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A Night Right Yank
#4.B Nat Star—Timejacker!
The white Crown Vic had crept through Dundalk at low speed, the Sergeant seemingly leery of attracting attention, now behaving as the criminal—if in uniform—he had described. Nat loved that hat, the brass CSA cavalry sabers crossed on the Stetson with the starry bar band. But, well, he just blurted it, “Major, Sir, the hat… ah, ugh…”
“Spit it out, trooper,” growled the Major.
“Um, ah—it will scare off the…”
Sergeant Crook grinned, “Sir, Agent Star here—for his demographic alacrity has already earned him that keen station—is tip toeing around the fact that your hat may frighten off such benighted Sons of Darkness as we do seek.”
The Major reluctantly unsaddled his hat as Sergeant Crook turned the Crown Vic right off of Sollers Point onto Barclay. The Major spat, and grumbled, “A baby crib, what to rock a buck nig ta sleep as well! I almost miss Pappa Crock—a right and proper savage.”
‘This feels so real, too real—I should be waking up.’
The Sergeant was observing him in the mirror, and, seeming to read his thoughts, cut short his reverie, a trick of the dream phantom to keep him asleep, tripping or whatever, maybe strapped to a gurney being revived…
“Agent Star, this is REAL—as real as real gets. Eye on the ball, Son. We are looking for a man with a guitar, a well pigmented example of his kind in black slacks, platform shoes and a pink suit jacket with powder blue tie, wearing a fedora, of course.”
The pawn shop and the Box N’ Save were to the left, the sound wall straight ahead as the car banked ominously left onto Dundalk Avenue, like a great four-wheeled tiger. Perhaps jarred to trunk-bound action, the forgotten man in the trunk began thumping and mumble-ranting, rocking the back of the car. The Major frothed into a red-faced rage, twisted in his seat, reached around, drew his Bowie knife from the belt curled up behind his seat, as the Sergeant cautioned, “Easy, Sir, easy now…”
“You whining son of a bitch!” snarled the Major as he thrust his knife into the seat back, cut a deep U, inserted his left hand savagely as he squirmed about in a spasm of apish vitality, and ripped out the seat back. He then squirmed more deeply, pressing off the dashboard with his snakeskin boots, handed Nat the knife, growled like some big dog, and with his big hands tore through whatever backed the seat into the trunk. The gagged man could be heard mumbling more frantically. A beam of bright hate shone in the Major’s blue eyes under those blonde and silver brows. Enraged, he snarled, “We offered ye a berth, coward, ta atone fer ye sin! Yankee scum!” snarled the Major more deeply, as both of his arms disappeared into the seat back. A frantic mumble was heard—and, the Major’s shoulders twisted and something snapped sickeningly in the back!
Nat’s eyes got big and were met by the Major’s baleful glare, which dimmed to a smoldering blue. The long big armed man then grumbled, “Apologies. A young fella’s first witness to death should not be such a craven-cruel event.”
The Major stuffed the seat back in place, nodded to the knife and belt and said with a solemn integrity, “Get me that night right yank under yon tin roof.”
The Major hauled himself with a twist that was unusually supple for such an old big man, back into the seat, placed his hat upon his head as the car pulled over to a bus stop that was occupied by the previously described relic of the 1970s. The man was in his 60s at least, was holding an electric guitar with a frayed amp cord dangling from it, looking like one of the Parliament Funkadelics!
“No way,” blurted Nat.
“Yes way,” assured Crook, “To it, Son. On the double!”
Nat slid the .45 behind his waist band, under that old brown belt that had belonged to Grand Pap Keeley out in Cumberland, thought about getting out and around, but instead slid over to the Major’s slicker and felt grays, picked up the stacked folds of creased uniform, opened the passenger side rear door, stepped out, noting that his Motor Head T-shirt was pulling on the handgun behind his belt, and said to the astonished black man, “We need a wardrobe man, Sir. I’m Nat, Nat Star—we’re a man short.”
The old fellow seemed struck dumb, his eyes lit with amazed but wary intelligence. So Nat nodded at that lonely guitar across his lap, noting that the man’s face was hard lined and reluctantly hopeful, “We could use a guitar player.”
“Damned buck wranglin’ always rankles the soul,” grumbled the Major.
But the old fellow was standing and coming forward.
Nat held the door open as the man slid in suspiciously, “I recall y’all from da bus—wutch y’all boost a car, rob a bank?”
Crook split a grin, “Da Playa From Da Himalaya! We had to come back for a second act. How about you throw in with us?”
“Shieet, Honky—whad a Pimp wanna trow in wit y’all cracka crew fo?”
Nat tried not to disrespect the belt and weapons with his tennis shoed feet. In so doing, he noted that he had sheathed the knife half-assed and backwards, some blade exposed above the brown leather. The guitarist noted too, with one raised brow.
Nat had shut the door and the Sergeant was pulling off, as he suggested, “Major?”
The big man took off his hat and handed it to Nat as he turned and looked with cold eyes of ice blue into the cagey old guitarist’s amber brown eyes, eyes that blinked but remained open. The tableaux was of a wolf and a snake searching each other’s depths for a common thirst to slake.
The Major’s voice was dead serious, “I’m a hunter. I need a scout, a guide—a hound; a hound what hunts by sight, by smell, by the crackle of musketry, and by the Devil’s own damned bell.”
The old guitarist looked to Nat, who he seemed to trust on instinct, “Dis shit fo real?”
Nat nodded, “Yes,” tapping the hat for emphasis.
The guitar player then met the Major’s eyes steadily and asked, “Whad’s in id fo me?”
“One hell of a rough ride,” answered the Major.
The car was cruising easily down Dundalk Avenue towards Turner Station and Water’s Edge, to cross Sollers Point again. This realization, this precise course, in the mind of a worldly teenager who had spent long hours exploring by bus the world he had planned on escaping from home and school to since he was 13, impressed him, that a dream this might not be.
“En who is you, big-ass honky?”
The blue eyes lit like coals again as the mustached mouth split in a grin over the blonde point of beard, “Major Shayne Pitt, Texas Rangers, Confederate States of America.”
The man had short straightened hair under his black fedora, something coming to wicked life in his amber eyes as he squinted and coaxed, “En what mighd yo serious-as-a-heart-attack ass be huntin’?”
“Niggers,” answered the Major.
The guitar player smiled like a beacon, his teeth still good after all those years, and extended his hand, long fingered and leathery, “Count me in—I hates me niցցers, done me nuffin’ but wrong all dese triflesome years!”
The two men shook hands. The old guitarist seemed to grow younger by a decade, assuring the Major, “Curtis Green! Have I got a herd fo y’all ta hunt!”
Nat was now utterly convinced, that with the perfect race traitor sidekick on board, that this was definitely a dream, probably his last, perhaps one he would never wake from.
The white Crown Vic rode low, like a boat, what with two men in the back and two bigger ones stuffed in the trunk. The Sergeant sang, “From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli!”
‘This is too fucking cool—do not wake up.’
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posted: November 3, 2024   reads: 43   © 2024 James LaFond
In The World #2
Grunt Role Playing Game Body Actions #4. A
Below are resolution methods for the types of tasks that ancient warriors would face. Some more modern or fantastical tasks will be covered under Mind and Spirit. Any task that is not here, that the players or GM regard as physical, like flying a plane, driving a car or riding a motorcycle or mountain bike, I encourage those people to make up rules based on these models. At the bottom of this section under strongman stunts and diving, I have suggested an alternative use of the 1d6, that, it is hoped, will suggest another tool for some development innovations on the part of the players.
Body Actions
The 3 Body Abilities combine to 3-18 points for 1d20 action attempts. They are also used for specific 1d6 checks
Strength: factoring damage, checking for injury, determining load limit
Stamina: vigorous actions per day, rounds of un-impeded action, exhaustion
Agility: limiting blunders, avoiding/reducing damage
Marching: The distance one can cover on foot per day ranges up to 30 miles. To arrive at a maximum distance on a given day, add the Body & Spirit scores, including mania factors, subtract a roll 1d20, then divide the distance marched by 1 for level road, round it down for easy track, divide by 2 for rough track, divide by 3 for trackless & broken terrain and divide by 4 for trackless rugged terrain.
Running
Simple
A messenger is sent to run for a day. This is a function almost exclusively of stamina. Rate his daily base run ability at 3XStamina, for a range of 3-18 miles. Have him check for additional miles by doing a Strength and Agility check, with the margin over the score subtracting form the mileage and the 1d6 difference under the 1-6 scores adding that much to the mile distance. If the runner makes both of these checks, then permit him to attempt an heroic run by doing an Animism check, and applying the die difference in the same way.
[An example of running skill use will be given under Mind, or, might have been, had not Fate averted my eyes when I woke to write and rolled a 20. I believe I was thinking of the Athenian runner who died after delivering his message concerning the battle of Marathon. It was said he spoke with a god upon the way from Sparta in a previous run.]
Interactive
A race is simple, with an even start. But for pursuit of foes, establish a lead for the fleeing foe. For instance, if Achilles is running down some doomed Trojan hero, who has a 9 Body, with his 18 body, and they both roll a 9, then Achilles has gained 9 [of whatever measure the GM sees fit, be it strides, stades, days if it is a long hunt, etc.] and the poor Trojan improves not a wit. If the Trojan rolled a 3, gaining 6 against his potential of 9, and Achilles rolled an 18, then that lucky fellow has made some distance.
Climbing
Establish a difficulty from 1 to 6.
For every number of difficulty the climber must make a specific ability check.
1st point of difficulty requires an overall Body Check, a 1d20 against the 3-18 score. You are now climbing.
Next, by stages, you must make the following 1d6 checks. If you fail 1, you must now re-roll your successful Body Check, or fall.
2nd point of difficulty, also requires a Wit check to determine if the climber picked the right path/method.
3rd point of difficulty, also requires an Agility check.
4th point of assent peril, also requires a Strength check.
5th point of assent peril, also requires a Stamina check.
6th point of assent peril, an icy cliff at night, requires an Animism check.
Falls damage the character like so, 1 point per every level of difficulty, plus a check against his best body ability, Strength, Stamina or Agility, with 1d20, with him also sustaining the difference between a roll higher than that ability—Yikes! If he rolls lower, then he has caught himself somehow and the difficulty damage is reduced by whatever the lower die difference is, and the monkey can keep climbing. Any fall that does not kill the character increases his Body Mania [Discord] and Pathos by 1.
Jumping
The distance to be jumped is determined.
