wife Beth made the better call when it comes to professions. We shared an interest in the law initially – her as a student and later practitioner, and me as a guy who dresses up in gaudy outfits and beats on villains – and that wore thin over time.
            Windsong replaces her mask the same way I do – it’s one of mine, after all – two fingers pressing it in place either side of her brow. The transformation into young adult is miraculously complete. Last time I glimpsed her on the NBN news I instinctively checked out her cans, her stocky childhood legs fast thinning out and hope not for any starvation diet. Although I am in good health – miraculously so, given the events of the past month – my own obsolescence is dawning on me the more I am confronted by my replacement.
            “I used to think you would resent me,” Windsong says at last. The words tumble free in a rush that I recognise from my own habits, it’s a sudden confession. Her face is turned away so I can’t see if her masked eyes still water.
            “Why?”
            “Well you’ve got to admit it, dad,” she says and gives a throaty laugh, wiping her face with the back of her fingerless gloves. (They’re a little bit Young Madonna, but I don’t have the heart to tell her. Kids will be kids and I can recall stomping around for a year in Maxine’s high heels pretending to be Gene Simmons at one stage, though admittedly I was a lot younger than fifteen). “No one could blame you if you had masculinity issues.”
            “Really?” I say, like this is a revelation to me.
            “Well, take a quick check: you grew up thinking your father was a gay sperm donor and you were raised by two dykes. You knocked up your childhood sweetheart when she was, what, eighteen? And rather than be the bread-winner, because of the whole costume thing, it was mum who went on to graduate law school and bring in the income. I thought one day you would be looking after me and something would happen, some urgent call, and you just wouldn’t come back. Like I just didn’t matter.”
            There’s silence for a moment, but not for long. It’s not like me to let such feelings linger.
            “And did I?”
            “No,” and she laughs softly, a commiseratory sound. “No, you always did.”
            “Better still, babe, there were plenty of times the police scanner went off and we couldn’t get a sitter or it wasn’t your day at kindy and I just watched it on the news. I just left it, let guys like Mastodon and the Wavemaster and Aquanaut and, that other guy, the guy with the fucking horns. . . .”
            “Capricorn.”
            “Ha, you know your shit, don’t you?”
            Windsong laughs. “Put your mask on old man. You sound like Zephyr again.”|
            As I comply, I give a wry smile and watch Windsong roll her arms around like she has any idea of what a warm-up is. We flew here from Atlantic City and I clocked her top speed at just under four hundred mph. Not a dash on mine. Still not a warm-up, to my mind.
            “So are you ready to get this show on the road?”
            “Yep,” she nods, and starts pulling back her hair from her heart-shaped face. “Combat training 101. That’s what I want, Zephyr.”
            “No, honey, that’s what you need,” I reply. “I saw you trash that jewellery store heist on CNN on Tuesday. That guy with the crowbar almost had you.”
            Her face pales as she realises she’s been busted.
            “You . . . saw that?”
            “I sure did,” I say without much of the amusement I feel. “You’re lucky I didn’t tell your mother.”
            “She’d only blame my visits with you.”
            “Exactly,” I say back. “Why do you think it’s our secret?”
            “Thanks, dad,” Windsong says through lowered lashes in the true tones of the abashed teenager she is. “I appreciate it.”
            “You owe me,” I reply. “And payback starts here.”
            She looks up. There’s fire and determination in her eyes, though unfortunately not a whiff of experience. I make a slow lunge with my hand lit up like a birthday cake and rather than defend herself, Tessa just wrinkles up that cute snub nose of hers and I think she’s about to say “Dad!” in her best irritable teenager voice. And then she’s launching backward courtesy of a significant but low voltage shock.
            Windsong lands fifteen feet away and doesn’t move. The idiocy of my grin drips steadily off my face until, with concern, I hurry forward to check I haven’t hurt her too badly.
            And walk straight into her attack.

          Americans seem to never get enough of vigilante justice. From the Boston Tea Party to Batman lurking in the shadowy alleys of Gotham City, something about vigilante justice makes our ears perk up with interest. Maybe it’s the thought that the Everyman can act outside of the law if he believes he is working for the right cause. But who can say that their ideas of truth and justice are more correct than the next man’s. The line between lone vigilante and crazed terrorist is no longer as clear as we would like to think it is.

            Gerard Butler stars as the stand up father and husband Clyde Shelton who is violently forced to watch his wife and child be raped and brutally murdered in a home invasion. When the perpetrators are apprehended, hotshot prosecutor Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) is forced to give one of the criminals a more lenient sentence because he was more cooperative and set up his cohort to take his fall.

            Fast forward ten years in the future. The man who once got away with murder is now found resting in pieces on Mr. Shelton’s property.  But instead of denying his involvement with the murder Clyde Shelton admits his guilt with a certain nonchalance that is creepy just to watch. He proposes that Nick either fix the flawed justice system or key people in the trial of my family’s killers will die. When Shelton begins to follow through with these threats, Philadelphia becomes gripped with the fear that a man who is already detained and apprehended could be orchestrating mass murder from his jail cell.