20s fail no matter how easy, and 1s succeed against all odds.
A standing jump is done by a Body check, with a successful check indicating the covering of a distance equal to the Body score, plus any negative difference in the roll and score, or minus any positive difference between roll and score.
A Running Jump is done in the same fashion, except, the Overall Body ability is added. So, if Achilles rolls a 2, for a 16 die difference, it is added to his 18, for a new world record by a foot of 34 feet.
Stalking
Hunting a man or beast, by day or night, by sound, sight and scent, requires full body integration, intelligence and instinct. This ability includes hiding and ambushing and sentry removal. To get close enough to strike or shoot, or be able to avoid the enemy’s stroke or shot, a stalking score is determined:
Stalking score: Body + Discord [Body Mania] + Wit + Animism = STALK
Skill Note
The stalk skill permits the addition of Wit and Animism, from outside the Body suite, to be added.
The stalk of both parties is compared, with the normal range around 10 but master stalkers such as Liver-eating Johnson, Body 14 + Discord 5 + Wit 5 + Animism 5 = 29 may approach or even exceed 30.
Let’s say Liver-eater is stalking a gunslinger with his same scores. The gunslinger, since he does not have the stalking skill, only uses his body score of 14 for the hunt.
Liver-eater rolls a 16, which would have failed if he was not an experienced tracker.
The gunslinger rolls a 13.
Liver-Eater’s die difference is13 to the gunslinger’s 1, for a difference of 12. The 1st point gives Liver-Eater an advantage. The 2nd point gives the gunslinger a disadvantage. The remaining 10 points are applied to damage against the gunslinger, IF Liver-eater strikes him on his first stroke or shot, of which he will get two chances, as he has an Advantage re-roll.
Pathos is not factored in stalking, yet may be affected.
A person who succeeds in a stalk, ambush, hunt, in this way, gains a Discord Body Mania point and a Pathos point, as this teaches a lot, as does climbing.
Riding
Riding a horse is physical.
You must have the horsemanship skill.
[Skills are discussed in more detail under Mind.]
A body check is made to determine if the beast will perform it’s best for you.
If you do not have the horsemanship skill, this is done at a disadvantage, re-rolling a success. One may learn to ride a horse in this way, becoming a horseman after succeeding in this trial by era 6 times minus your Knit ability score. That is right, a man with a 6 Knit will learn very quickly.
Once one is riding, how fast one goes is up to the horse, who has a body rating and is run like a man. In the case of a horseback fight, horse race, etc., the horsemen first make a Knit check to see if they get an advantage and then make a Body check to see if they incur a disadvantage.
Driving
A chariot team is handled in the same way. But rather then a Knit check for advantage, the driver makes a Kit check.
Skying
Using skies is done like handling a chariot, except the character’s own body, rather than a horse’s is used for the Body check.
Rowing
Working at the oars requires a Body Check with a Strength check to determine if there is an advantage and a Stamina check to determine a disadvantage.
Sailing
Sailing, that is handling the sails and operation of a sailing vessel, not piloting or navigating, calls for a Body Check with an Agility Check to determine Advantage and a Stamina check to determine disadvantage.
Advantage and Disadvantage
Both of the competing crews at the sails, at the oars, might generate advantages and disadvantages. In such cases, these numbers cancel each other out until only one player, or neither, has an advantage or disadvantage. Disadvantages cancel rival Disadvantages. Advantages cancel rival Advantages.
So, if Olaf at the oars has 3 advantages and 1 disadvantage in his pursuit of Loki working his oars across the Baltic, who has 2 advantages and 1 disadvantage, then neither player has a disadvantage and Olaf has 1 advantage. This is done to quicken play. In some special episodes, involving great peril, or which perhaps represent a terminal manhunt, the GM might want to have the characters retain all the Advantages and Disadvantages to increase play length and suspense.
Wielding
The characters are all regarded as fighting men, able to use hand weapons. Particular Kit based weapon skills are limited to dueling and shooting.
Using any weapon or tool or object in hand-to-hand combat requires a body check for success. If one has made a body check they have struck the foe.
The wielder must possess a strength score equal to the weapon strength requirement [WSR], or damage is reduced by the negative difference. If a scribe with a strength of 0 uses a war ax which requires a 3, then his damage is reduced by 3, which happens to be the WD of the war ax.
Damage is factored like so: Strength + Knit + Weapon Damage [WD] = Damage. Example: Achilles Strength +6, Knit +6, + 3 spear = 15.
From this, Sarpedon’s armor of 3 and agility of 3, reduced the stroke to 9 damage. Sarpendon had a 4 Strength, 3 Stamina and 3 Agility, for 10 points, so that unhappy hero stands at Death’s door, with 1HP, where he may keenly appreciate the attention of the starving stray dogs that will come out at night to feast upon his barely living body. An indulgent GM might have some wench drag him off to the camp follower’s tents to repair him.
I got ahead here: all this damage stuff will be covered with proper nuance in Chapter 5. In combat Achilles will have a chance to knock Sarpendon over and deliver a stroke. I have gotten ahead of the design here and have given a partially accurate example of combat, that is also incomplete. This paragraph above is retained as a developmental example. As I am unable to develop these rules, I am retaining some “muddy” superseded mechanics, for the player/developer.
The damage equation is:
Damage: Strength+Weapon+Knit
Minus: Armor+ Agility
Equals damage sustained, placing offense in the assent where it should be and leaving open a Knit-based damage reduction option for a fighter who focuses on defensive weapon use.
Agility/Knit Note
There was an option, in the first draft, suggested above for agility being withheld from combat to be used for defense. Agility should remain as a basic ability to evade damage. The option should, and will, under specific rules for combat instead use the Knit ability, being withheld from potential damage, to guard against potential damage, achieving play balance, it being the odd factor in the 3 to 2 damage verse protection equation.
Upon review of these rules, it seems important to use agility as a standard damage reduction against the strength damage, with armor against weapon, which still grants the knit advantage to offense over defense. This Knit factor may be countered, as described later under Combat, by using the weapon for defense, as a kind of armor.
The context in which a weapon is wielded, varies from duel, battle, brawl, stalk, skirmish, rout and capital punishment. In some cases both do damage, in others one or the other.
Lifting, Bending & Breaking
Rolling high with 1d6 is the method here used.
These are strict strength tasks, with a task rating of 1-13 against the strength score of the hero. If Achilles, with a 6 strength wishes to move a boulder rated at 9, he must roll a 3 or better. Note that a 13 object is immovable or unbreakable by a man, unless one rolls a 1. Miracles will be covered in more detail in Chapter 5.
Throwing
A body check is made to strike the target. An evasively moving or cover-using target must be hit at a Disadvantage. A target moving forward or away is done without advantage or disadvantage. A still target in the open is targeted at an Advantage. Damage is factored by adding strength, weapon & knit and reduced by armor and agility. Weapons that are thrown are thrown directly by hand, without rotating: spears, lances, javelins, darts, rocks.
Hurling
Hurled weapons rotate, or are thrown in rotation: like, axes, hatchets, hammers, knives, bolos, etc. These weapons, to be thrown without damage reduction, require a Knit check. If this check is failed, the damage is reduced by the positive die difference.
Slings require possession of a specific skill. The damage of this weapon is a flat expression of the slinger’s strength, like a bow.
Swimming
Requires a Knit check to learn and is accomplished with a Body Check. Swimming while encumbered, like Beowulf, or in averse situations, like Alexander’s men swimming the Danube by night in armor with inflated and stuffed tent canvas, may be replicated according to the climbing or strength method, whichever the GM thinks most closely simulates the action.
Diving
Diving is the opposite of climbing and is simulated in the very same way, by assigning a difficulty rating to the dive. Succeeding in operating under water, requires a successful body check, then the graduated difficulty checks as in climbing. Success of a new crisis diver brings skill.
Notes
Some of the mechanics from this section will be expanded to play out chases, battle routs and posse pursuits in Chapter 5. Likewise, leadership and inspiration, effecting more than a single hero, will be covered under Mind and Spirit. Skill development and use will be fully covered under Mind.
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posted: November 2, 2024   reads: 52   © 2024 James LaFond
‘Statesville’
From a Heavy Gravity Planet #1
Writing From a Heavy Gravity Planet.
As I detrained far above the Joliet streets, I could tell that the backpack and cane were not ergonomic, that I was close to a back sprain and that my left hip was in distress. Gingerly down the long concrete stairs, I moved so slow that Dan and I missed each other. Returning inside as he returned outside, meeting under the boxy brick arch, we shook hands and he relieved the gimp of the tiny burden wrecking the wan frame with one bear paw of a hand.
Dan no longer lives in Joliet, where he spent his first ten years or so. Nor does he live where the family moved to, but part way between Joliet and Plainfield. He expressed a driven desire to drive me by the place where he grew into a youth, where he had lived a wonder-filled life as a boy: now Statesville Prison. This ominous early 20th century dungeon is surrounded by a rectangular road grid and overlooked by two water towers, with “Statesville” stamped ominously upon them.
We take two circuits around the Statesville State Prison with Dan giving the tour with all of the eye for extant and extinct detail common to the man who introduces a friend to his boyhood haunts, noting what is the same, what has changed, and pointing solidly at those aspects which remain only in memory. His narration is a mix of socio-political deadpan, such as the fact that corrections officials from countries as far off as Sweden toured the prison in its former incarnation as Joliet Federal Penitentiary, as “a model prison” to be replicated around the nation and around the world.
These fascinating details will be reserved for Dan’s recollections had at his dining room table some day later this week, in one of two chapters, earmarked for this, the one on growing up on a federal prison farm or the one about his father’s term as Chief Engineer at that facility. The ancient institution of resident functionaries, whose family also reside on the property is, I think, is now limited to a small number of cemetery caretakers. Even this is almost gone in America. Dan’s experience as a prison farm tyke ended in 1980 perhaps a decade or two ahead of that practice. One supposes that children living upon a federal job site is now clearly against various federal laws, except perhaps on military base housing, or wherever the Puppet-in-chief is stored off stage.
At a crucial point in Dan’s automotive retrospective, he turned his white work truck around at the mouth of the very driveway to his childhood house, a house yet lived in, with one metallic painted minivan in the driveway. A great spreading tree, an oak or a maple—I forgot to check the leaves and can’t identify any other type of leaf other than an aspen—shaded an idyllic grass yard. The center piece of this perfectly flat play space is a well. I asked Dan, “Is that an actual functioning well?”
“Oh, no,” he smiles, “Decorative. Good thing it’s not, because I fell into it and got busted up!”
The spreading smile, overshadowed by sad commemorative eyes, split Dan’s thick bristle beard of crimson-tinted brown as he said, “It was a good place to grow up. I was friends with the sons of the other prison officials—there was a huge house on the other side of this lot. There was a building over there where the horses were stabled on the ground floor and the guards were stationed on the second floor. We would go feed the horses sugar cubes… Most of the farmland has been sold off… those subdivisions over there, was crop land, the prison was entirely self sufficient. The trustees, guys with six months or less left, who hadn’t killed anybody, would come cut the grass. My Mom would find me playing catch with these criminals out in the yard and call me in…”
And Dan reluctantly turned the wheels of his work truck and took us away from his yesterday.
Various byways were taken out of Joliet, even along Route 66, where he pointed to a “Kicks” ice cream shop, with statues of painted blues singers in black suits and hats posed in stop motion above a white painted block building of tiny proportions. Dan pointed right, “We went to that ice cream place when we were kids and still take our kids there.”
Pointing left, “Those houses are all fuckin’ Mexicans now—you have the occasional shooting here. Down to the left is the only boxing gym outside of Chicago. I checked it out. It’s just for Mexican kids. Some African Olympic boxer from some country opened a gym a few years back, I think right before Covid, and it didn’t last a year.”
As we drove towards his home along the broad, easy streets, surrounded by cornfields and subdivisions that used to be farmland, Dan points to a pond with a fountain between the boulevard and a postmodern condo subdivision, “State Natural Resources stocks this with fish. There is a guy in a wheelchair who fishes here. You’re allowed to fish these ponds. I always loved fishing, had some fantastic experiences up in Wisconsin. I just can’t get excited about fishing in a retention pond. Unless you are fishing in Southern Illinois were it is hilly and the glaciers didn’t flatten it out, down by the Shawnee National Forest, you wouldn’t even want to keep any fish you caught in Illinois. The rivers are low and slow and filled with truegreen and chemlawn runoff. There is a cool chain of lakes up by the Wisconsin border, which is a lot more like Wisconsin. But other than that and the south, Illinois is so suburban, even in the agricultural areas, with farmland being sold off for subdivisions, that sports fishing is not a thing.”
We return past many an automotive repair shop or garage, with Dan informing me that I will be meeting the owner of one of these shops on Saturday, at a house party he is holding. Entering the driveway where we so spry-like trained and sparred 14 months ago, before my misstep into bio-mechanical oblivion, Dan again hefted my 30 pound world in his heavy hand and led me through his garage, up into the kitchen, down into the 2nd of the 4 split levels of his nice “lived in” house, to this tiny guest room. This room is often used for his visiting twin granddaughters, who lived here during my 2020 visit. Appointed for girls now about six, I suppose, the princess and fairy bed sheets on the cozy cot, the pink basket on this vanity desk, help the old gimp feel at home. Honored with a window air conditioner, I smile as Dan points out the tiny imitation polar bear rug [with no head, of course] placed over the threshold. Kicking up the throw, Dan points with his toe at a lifting threshold and says, “My granddaughters said they put this here so that Pawpaw’s friend doesn’t trip!”
Squared away beyond the tiny darling threshold, I went above, where Dan sat at his dining room table and enjoyed a good 8 hours of streaming conversation. This convinced me to abandon my three-part chronological outline. Instead, I shall embrace Robert E. Howard’s dictum that a man who has experienced adventures naturally relates events at random and out of chronological order. Dan has no desire to relate his adventures, but to honor six men: Dad, Demetrius and Dave, now dead, Sean, locked away for life, and Scott and Frankie, both of whom Dan has lost all contact with.
From a Heavy Gravity Planet is mostly an ode to these leaders and fellows who accompanied Electric Dan on some portion of his journey to being a thoughtful Man.
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posted: November 1, 2024   reads: 97   © 2024 James LaFond
From a Heavy Gravity Planet
A Boy-To-Man Memoir of Electric Dan
Author’s Proof
Copyright 2024 James LaFond
A Crackpot Book
Lynn Lockhart Publisher
Dust Cover
I first met Electric Dan, a long time reader of mine and fellow combat practitioner, in August of 2020, near Joliet, Illinois, during the plague that enslaved us all. Between training, clearing a small tree downed in a recent tornado and engaging in a role playing game with his wife and daughters, Dan shared stories of his life growing up as a working class son in a town targeted for transformation into a criminal class slum. Dan’s story of his early life in the soulless shadow of Chicago, growing up in the 1970s and into manhood in the 1980s, comes from an untold corner of the Modern Experience.
Electric Dan
I find Dan and his life, trials and thoughts to be interesting, far more so than that of the power-twisted people we normally read of. He, however, does not, would rather speak of his father foremost, then his friends and the world of honesty, bustle, lies and trouble he has waded through as a boy, then as a youth, then as a man. I, as the nefarious author of this chronicle of working class plight in a modest town of the Midwest, am seeking through Dan’s recollections to find a better understanding of this friend found late in life.
Last year we sparred for almost an entire day, then talked. I like Dan. He is a slightly big man with a power lifter’s frame who enjoys the relatively delicate arts of boxing, karate, stick fighting and knife fighting. Dan is an electrician by trade who has suffered hard injuries to his back and shoulders. In his mid fifties, his stamina is better than that of big men half his age. I can tell by this, that Dan has been in bad situations and has come through with a more level head and easy heart than most. I am hoping to learn more about Dan, my friend come late in life, through his stories of other men he wishes not to be forgotten.
Tonight, my only childhood friend, Rick, will drive me down to the Pittsburgh train station. Overnight the train will take me to Chicago, then in the morning to Joliet, where Dan will pick me up in his plain work truck. He is recovering from surgery, so has time to sit and talk at length about his life. I aim to complete recording his tales from Monday through Saturday. Then, hopefully having come to know Dan better, as I take the trains from Joliet and Chicago to Seattle, to visit another late found friend, my intent is to assemble the pieces of this life remembered, in the order they occurred, into single a book. Then, considering our week together, my biographic intent is to write an impression of Dan as he is, at the rear view mirror of life, together with his family and wife. Dan does not think his life is worth recording anymore than another person’s. That is the point of this. Those who earn the fame to be written of as a subject, in this money-god society, tend to be the worst of us, the folks we, as humans, would least like to have dinner with. Dan wished me a happy Father’s Day today.
-James LaFond, Sunday Morning, June 16, 2024
Composition
Seated at Dan’s dining room table, over coffee, books, water, and perhaps something else. To be typed as spoken with questions limited to details and prompts to recalled stories from earlier visits and questions focused on the persons, places and events of early life.
Inspirational Quote
“He was so thick, so strong, almost squashed—like he was from a heavy gravity planet.”
-Dan, Late April, 2023
Dedication
For Angie, Dan’s wife, for her kindness to this stranger and her common sense dedication to seeing reality in a world trafficking in stranger fantasy.
Contents: From Quotes of our 2023 Interview
-1. Being a Kid
-2. Protecting Our Sisters
-3. Being a Man in a World that Hates You
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posted: October 30, 2024   reads: 122   © 2024 James LaFond
Comments
Crackpot Brain Pan Scan
Two weeks ago I began reading and answering comments on the back end, after some years abstinence.
I have found that it distracts from my writing.
It is not so much the comments from readers, but the deluge of scams, porn propositions, money hunts, click bait traps and such that target the comment section.
I have limited screen time with my eyes.
Comment checking, deletion, approval and answering cost me almost an hour per week. That is a 1,000 word article that was not written. I was going to write Saturn Sends the Rains, yesterday. But all I did was answer comments, and emails, not writing AT ALL.
Once again, I will selfishly turn away and promise myself never to let my waning ego tempt me into creative dissipation. i may fail, might one day look at a comment. If that happens i will admit it in my writing notes and not eat for 36 hours as punishment. I'm here to to write. Nothing else matters.
If you do comment please keep in mind it is for the readers and direct it their way. There is nothing the matter with you all carrying on your own dialogue in this bad thought space.
Approvals and deletions will be handled by the webmaster.
Thank you.
james
10.30.24   Maud'dib — No worries, I jones for your interviews .....whether it is the Mouse, Myth or other...Pod cast or video....
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posted: October 30, 2024   reads: 143   © 2024 Maud'dib
Kelly
My Late Met Friend: 10/28/24, Lancaster, PA
The unexpected ways by which Eternity informs us through our fellows that one we loved has been snatched from our ever more lonely midst, is of increasing interest to this crumb as he and his diminish.
Yesterday my Wife called from Portland and she talked to a real faerie tale princess, Ruby by name. My fellow fighter’s child had awakened me with an etch a sketch geometry test, which I failed, as Wilson the pretentious cat whined for his fancy feast and Janie the mutt licked the cut on my shoulder. It was a good morning. Flop the zero phone was handed to Ruby and the Lady from Alaska assured her that she was “so pretty” and would someday be “a beautiful woman.”
Off to work in the yard and a return to the phone brought a missed call from my Cascadia Land Lady. Knowing something was wrong, I called—no answer. A text came, “Kelly passed away this morning.”
Something in my chest sank. I knew that my Wife would be on vigil with Kelly’s wife for the next couple of days. She has become a full time mourner as time scythes down one of her hometown circle every month it seems.
I told Erique as Ruby ate her yogurt.
He said, “I’m so sorry. I’m getting sick of losing so many people, my head is still dealing with my father passing. Who was he, what was he like? How did you meet? Talk about him as long as you need to. You’re going to write an eulogy, right? Let the readers know?”
We met at his house, the Wife brought me over for a movie night and he cooked dinner. We hit it off. Once we found out we had both boxed and worked in the supermarket business we just clicked. His arm wrestling stories were so cool—guy did a lot, would teach strange kids how to fish and give each an entire tackle set. This past winter Kelly had a man on his street bring his 8 year old son over each week so he could hand out a present, often valuable antiques of interest to a boy. He trained horses, guided hunts, was involved in legal and illegal boxing, sold coke on Friday nights for a few years. He would apologize for telling me the same stories over again. I encouraged him to. I told him I’d type down his stories and publish it as a book. He would laugh, a snicker laugh, like the dog on the Dudley Do Right cartoon. He was a sweet man—looked like a viking with short white hair, still had all his hair. But he told me, since he retired, that his heart and kidneys went bad and that he was looking at medical procedures he wasn’t up for.