            The term screw top movie from which we take our name fits this film to a tee. By definition a screw top is a movie where you just screw off the top of skull. Then take out your brain and set it on the seat next to you. Then just enjoy your movie! While this could be an entertaining movie the plot is based on elements that are rather far-fetched and often just hard to believe. The amount and volume of action packed killings in this movie may appeal the lowest tenth percentile of movie viewers but logical thought about law enforcement and justice just falls through the cracks. Take the eight dollars that you would have spent on this ticket and take it to Blockbuster and rent “Falling Down”. It conveys the same idea but with better acting and less silly violence.

As many of you may (or may not, more likely) know, we have a midterm on Monday.

SURPRISE

I’ll bet that everyone who knows is particularly impressed, and is so very excited to spend their weekend cramming. I know I didn’t have any plans whatsoever, so it’s not like this will be infringing on my time working, or hanging out with my friends, or fulfilling prior obligations, or fighting crime. NOPE, NOT ALL ALL.

Now, I know I’m being pretty mean just there, but I feel absolutely disrespected. One of the first things that Tae Kwon Do taught me is to have courtesy for everyone. Be respectful. And when I became an instructor myself, that again was drilled into my brain: to respect my students. Be fair with them, you are here to teach them. They are not here to be taught by you. So you can imagine why I feel like Brian has zero respect for us, not even bothering to tell us that we have a mid-term on monday.

The date isn’t even written down on the syllabus.

I’m still not 100% that it’s going to happen. I found out via rumor, right? It’s all the news on facebook and whatnot, which makes sense. One person found out about it (I don’t know HOW) and didn’t want the rest of us to get screwed, so passed the message on in a medium that most of us use. That’s where I found out.

Now, I’m never one to waste a weekend cramming when I don’t have to, so I promptly emailed Brian to find out if our test will indeed be monday. If I don’t hear back from him, as far as I’m concerned, this MidTerm isn’t happening. If he emails me back, and confirms it, I’ll post it here and on the wiki.

Sit for long enough at your desk at home and the sounds from below become familiar to the point that you learn to identify a neighbour’s faint mumble, the rumble of wheelie bins towed to the kerb or even the Woodpecker’s toc-toc-toc-ing a dying Ash.

As I was reading about yesterday’s boy-in-the-box-not-in-a-helium-balloon sensation, a man-in-a-van stopped outside and pulled out a set of ladders. I watched from my first-floor window as he reached up to position a yellow sign but realised I couldn’t quite make out its writing so grabbed a pair of binoculars that are kept at hand to spot any impending mischief around here.

I peered through the glasses and the words Neighbourhood Watch came into focus. I was .. watching the neighbourhood.

God, it felt great to be here. Looking and listening, sharp as a razor, athletic and honed, on guard, on my toes and and prepared like a scout: This eagle-eyed citizen spy maintaining his surveillance from the safe-house, a sentinel in the canopy, a lookout scanning the horizon from his cliff-top lighthouse. I was Jimmy Stewart sitting by a front window and it smelled like .. victory. Oh, yes!

*

Three months before. A summer dawn, 4.15am and there are noises downstairs. An elbow has nudged my ribs awake and very slowly, I realise there is someone halfway up the stairs. And it’s not one of us.

I don’t notice the glass in my bare feet as I pad along the carpet, nor the last faint disturbance from outside when I pad sleepily through the ground floor. Nor does it occur to me why there is a faint cool draught blowing through the living room or that the shattered aperture punched through the double-glazed window panel might be anything more than a sleep-walking collision.

Lights are on and my wife is standing in the doorway holding a tennis racket, a grimace of adrenalin and fear in her face as if she’s about to fight for her life .. on Centre Court.

*

The man was from Lambeth’s Graffiti Squad and had been up since four-fifteen too, patrolling the borough for graffiti and fly-posters. Later, when his team are out themselves scraping and steaming the offending street art off, he can be found gauging his verticals with a spirit level at lamp post 7.

“I’m pleased because stopping this makes a difference to the community,” he beams, “it sends out a message to everyone.”

I tell him I was eye-balling him through an eye-glass – y’know, being suspicious, which is pretty .. comical, didn’t he think? He shrugged and quickly added how many he’d put up yesterday and how his granddaughter wants to study Forensic Science at Cambridge – to ‘do her degrees’ – and I thought of the young lady SOCO who came to dust our woodwork with aluminium powder and found .. Nought. We on the other hand, now imagine breaking glass every night.

I am the Warden, I am the Watchman, goo goo g’joob.

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I love this story. Seems there was a bit of road rage between Apache Junction’s Vice Mayor and his son in a pick-up truck, and a biker and his wife on, yes, a motorcyle. Whatever took place culminated in the mayor, R.E. Eck, bumping into the back of the motorcycle at a stop sign. Seems it was done purposely as some sort of “lesson” to the biker, after the mayor smacked into the back of the bike, the mayor’s son exited the passenger side of the truck, armed with a pipe. The son approached the biker, who then disarmed the mayor’s son and punched him twice in the face, then walked back to the truck and punched the mayor in the face. The mayor then smacked into the back of the bike again, knocking it over and causing the biker’s wife to fall off and be injured. Charges against the mayor and his son for various forms of assault  have been recommended by law enforcement officials. 

I’m on team biker. What a prick the mayor and his son are. So sad, they were safe and sound in their sturdy pick-up truck, indignant over someone else’s behavior – so much so that they are gonna teach him a lesson using deadly force – and then they get dealt with. Accordingly. Wonder why the mayor didn’t just call the cops to report the allegedly bad driving of the biker? I guess that’s just not as much fun as vigilante rage.

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