I found out two weeks ago that Kelly had fallen while helping his wife get around. Kelly’s life has revolved for the past two years around taking care of his wife’s health needs. He once played Santa Clause and still looked the part and had exactly that kind of jolly heart. He did though, have an edge, a limit. He reminded me a lot like a late 60s version of Big Ron, an easy, kind man, with a moderately projected sense of humor, who has a line in his mind that most jerks somehow know not to cross. For Kelly it was beating women. He was born to an abandoned mother of 7 [I think] and would not stand for men beating women. He confided that this was not all chivalry, “I had my ass kicked enough that I knew I was no world beater. So when I see a man who beats a woman, I know he’s mine—him and I roll, and he’s the woman. You know, even a little guy like you who can fight, you know most men don’t have the heart for a fight and that the ones that can’t help but beat women, are hanging out a sign advertising it.”
When Kelly fell, he would not let the women present, one of them a fit scrappy athlete of 40, help him up. I was enjoined not to mention this too him. So I waited a couple days and asked him by text how he was doing. He texted, “A little rough L****’s been having a hard time with health issues.”
Yesterday I had planned on calling him about the training session on Saturday. He loved hearing about me getting my ass kicked for staying in the fight game too long. He really liked seeing the group photos of the men, lining them up against one another in his mind.
Kelly liked my curiosity and told me everything he could about fishing, horses, dogs, hunting, trucking, driving, and football, very much like Bob in Utah, a volunteer big brother for an old runt who never had an older brother. He actually trained me in arm wrestling, saving me from a fight with an agitated young man in a bar, who I was able to mollify through agreeing to arm wrestling.
Kelly is one of the best men I have known. I miss him. The odd parts of us that clicked and tracked, those are lonely places in the soul. Every one of you who is a fighter, know this, that you will meet a hundred men, and none of them, or perhaps one, will join you on the edge of the heard where the pack roams. They will sit and cheer MMA girls kicking in another cutie’s face, yell at a ball player mishandling a play on TV, dismiss hand to hand fighting as stupid. All the while these men, that in a man’s world might be your friends, your scalps or your slaves, regard you with an odd sense of dread, for reminding them that you are the toaster and they are only a slice of bread.
At bars and restaurants, Kelly sat like a kind old king, comfortable in his self effacing humor, able to chuckle snicker-wise at little things and give even more “messed up” men room to vent their frustration at life, lives that pained them so much more than Kelly’s mostly because they had never fought, never put it all on the line, never walked into a bar full of drunken Indians looking for where they had stashed Clint.
I only spoke with Kelly one time since mid July, when we last shook hands and he pulled me in like a big bear and assured me we were brothers. It was a phone call on Tuesday night, our movie night. I asked him how he was doing and he said, “Would be doing better if I wasn’t practicing drinking this cheap fucking beer for when you get back! Here, I’m dumping this piss out—got me a Coors Light and the mountains are blue. I miss you, Brother. You always have a place to stay while I’m alive.”
I pray that Kelly has been taken to a better place.
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posted: October 28, 2024   reads: 163   © 2024 James LaFond
Savay,
#2: Chance Met Senior Souls: 5/11/24
Savay, I met on the #36 bus from Towson to Essex, where we both picked it up as it dipped into the City, three weeks ago and I cannot get his monologue out of my head. Savay is about 70 years old, 5-foot and 8-inches tall, thick-boned, and bent from some injury. His hair is a close cut afro and is streaked with white, his beard the same. He wears denim overalls over a yellow shirt and goes barefoot. Behind him he wheels a large luggage carry-on as he pushes a handy-capped walker/seat. The seat of this thing is loaded with a milk crate of bottles and cans collected for recycle. He sees me and approaches, sitting in the last right-facing bench seat for elderly and handicapped and leaning on the plastic barrier before my first forward facing seat, both of us behind the driver. In case violence breaks out, this is the power position, as the bus banks often to the left, and any yutish adversary harassing us from the aisle, may be dispatched using the force of the bus banking in to the next stop. These are considerations from the previous era, before the yutes became hypnotized by their smart phones, and the buses came equipped with audio visual equipment and the federal penalties for violence on mass transit were posted.
The man sees in me a ready ear and begins his story, leaning towards me in a conspiratorial posture, smiling with his wide jaw and mouth, his teeth still there, but yellowed as he searches my one eye for signs that I get the meaning of his various narratives.
“Are you well, friend?”
I nod, ‘Yes.’
Points to cane and eye-patch.
“Service, military?”
I shake my head, ‘No,’ and ask, “West Indian?”
“Yes, Jamaica. Land of the best rum. You know, they make rum from the sugar cane, brought the slaves over and have them at it with machete…”
Mimes sugar cane harvesting, flipping imaginary machete in hand to use the flat against the other to stack cane.
“It’s a wonderful process. You know, they make it three-hundred proof—three-hundred! Put a cap full and light it and its gone. They cut that down to One-fifty-one. That is five dollars at the rum bar. The weak stuff, watered down, is two dollars, for the cheap man that the barmaid will not like, a dollar. A man who wants standing, he buys the good stuff, the One-fifty-one. That cane is grown down low.
“Up in the highlands, where the Rastaman live, they grow the ganja, the weed—you know what I mean?
I nod, ‘Yes.’
“You smoke?”
I nod, ‘No.’
“Oh, so you don’t care what is done. In any event, it is legal now, no need to smuggle. The Rastaman with his weed is now doing well, and legally so.”
“Now, the cocaine, from Columbia, there is still a need to smuggle that. I worked for a shoemaker, one of the best, made the perfect shoe. He made shoes with hollow heels that would be filled with cocaine, ship a pallet over to Florida. This is better than a woman holding the cocaine in her vagina. Like this woman here, with baby, would hold cocaine in her vagina—that is no good!”
Brown woman with baby looks on in horror and holds her child closer.
“Shoes are very important to people, especially soldiers,” as he points to his bare feet.
“I learned this when I enlisted. Royal Marines, trained in New Castle, England: left right, left, right, march! Left right, left right—twenty mile run before breakfast. This was a good life, lots of mountain training. When we were in Iraq, in that place, this mountain training paid off.”
[I assume 91, Desert Storm.]
“That man, that Saddam, he stood no chance. You know his troops were pretty good. We respected their artillery fire discipline and their Republican Guard—but one nation cannot fight the entire world. Even America, this great nation, does not fight the whole world—even The Dragon who scorches the earth with fire has a master!
“I learned about military history in New Castle. You know Operation Barbarossa, Russian Front?”
I nod, ‘Yes.’
“The Germans, they all most take Moscow. But they needed to secure oil production too, down in the south, so had to divert troops to that purpose. Even then, they come within twenty miles of Moscow, twenty miles from their arising a different world! Think of that, a different world with a Cold War between Germans and Americans instead of Soviets and Americans? You understand this?”
I nod, ‘Yes.’
“Good, good man. So the cold come, the Russian Winter. You know, we are cold here in this American Spring. Imagine the Russian Winter: forty below and the oil does not flow. Machines do not like the cold. Then come the Russian Eskimos on skies—what are you going to do in your unlined trench coat when Eskimos on skies, with guns, come for you in the snow?!”
I shrug shoulders.
“You know, their leader, Hitler, he was not crazy, not insane like they say. He had good reason for what he did. People hate him for the Jews, what he did. But he did it for Jesus—you know, I’m a Baptist and believe in Christ—and the Jews, they nail this man to the cross, our Savior, nail him up good!”
Makes hammering motions with his right hand as he mimes holding a pair of feet to the bottom of a crucifix!
A tall lean youth is shaking his head in horror as he holds the overhead bar. The woman with the child cringes and scrunches her eyes.
“You know, and the Jews were destructive to Germany too! You know this?”
I look around 360 degrees.
“Oh, they are not on this bus! They have money! They have nice cars! Do not worry—be honest, you are a serious man—you must know this, that the Jews run the world: newspapers, government, TV, banks!”
I shake my head, vigorously, ‘No!’
“There it is, the proof! Look at you, a serious man, on the bus with a cane, unafraid of the criminals that walk; you who this batty boy” [points at young man] “here shrink from, you who do not fear those who were sent to drive you into hills to be a Billy man! You, white Rastaman, YOU fear the very name!”
I shake my head, ‘No.’
“More proof—my serious man! I give you some shots of 151 and you will agree.”
I rise and extend my hand, “My stop, Sir. I’m James.”
He wiggles his big brown, splayed hobbit toes, grins and takes my hand in his bigger, darker hand and declares, “I am Savay, the Baptist. Walk with God, My Friend.”
10.28.24   Maud'Dib — Yes, he correct on the 6,000,000.

EVERYstein SINGLEberg TIMEmyorkis!
10.29.24   James — I was terrified yet amused at my own pending demise for relating Savay's monologue.
10.30.24   Curt — Savay is right, James.
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posted: October 28, 2024   reads: 148   © 2024 Curt
Agent Badass
#4.A Nat Star—Timejacker!
The Major was ripping down Belair Road as he spoke, “Prospect Star, Prospect First Class Star, would you like your handle to be Nat or Star?”
Nat looked at the stars on the band about the Major’s hat and declared, “Star, Sir.”
“Don’t Sir me, Son. I’m a sergeant is all. Save your sir’s for the Major here and what officers you serve with. I’m enlisted same as you.”
Nat grinned and answered, “Yes, Sergeant,” as he unloaded the .45 and placed the spare round and clip in his pants pocket.
The Sergeant swerved around a driver that pulled out into traffic and the Major, winced, indeed white knuckled it, which seemed so odd. As ever, the Sergeant noticed and said, “Not the Major’s normal mode of travel.”
Recalling him as the biker picking up Ms. Engle, Nat observed the Major, who shrugged apologetically, “The infernal iron horse was one thing, horse-like enough. But these danged buggies careening like a stage hither en dither, tests a man’s nerve.”
“I suppose we owe Prospect Star here an explanation, Major.”
The Major shrugged, “She’s all yours. The danged mummery has got me out o’ sorts.”
“Mummery?” asked Nat.”
Crook smiled harshly, “We would say, men of this nearly spent Twentieth Century since the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus H. Christ, ‘Mumbo jumbo.’ Our commander here, is from an earlier time frame.”
“What?”
“Major Shayne Pitt of the Texas Rangers, served under General Joe Shelby in the great raid of 1864, and at the defense of Brownsville Station, last battle and final victory of Confederate arms, before heading into Mexico, where he was recruited by yours truly.”
The Major winced, “Rankles a man to lose a war against them that can’t fight.”
Nat grinned, sure he was having a most excellent acid trip, and declared, “So that’s it, you’re time travelers and I’m joining some kind of time force, like time police? Or is this the time marines or time army?”
“Son,” declared Crook, “non of the half-assed above. I called you a civilian for good reason, for until you took up with us in this righteous journey, you were. But neither are you some cuckhold government tool. No siree! Son, there are civilians, ruled over by military and police, then there are the other folks, who rule not at all and battle the Gob-o-ment! Criminals, son! We are Time Criminals—Timejackers to be exact, done come here for a new vehicle to get back to a future gone wrong and to set some matters right! Welcome aboard, Prospect Star!”
The Sergeant took the ramp onto I-695 a bit fast and the Major grumbled, “For the creak of leather or deck, even the creak of boots—I’d rather be in the infantry than in this blasted buggy!”
“Major, as soon as we get our new vessel, we will be under sail.”
“Direct action if you will, Sergeant. The mummery has me worn to a fray of thread.”
“Yes, Sir! Until that fine moment I shall brief Prospect Star. Star, some years from now, certain bad actors out of the Middle East develop a form of malaria that will only afflict people of Indo-European, or ‘Aryan’ racial stock. Some hundreds of years into that future we are bound. By that sorry then America will have been split in an Asian and Mexican West, an African Center, and a Muslim East. Fortunately an ice age has set in and some pockets of Arуan resistance remain in the Rockies, above 7,000 feet. Commander James Bowie is taking it to the enemy West and Central. The General is on the ground in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi. That great man is in sore need of a distraction to the east. That is where we come in.”
“The General? General who?” asked Nat.
“Son, he is THE GENERAL, the only one we have, and there is none better. We are bound for the Chesapeake Bay of an unspeakable future, where it is known as the Water of Allah!”
The Major spit between his boots.
Crook crowed dramatically, “Prospect Star, do you swear to sail beyond the sunset, into a Towel Head tomorrow, to battle the forces of darkness, to cleanse the sandy taint from the east, to reduce the African race to dust and to drive the Mestizo hordes of a latter day Gomorrah across the Rio Grand?! Nat Star, do you, for the mothers of our once great race, pledge to forever stand against the muddy tide of a vile-begotton history!?”
He felt a swell of pride, such an odd emotion to feel in such a strange dream, and, dreamer that he was, set his jaw, sat up at attention, both hands on that heavy-even-when-empty gun, and declared, “I do. I am your man.”
“What do you say, Major?” asked Crook as he passed a semi doing 90, zooming down towards Back River Bridge.
“Sergeant Crook,” growled the voice of the man with his white knuckles pressed against the dashboard, “I believe he will do.”
Then, the Major turned and looked Nat in the eyes, extended his big right hand on that long chimp arm so that the button on the sleeve cuff pupped as it slid up his arm. Nat took that big strong hand in his and gritted his teeth as the bones of his ground together under that firm but not cruel grip. The Major winked and frumped his blonde handlebar mustache with a bitter twist of his mouth, which Nat could see was stained with tobacco juice and seemed to apologize, “Young Nat Star, you are a man this day. I humble like welcome you aboard this infernal buggy of the good and goddamned. Know ye that promotion is a constant state of our affair, for we are woefully, as in the C.S.A. way, under-manned. Be that as it may, I be Major Shayne Pitt of the late, great, Confederate State of Texas and here swear to God to not abandon ye to a foul enemy or a lee shore.”
The Major let go, seeming serene now after that human hand shake, and calmly commanded, “Now, Mister Star, this havin’ been the rancid womb of your nativity, look ye out sharp for a Yankee Negro to steal.”
Continued in A Night Right Yank, #4.B
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posted: October 27, 2024   reads: 104   © 2024 James LaFond
In The World #1
Grunt RPG Overall & Specific Actions & Grunt Checks #4
Pathos, Mania, Advantage and Disadvantage have been discussed. Equipment is the final chapter, well, was until I added #8! However, some examples will accompany the basic concept of equipment in Grunt below.
Equipment, in combat, does not do intrinsic [rolled, random] damage, but enhances damage or reduces damage. In other actions, equipment, is likewise considered as an extension of the will, amplifying or reducing effects of actions, be they Body, Mind or Spirit actions.
The basics of Body, Mind & Spirit Actions are covered here, In The World #1, and focus on individual actions, not group actions like Battle or Counsel of War or the results of actions, like injury, maiming and death.
The basic mechanics are general, resolved with a 1d20 or specific, resolved with a 1d6.
Overall Body Check
A general or complex action, such as climbing, or throwing, are a function of an overall ability, the Body. These efforts are resolved by doing a 1d20 check against the 3 to 18 body ability, with a 1 miraculous, a 20 disastrous, and the margin of success indicated by the negative die difference: Ability – Roll = Level of Success.
For instance, if an archer has been detailed to run a message to the rear guard through enemy infiltrators, and his Body is 12, then he must roll a 12 or less, with a 1 indicating that he has arrived ahead of time and that he has perhaps noticed something important about the enemy dispositions. If he rolls a 9, and the backup runner rolled a 3, getting there, let’s say 6 minutes before him, then he might suffer some social penalty. We will revisit this example of the upstaged runner under Spirit. [Yeah, I didn’t go back to this, but it might make an interesting solo adventure.]
If our runner rolls a 20, that could be a blunder or he might have been noticed by archers and has to dodge arrows or be feathered to death, or both.
Specific Body Check
Lets’ say he stumbled. He must now make 3 simple checks against his individual body abilities.
To determine if he was injured, he must make a Strength check on 1d6. If he fails he loses the die difference in hit points [which are temporary body points].
He must roll a Stamina check to see if he can try and make the rest of the run as intended. If he fails this, then he must change to a different action, the run and blunder having depleted him. Perhaps he can stalk the rest of the way, taking longer, hide until morning, begin stalking the sentries, or simply cause a diversion for the back up runner by charging the enemy sentries or leading them back to his own lines. In the case of a failed Overall check, and then failure of a Stamina check, the character must choose a different course of action.
Third, whether he is injured or diverted, he has blundered and must check and see how bad it was, by an Agility check. To determine if he made noise that alerted the enemy archers, he rolls a 1d6 against his 1d6 agility score. If his agility is 3, and he rolls a 5, the difference is 2, so we can say he was heard by two archers.
Lets’ say this messenger has blundered, avoided injury by making his Strength check, and made his Stamina, permitting him to continue his run for the allied camp, but that he failed his Agility check to determine if he alerted sentries, and that he did alert two nasty, Scythian sentries with his 5 roll against his 3 Agility. Both Scythians loose arrows in the dark.
In daylight, the Scythians would make a 1d6 against Agility, Knit or Kit [since they are skilled they use the applicable skill that favors them, if unskilled always go against Knit which is learning ability.] archery check to see if they could hit our messenger. He might then use his Agility to try and reduce damage. But in the dark, they loose without proper aim [darkness inflicts the use of the least favorable of the 3 abilities] and it is up to our messenger to dodge, if hit, using his agility to reduce damage.
Darkness: costs either a disadvantage in action or, in the case of a skill, the use of the least favorable applicable ability.
Total Darkness
In the case of a moonless or stormy night, the firing of the archers might be regarded as random, in which case the action might be resolved by having the messenger make an agility check.
He makes two rolls, 1 for each archer: a 1 indicates that 2 arrows have missed him in the dark. A 3 indicates that he has been uninjured but his clothing or armor has been impacted. [A 6 would have meant being hit by 3 arrows and probably slain.] If the GM decides on such a dicey use of agility, then that ability might not also be used as damage reduction.
A close call like this might be used by the GM as an adventure hook, such as the arrow deflecting gave the Scythians a sound cue, and they are now slowly stalking the messenger, making this a different action. We will return to this latter, below.
This is the standard use of Overall and Specific Ability in actions, whether physical, mental or spiritual.
Grunt Checks
A Grunt check is a method by which this combat-oriented game does not become so meat-headed that it cannot be used to replicate combat with firearms, and might also be expanded into a more complex social setting for fantasy and science-fiction play.
There are cases when a 4th and even 5th ability, from outside the overall ability governing the action, should be taken into consideration.
For instance, in dueling, Kit ability of the character to have a better understanding of his weapon than the other fellow, who is using the same weapon, is key. Dueling against a man using a different weapon requires an even higher level of weapon knowledge. So, at the outset of a duel, each player should make his Mind Kit check and compare the difference.
If Koragus has a 5 and rolls a 4, against Dioxippus who has a 6 and rolls a 2, then we subtract Koragus’ 1 die difference from Dioxippus 4, which leaves Dioxippus with 3 advantages, that is 3 re-rolls of any roll his controlling player does not want.
We then look to the disadvantage determined by Spirit Social, for a calm check: whose palms are sweating, who is nervous and who is better focused? In this case Koragus, a goon, with only a 3 Spirit Social, against Dioxippus, with his 4 Spirit Social, each roll a 3. the difference in favor of Dioxippus is 1, meaning that 1 successful roll by Koragus may be re-rolled at the GM’s discretion.
In the various actions described below, under body, and then under Mind & Spirit, it will be noted with a GC, if a grunt check is required. A Grunt check will consists of an advantage roll and a disadvantage roll preceding the action. Grunt Checks also apply to simple actions, like a climber, assigned to scale an icy cliff at night, making a Spirit Animism gut check for disadvantage and a Mind Wit check for some kind of advantage.
[Let us note that I neglected to factor Grunt checks in the rest of the game. When used, Grunt check advantages and disadvantages should be used to cancel out or augment those gained in the pathos roll, to arrive at one for each. I favor Grunt checks as an option fro a gear specific setting, such as pistol dueling, man-hunting and spell-casting, to include conducting sacrifices before battle.]
Before we get to the specific skills, let us make some stipulations:
Current hit points, even if the character is down to 1 Hit Point, do not influence performance or call for advantage or disadvantage checks. Characters die quickly enough in Grunt as is.
But, War has his grinding wiles, and there is a way to determine his pleasure or impatience with your puny actions.
Overall Body Actions may be initiated only as many times a day as a character has Stamina points. A player with a 1 Stamina may only attempt a single action on the day. If he attempts a second, he must make a check against Strength, and if he fails, well, he fails to act and suffers hit point loss equal to the die difference.
Once an action is initiated, the character may only act at full capacity for as many rounds as he has Stamina. Once that number of rounds has been reached, for his next round of action he loses 1 Overall Body point, for the purpose of factoring his actions, at the start of every round. He does not lose individual body ability points. As soon as that character is granted rest, he recovers these overall ability points at the rate of his Stamina at the end of each round.
This is why boxers rest between rounds and why Roman soldiers fought in shifts, to arrest and reverse the decline of their physical powers. For this reason, firearms use and more complex equipment operation are covered under Mind. For instance, rowing and sailing are primarily physical. But Piloting, crewing and navigation of the same vessel are pre-dominantly, and increasingly cerebral.
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posted: October 26, 2024   reads: 102   © 2024 James LaFond
Jim
#1: Chance Met Senior Souls: 5/10/24
These men, among an increasing number of their decreasing generation, the men ten years or so older than I, seem to select me from among a crowd to vent, in Baltimore, Portland, Pittsburgh, San Jose. This has happened often on the trains, and now on the buses. Venting by older men to me goes all the way back to about 2000, when, at the Fort Charles Pub, a man whose story I wrote as A Ghost of Patton’s Army in the book Chinks in the Machine, sought my ear.
Once I had conducted hundreds of interviews for the Violence Project, I somehow began to exude “good listener” and men simply began telling me their story, men of all races and ages, but more so the older they were. I am not proud of this sidekick sounding board identity that crept upon my person through writing and research. But, here I am, on a bar stool with old fellows drawn to tell their story to me. Part of it, now, is that people know I travel. Men at the Raven Inn have seen me there on occasion since 2016, and they have slotted me as a visiting traveler. The fact that I am not a resident of their locale and that I seem “from” there seems to make of my form a more appealing ear for the person addressing themselves to an uncaring world.
Jim, I have met thrice at the Raven Inn now, this trip back into town. I will start with Jim first. He is a big man on the bar stool, only two of the hosses there being bigger. His white beard is trimmed close, his soft white hair falling barely to his shoulders under his ball cap. He drinks half pitchers of Yeungling beer poured into a small mug. This place is the psychological hospice center for Baynesville, Baltimore County.
“I like this bar, a family bar, a friendly bar, like the bars used to be in the city. I was Northeast Ballmore, born en raised. Grew up down by Good Sam [Samaritan hospital]. Got run out—you know how it goes, always the same, a
nice place, good people, then the crime comes, like it was sent.
“Got a job in construction, worked construction my whole life. Retired, sixty-eight years on this planet and I don’t like what it’s turned into. Lived on White Avenue, a block from Harford Road: Hamilton Tavern [now closed], the Wilkens House [now Brennens, a black bar where they won’t serve me], Shamrock—was a brother and sister owned that, Holiday House [now closed] next to the Hell Bent for Leather shop [closed, I still have the doeskin knife fighting gloves Dave made me]. The Holiday House was a biker bar, but a neighborhood bar too. The Chosen Sons used to hang there. Only had trouble with them once. I was playing pool. My girl was sitting at the bar. This Chosen Son started asking her out and she said, ‘No, I’m with him.’ He kept it up. So I went over to him and said, ‘Look, she told you she was with me. You should let her go. We squashed it—he backed off, a test I guess.
Only time I got in fights was over pool. Once, this guy jumps my quarter. The fight was over a quarter. You know how it used to cost a quarter, now seventy-five cents. I say, hey, you jumped my quarter. We aren’t even playing for money. He says, ‘No I didn’t you jump your quarter. So we put up the dukes and start fighting. Mack, the owner, he comes over, breaks us up and says, ‘You, that end of the bar! You this end of the bar. Anymore fightin’ in my bar and you’re out!’
“That was it: threaten the beer and we were cool.
“Once, after a pool game, we’re in the parking lot behind the bar, having a fight, juts me and another guy. Police rolls up and says, ‘Hey, you are disturbing the peace—drunk and disorderly.’
“He takes us to court. A night court, a small jailhouse and court down there by Argonne Drive—long time ago. Not there any more. The Judge has me up there on bail review and the police says, ‘Your Honor, he only has so much money in his wallet.’
“How much?’ says the Judge.
“The police brings my wallet to the judge and he sorts through it. He says, “I’m leaving you twenty-five dollars. I am keeping the rest for your bail. If you get into another fight, before the six months of your probation before judgment is up, you are staying in my jail.”
“Yes, Your Honor,’ I say.
“The police, who was a nice enough fella, who we did not dare sass. Baltimore City Cops, back then, when they were allowed to do their job, oh, you, did, not, mess with them!
“I ask, “Are you dropping me off?”
“He laughs and says, “There is a bus stop right there, across the street. Use it.”
“It’s not fighting any more out there, is shooting, stabbing, stomping, many on one. There’s no longer a place for these [shows fists]. I don’t like what the world has become. The kids don’t want to work. The immigrants are taking all the jobs. The politicians are giving away the store.
“How much more?
“I have my one vote—that’s it, and I wonder if it matters. I don’t know where it all goes—maybe somebody does, and I wonder if they can bring themselves to look in the mirror in the morning. But I don’t like the way it feels, the world has become bad. I wake up after sixty-eight years, forty-five of it working, and I’m in a bad place.
“We have beer. The beer is good. The people in here have fun poking jokes at each other. But they look out for each other. Sean [the barkeep] cuts Erik off and doesn’t let him stagger home too drunk.
[Seems to be stricken with an epiphany.]
“You know, seeing you and your friend their [nods to Mescaline Franklin], you know, he has a presence, you have a presence, like you’ve been where this world is headed…”
Mescaline nods and mumbles, “Yeah, fuck New York! Fuck this World!! And yeah, the beer is good, the slave drink of Civilization, the Liquid Goddess!”
We salute with our mugs, three old mugs in a row, like reverse Norns, and Jim says, “This is truly a watering hole,” looking around the bar, then nods out to the dark boulevard, “and the game warden doesn’t care what happens out there.”
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posted: October 25, 2024   reads: 152   © 2024 James LaFond
‘Zombie Nation?’
InTheseGoingsDown Wonders if the American Mind has Been Gasstripped: Utah, 7/27/24
“James, what do you think about the process of Murkha, becoming this weird, zombie nation, like a shambling clown god sent up out of some Lovecraftian abyss?”
-InTheseGoingsDown, via flip phone
Since we will be visiting with Arkham Reporter in the gaslit East, under the very snout of the Murkhan Beast come Halloween, I think this will make a nice post for All-hallows-eve to appear a month before the All Shallows Deceive.
The heart and soul of this Zombie Nation is a duality feedback loop that compels the body of the Beast to repair and upgrade its woebecome structure. It is the hopes, dreams, pains and pangs of the suffering tax heard of drugged and mediarapt souls which are fed upon and used to build the beast. This is a frightful generative feast, clothed in retrospective glory, or at least dignity, by the History-keepers of Under Steerage; those steerage cultists who massage the retrospective and self-reflective mind’s eye of a beast that could not be designed or built, and cannot be upgraded, without taking on the conscience of the cannibalized souls used to build and feed it. This is a great problem for the psychopathic demons who create and then steer such a Social Beast, that they must take into its structure empathetic, sometimes innocent, even angelic, souls to power it and a random mix of common empaths to feed it, resulting in demons without compassion—fired only by passion—piloting a suffering colossus that has lived for many lifetimes.
These dark agents of oblivion must then rely upon light agents of the living to man their dreadful conveyance. I actually feel compassion for these striving agents of darkness. This feeling is probably Tolkien’s fault, for portraying the Ring Wraiths as woebegotten shadows of departed humanity.
The body of this beast is made up of the persons and efforts of the tax heard. Most of the taxed soul chattel provide the breath and blood of the beast through their efforts to survive. The bones of this beast were long ago formed of the fake laws and precepts of the people by the designers of the great zombie, since its painful birth, alternately stooped in melancholy or raging across the planet, rending itself in self-hatred or brooding over which of the lies it embodies is the truth.
The mind of this great zombie beast is represented by the steerage cult army, the few millions of souls who attempt to repair, improve, direct and correct the great beast. This beast that has lived now for over 200 years, and is going insane as it’s pantheon of heroes is exchanged for an earlier gallery of demons, former rights are now wrongs, and former wrongs now wax godlike strong. The current minority among steerage cultists is well represented by the minor fiend Michael T. Flynn, LTG, U.S. Army, (Retired) in his book:
The Citizen’s Guide To Fifth Generation Warfare: Introduction to 5GW.
In this manual for total mind war the general, who may be a knowing demon of the Deceiver or a well-meaning dupe of the Deceiver, states, lucidly, before descending into the trenches of the teeming chattel souls to battle over the building blocks of the great world-straddling beast:
“We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence…”
Flynn knows everything about how the Overmind of the Zombie functions, because he was one of its functionaries. The polarity that fuels the building of the mass mind that emotionally justifies the temporal crimes of The Beast, the Zombie Leviathan of which we are but cells, is represented by Flynn’s disenfranchising from that fraternity. He has been cast out from the steerage cultist that make such decisions as planned demolition of our largest buildings and death of 3,000 people in order to rouse the tax heard for rebranding, reprograming under geometrically expanded control from steerage cults. The recent attempt to kill a minority steerage cult puppet was also conducted by men formerly under the command of Flynn’s fraternity.
The base mechanic is currently, the Left-leaning Cults of Steerage, numbering perhaps 80% of Steerage, have prevailed in usurping control of Leviathan from those 20% of the Old Guard who built Leviathan into a semi-intelligent form. The New Guard of Steerage, since they have indirect control and unquestioning loyalty from only 40% of the tax heard, do not have the resources to battle The Old Guard, the 40% of the tax heard loyal to the Old Guard, the 20% anarchist section of the heard, and also the rival Leviathans around the world—this while also feasting upon the bodies and souls of nearly a hundred lesser tax herds. This requires many steerage cults, which compete, as well as CENTRAL Steerage, which is the psychopathic section of the cobble-cult brain. CENTRAL Steerage alone must suffer from Multiple Personality and Self-deceit Psychosis. As operatives of all of these cults are drawn from various segments of the mesmerized tax heard, then discharged back into said heard, psychic breakage is a real and constant risk.
The above is well represented in the various Frankenstein movies, as the designer required fresh killed human bodies [like the Fire Chief and decoy shooter slain during the Orange Man shooting] morally conflicted assistants [the various law officers involved in the murder attempt] all conducted in the castle on the high hill in plain view of the peasants upon whom the monster feasts. I suspect the story of Grendel, his mother and Beowulf is a dim reflected memory of a former evil civilization, a Leviathan like our nation, that was slain by a barbarian hero king.
The ennui, angst, lust, frustration and hurt experienced by this Zombie Nation, in its Steerage Cult mind, requires much medication of classes and individuals. I suspect that our recently usurped zombie prez had accelerated insanity and cognition issues based on psychiatric medical controls injected into him since 2016. Just as 30% of military age males and 70% of matriarch age females have been placed under heavy medication by various Steerage Cults, to include biker gangs and Mexican cartels supplying material and Central Steerage direction and Medical Steerage, the cult agents themselves must operate under lies that require off duty medication. The goal is subsanity, a pre-medicalized zombie citizen suspended in chemical innocence. These are some reasons for the unraveling sanity of the formerly remorseless, single-minded engine of industry and conquest.
To increase mental instability under mass mesmerism, more than drugs are required. Discord, was the first of WAR’s three servants, Panic and Rout to follow. This is an overt infliction of insanity, agitation and depression among the tax heard. However, wielding such power, and bending the minds of others, causes insanity in those who are not psychopaths. This is yet another cause of depression. Either Flynn is a psychopath with no conscience, or, he is a human operating under a lie, and the revelation of that lie would shatter his mind. Such high functioning fools surely outnumber their psychopathic handlers, and all labor under a subconscious delusion imposed by their mind to prevent a complete psychic collapse—the entire beast, Leviathan, Murkha, the Zombie Nation, is in a similar danger of insanity. As Uncle Ted related, the System will come self aware, the spark of the Zombie soul ignited by resistance and friction. Self awareness is the basic precondition for insanity.
Another cause of decreased sanity in the System, is the feuding inner parents of the Steerage Cults. If Flynn is successful, and recruits enough actors to overthrow the majority Steerage Cults, and take over all or, most likely, only a portion of CENTRAL Steerage, the result will be even more emotional instability in Leviathan. Like the manufactured Prometheus postulated by Mary Shelly in her novel some 200 years ago, Murkha, has feelings, is an increasingly emotive thing, feeling more and less rationally, but with hurt cause, for it has been hideously transmogrified by its ongoing redesign and reprogramming.
So Zeus, Almighty, Timeholder, had Prometheus (Forethought) chained in adamantine fetters for the crime of empowering man to burn the world. Horrible it is, to imagine an increasingly self-aware, increasingly intelligent, USG Zombie to continue cannibalizing our very minds, let alone our trivial work, as it waxes ever less sane due in large part to driving us insane and then feasting upon our dying brain. But, giving the beast back to such as Flynn, then strapping in for a Final Battle against rival leviathans, as Murkha rages in fits of inner PTSD, that too sends chills down the pulp science-fiction writer’s collapsing spine.
Dear God Almighty, please dispatch your SWEET METEOR OF DOOM—MAY THE ANGEL OF YOUR WRATH CREASE THE HERETIC SKY!
10.25.24   Maud'Dib — “James, what do you think about the process of Murkha, becoming this weird, zombie nation, like a shambling clown god sent up out of some Lovecraftian abyss?”

The phone zombie's are mostly what i see, following their food source.

Come into work and see all the souls leaving staring at their screens. WTF, they just spend 8-10 hours staring at a bigger screen.... alll. day... long.....
10.28.24   James — This has saved me numerous scraps with the degenerate scions of my hereditary foes. I'll take phone zombies all day long!
10.26.24   Faber Pyrex — Seconded.
10.28.24   James — Though i selfishly relish the faded virility of my Master's eager manhound slaves who once drove me forth into the better lands beyond our hometown, it now looks certain that the only hopes for the survival of humanity is a grid down disaster.
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posted: October 24, 2024   reads: 218   © 2024 James
Can In Print
Casting Darts Publishing Does Not Rest!
Hi James, Lynn and Charles,
just a quick update that "CAN" published in paperback today. Here's the Amazon link:
Best, Jeth

This old crumb is astonished that Jeth and his crew are putting out print books like I used to do when i had my youngest son at hand to navigate the POD platform.
I love the cover!

CAN: Ballad of a Phentland Superman Paperback – October 18, 2024
by James LaFond (Author), Jeth Randolph (Editor)
See all formats and editions
WELCOME TO PHENTLAND:
A high-speed zombie landscape populated by the unemployed, unpersoned “Slows”: doomed souls preyed upon by the chemically adapted “Highs” as well as cops, politicians, corporations…
Enter Can, a traditional urban crackhead from Wilmington, Delaware who finds the key to unlocking the superpowers of humanity, in The Name of God, on behalf of the sheepish Slows, through back alley chemistry...
The mystery of Can’s origin and the meaning of his name are explored through investigative interviews with those whom he has saved...
From cult author James LaFond comes this tale of the inner demon-haunted wilderness of postmodern Murica.
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posted: October 24, 2024   reads: 150   © 2024 James LaFond
Under the Gray Vault
Observations of Baltimore County & City: 5/2/24
For these three weeks I have been taking the bus in East Baltimore, Baltimore County and Northeast Baltimore. Two days a week I spend in Harford County. Yesterday I took a walk of 2.5 miles into Baltimore County and back again. My impressions and observations are sectioned below.
Weather
Cool breezes and bright blue daytime skies alternate with a murky gray vaulted heaven. Morning, on the waterfront yawns long, with the clouds clearing to bring a bright day. The climate has ranged from murky cloud cover keeping us in jackets to blazing, beautiful skies. Local, nighttime downpours go unnoticed by most people and unreported on the news. The trend of never a hot night these past few years seems to be on the extend. Plants are blooming in wonderful profusion.
Pollen counts are at record levels causing allergic distress.
The water is filthy, the civic water supply system now presenting intestinal parasites.
Numerous record low temperatures are flashed on the screen of the house computer: usually overnight and dawn temperatures, as much as 10 degrees below normal.
Record temperature increases over a day, like in the Rockies, are now noted on news reports, with a record low by 10 points rising to a record high by one point, and the news focus being on the temperature rise, not the overnight decline.
I have viewed numerous local news broadcasts in two households.
Each news broadcast is beginning with a Global Warming story, such as the loss of islands in the Chesapeake due to storms, which bring cooling, being blamed on sea level rise from melting ice caps.
Then, a local news weather caster will be tasked with explaining away unusually cool or wet conditions. Safety and survival, a shelter in place value set, is being promoted in weather reports.
Then, another Global Warming story will follow before the uplifting human interest closeout. A local grandmother I know has cited Global Warming as a reason for her children to have no more grandchildren. Most of the climate crisis stories that bracket the report about local cooling will focus on the production of more ice at the poles that is causing ice to be pushed into the ocean, and misrepresenting this as the ice reducing rather than expanding, complete with repentant Climate Deniers giving testimony.
Complete landfills in the region now present as green pyramids to posterity made of trash.
A national news cast recently admitted that no plastics get recycled as part of the generations long social control experiment of recycling. My family told me this, noting, “You were right, all along. We thought you were nuts…”
Wind damage is continuing to take down old growth civic shade trees in Baltimore, the sound of chainsaws and stump guns in the city never far away, for two years running now.
Society
The increased diversity of Baltimore has made it less violent, scattering Kangs and Gawdesses into rare suburban haunts and away from all but the main bus routes in the East and Northeast. Gawdly colonies are blooming in Harford County. The formerly violent packs of Yute Warriors are now hypnotized smartphone subjects, mesmerized by the World Altar in their increasingly light-complected and effeminate hands.
Martial arts and boxing participation has declined further.
Vacancy’s have stabilized, with many vacant bars, retail outlets, churches and banks, now transformed into mental health and wellness clinics of every stripe: Christian [0], New Age, Medical Drug Rehab, Social Justice, 12 Step and mystery cult versions. In one four block section of Harford Road in Baltimore county, mere blocks form the City Line, stand six, yes 6, mental health clinics. These outlets service people of all types and do more business than any other business there, having taken over the vacancies created during the shamdemic, which also seems to have created an increased market for “Wellness.”
Mass transit service has improved and expanded in Baltimore every year since 2018. Finally, in 2024, bus use, by number of passengers has returned to 2014 levels. This ten year recovery of mass transit, as with every other city I have visited, been coupled with reduction of drive lanes on main urban streets. The new bus patrons are not the majority Gawd Male who once dominated bus use. Indeed, American men of divine hue are almost entirely absent from City and County buses. Most of the new patrons are working women of color, the hypnotized students listed above and immigrants from Latin America and Africa.
This has been a very pleasant situation for this aging pedestrian.
Police presence continues to decrease.
Private Security continues to slightly increase.
Two different advertisements for Baltimore Police Department recruitment are placed on city buses. This is an advertisement for people who do not have a car, who, if they become an officer, will be awarded a vehicle, who are most likely female.
One sign declares that police work is an “Honor.”
The other, more common sign, reads:
“Be An Officer Of Change”
I read this with a shiver.
-61K a year to start
-advancement
-signing bonus
-wellness care [1]
-benefits
-[gun, power and car are not listed]
Automobile collisions are on the rise in the areas I travel through. The Baltimore Fire Department is tasked with sorting out these wrecks as their primary task. Of interest is the fact that the fire engines now arrive before the police cars—if cops show up at all.
Overall, I see an increasingly efficient State of Maryland, conducting large scale population replacement, successful news gaslighting of displaced subject population counter to observable reality, [2] and adopting a law enforcement model that should prevent Federal actors from staging another large scale riot in its chief city.
Notes
-0. One Christian wellness center, has its largest sign devoted to “no mask, no entry!”
-1. Speaking to a retired law officer two nights ago, he described the police department psychiatrist as an increasing power position in police work. He also informed me, that in Maryland, State Police automatically review the use of force encounters for any locality, pointing to a centralized police state and providing an explanation for the almost complete absence of arrests and traffic stoops.
-2. The ability of government influenced and controlled news organizations [priesthoods and their oracles] to instill the belief in home bound persons that the cool breeze and midnight downpours outside there door are not real and that anthropomorphic global warming is real, may, perhaps have a higher purpose. However, I think that the most important thing about the imbibed Government Lie on any subject, is not the specific misrepresentation of reality, but rather the mechanics of indoctrinating occupants of reality, through the use of mesmerism, that it is not raining, when it is. Such methods can be extended to any purpose, once perfected.
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posted: October 23, 2024   reads: 176   © 2024 James LaFond
‘Good Afternoon, Sir’
#1 of #2: Harm City By Bus and Car: 4/18-20/24
Thursday at One I crutched from the Brickmouse House to the bus stop. There were two hood rats and a junky doing some kind of business. At the stop. When I arrived they took whatever they were doing back into the neighborhood.
The Overlea bus came and let off one young lady, a nice pretty milk chocolate, who saw me admiring her form and waved, smiling from under her wavy hair, “Good afternoon.”
The State Center bus came and disgorged a family, a tall, blond woman, much worn and weathered, a muscular Jamaican man with braids and two very pretty mixed children. Mom wrangled the 2 year old and 3 year old as Dad deployed the large baby stroller. The children were loaded and Mom began to push as Dad looked at me and said, “Good afternoon, Sir.”
“Hi,” I chirped, unused to such a civil Baltimore.
Next came a tragedy: 5’ 8”, 145 pounds, athletic buxom, her hair braided in a close coif showing off her golden brown face which had lost known of their high African cheek bones—a very pretty, athletic girl in Johns Hopkins Medical Medical Blue. This woman should be draped in silks and gold, serving banana beer and Moroccan wine to some prince of Senegal. Yet she is in Baltimore city, waiting for the bus, so she can shepherd the informative sick up the meatchute of souls. She looked at me, stepped slightly away from the stop and said, “Good afternoon, Sir,” motioning for me to take the position to load first, as I had been trying to do for her.
“Mornin’” Miss I chirped, off by over an hour…
She smiled, a sad smile of compassion as she saw my eye patch, crutches and backpack. This woman was one point less beautiful than Halley Barry in her youth, was perhaps 25, and was built like an ebony Artimus, athletic tending towards the motherly make.
The bus meter was out of order, so I put my $5 away.
More businesses are vacant or boarded up than in 2023.
There were no men on the bus, which had 25 occupants, back to normal pre-shamdemic levels. Bus service has expanded directly to Whitemarsh.The number of buses have increased. Lines have been extended. The bus is occupied by women from 18 to 60, going to afternoon jobs or having finished their day shifts. All of these are pleasant mannered African Americans, facebooking and gossiping, discussing rising prices “and all the shit done been dumped in the Harbor under the Key Bridge,” as their copious bling jangled and their gold framed smartphones struggled to remain in their manicured hands.
The young Hopkins Beauty, hovered around me ready to catch me if I fell and stood beside me as I was seated on the rocking bus. She stood next to me and looked to check my status like she was my nurse.
Less trash—much less trash is preseant in Northeast Baltimore and the Overlea, Fullerton, Rosedale and Essex areas of Baltimore County. [1]
Ten teen youths, all males, get on at Steemmrs Run. Eastern and Stememrs is still baorded up and inactive commercial real estate, within 200 yards of the largeset Baltimore County Police barracks. The Yutish tribesmen of old have been replaced by lighter, more feminine, gossippy, tik tok using smartphone zombies… just like the women on the bus. This is paradise. The chronological analogues of these fellows from 10, 20 and 30 years ago, in Essex would have started pickinga fight with any able man and humiliating elders like me.
As I write, before taking the buses out of town, Megan and Georgia are watching TV in the enxt room:
The news is carrying a story about Mayor Brandon Scott declaring that too much medical relief funds are going to “white grant organizations.”
There is also the news that Homeland Security, the FBI, Google, The NFL and the Boyscouts of America are combining forces to address child traficking and sexual abuse of children.
Car jacking, shooting and stabbing reports on the TV, Saturaday morning, as I write this, help me still believe in Baltimore… and the type 2 diabetes sing along comemrcial is on, all is well with pharmaceutical hell.
Offloading at the goodwill store, that used to be a supermarket under three banners, the increase in Latinos and Africans has rendered this intersection busy for the first time in 20 years, and much more polite. Crutching across the bustling lot, inhabited by all races, including some other crackers, the cool, cloudy day was pierced by a few sunny rays.
Three young people, obsessed with their phones, praying into the mesmeristic Allmind, glance at my progress and submit again to their hypnosis.
The Orange bus pulls up and I see that the single fare is $2 and a day pass is, I forget, I will be reminded in an hour. The driver, a large, pleasant, light skinned African American, stops me as I take out my two dollars, while crutching aboard, “Sir, would you like me to issue you a handicapped pass?”
Pride interceded, “No, thank you, Sir.”
The $2 slid into the functioning meter, the driver waits for me to seat and I head down to Rolling Mill and Eastern, where I limp off as some spry young cacker hauls a box of belongings, covered under the drizzle, upon the bus. The driver, in university American English says, “Take care, Sir.”
“Have a nice day, Sir,” I rejoin.
It takes this lame old cracker 30 minutes to make the quarter mile back into Colgate, to where these two pleasant ladies await to check on my well being:
Megan: “Baby, have you eaten today?”
“No.”
Georgia: “Good Lord, no wonder he is so skinny—he might blow away!”
Megan: “Asshole! It’s after Three. Sit down, we have some pot roast tough as leather you should be able to gnaw through—no one else will touch it.”
It was mighty tasty, but took some chewing. That must have been a milked out dairy cow that was forced to walk to the slaughter yard.
I feel so old as I write, 20 minutes form leaving for Harford County.
When I get to Mom’s I will relate the strange impressions of this migratory space had by car with Vaxx Zombie De Gualle yesterday, Friday, the day after my arrival and before my exit.
Time to back up this file and crutch off into the murky sunrise.
8:33, Saturday, 4/20/24
Notes
-1. Overlea and Rosedale are neaighborhoods that straddle the City/County line.
10.21.24   maud'dib — Quote from above "I feel so old as I write, 20 minutes form leaving for Harford County."

Wisdoms has its price!
10.24.24   James — It is its own kind or weird inner tale to be approaching full dotter.
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posted: October 21, 2024   reads: 208   © 2024 James
Prospect Badass
#3 Nat Star—Timejacker!
Nat was feeling great, not feeling a bit like Scott!
He walked behind Sergeant Crook, who marched as stridently as a “hog-bodied individual” might behind Major Pitt, who swaggered in his snakeskin cowboy boots, his yellow streaked with white viking hair falling about his epulettes. Mrs. Crockett was standing in the doorway to his classroom wearing a look of concern. Majot Pitt tipped a missing hat, “Darlin’”, and Sergeant Crook saluted at the march, “Ma’am, don’t you worry. This young fellow is bound for better!”
They were headed towards the back of the building, not for the front door, which was really sketchy. Ahead of them, was the turn.
‘What type of strange stuff could happen before we make the turn for the back lot? The bell ringing and mobs of students flooding the halls? Some enemies of these assholes—I don’t even know if these guys are good or bad—they seem to be both?’
“Just relax, Son,” intoned Sergeant Crook as he took a jocular comic shuffle.
Then they turned the corner.
‘Good! One hallway, four doors to release, to get some air and wake up from this insane nightmare!’
‘No fucking way?’ he thought before he had the good sense to stop.
The Principal was in the hallway with the floor scrubber, yanking on the wonky handles, kicking at the floor wiper, cussing under his breath, as Benny, the old black dude who normally cleaned before and after they were in the halls, stood by staring at his boss, who seemed to have lost his mind.
The Major strode up, “At ease, Seat Shiner, at ease,” and the Principal stopped too suddenly, then lurched forward in a daze, his hands on the clasp-like handles of the big box of rolling liquid filled cleanliness, drool trailing from his quivering lower lip.
The tall chimp-armed viking in snakeskin boots and a uniform too sizes too small, then called a halt with his hand and stood with hands clasped behind his back. Benny was terrified.
“At ease, Negro,” soothed the Major, and Benny’s eyes bugged out like he was frozen in terror.
“Good boy,” drawled the Major and spoke without taking his eyes from Benny, “Sergeant, assess the bio equipment.”
Benny was now relaxed.
‘If they hurt Benny I’m going to rethink my racism!’
With that suggestion, Crook walked up between the two men and waved his hand slowly, first before the Principal’s quivering face, which twitched and drooled more actively, and next before Benny’s fearful yet calm visage. The man then took out a flash light and shone it first in Benny’s eyes, which did not move, then in the Principal’s eyes, which fluttered as the man shat himself explosively—bubbling, liquid gruel of bowel staining the gray suit, draining into and over the black hard shoe uppers to pool around those clack prone soles.
“Major, works like a charm on the savage races, as predicted by Pappa-Boy Crock. There is certainly a lack of efficiency in the mesmeristic operation of this here meat bot. A dressing down oughtta do, Sir.”
Major Pitt then let loose, “Seat Shine! You have shit the bed with a Board of Education Inspection in bound!”
The man tittered, stopped shitting, stood at attention, and cried.
“Seat Shine! My floor is as black as Toby’s ass here,” pointing a thumb towards Benny, who stood stalwartly at attention.
The man in the suit whimpered in incoherent babble but stood straight, “Dismissed. Retire to the latrine and police your person.”
The Principal, tottered like a broken, shit-footed reed, turned and shuffled towards the boys room.
The Major turned to face Benny, saluted and directed, “Resume sanitation detail, Soldier.”
Benny straightened even straighter, saluted like a cartoon soldier, stepped to the scrubber at attention, unlocked it, an action quite beyond the Principal’s capacity, engaged the scrubber and followed the stuttering school administrator’s slime trail towards the bathroom.
The officer looked, as it seemed, for an opinion, to the sergeant, who answered, “Aircraft are out of the question, Sir. A war galley, single bank of oars, maybe—perhaps a steam engine. Force multiplication will be a hurdle. Perhaps Nat Star here has fixed his lawn mower?”
Crook grinned over his shoulder at Nat, who had cut a lawn or two, but had not had the luxury of a teenage car and had cooked for coke sluts just to get a ride to New York for a Motorhead concert, so was not feeling much like a functional gear head.
“I’ll learn you up, Son—once a man has made metal bricks fly, coaxing lesser machines to roll and such is child’s play.”
Nat just nodded in the affirmative, as if he knew what he and this insanity were all about. In the company of such men it behooved a punk to project confidence, especially if this was a drug-induced state and he was doomed to relive this in future dreams. So he did.
Benny was herding the Principal into the boys room with the scrubber, a great white grin splitting his face. Soon the side door onto the back lot, which was technically the back door onto the side lot, opened to admit the glaring blast of hated sunlight that would have galled his eyes after a night spent reading by flashlight. Yet, this blaring bath of sunlight was welcome. Directly to a white sedan, a Crown Vic, an obvious federal cop car, they marched, three men on a mission.
‘This feels good, feels too good to be the acid trip from some shit-head painting the water fountain with PCP.’
Closer they walked as the DOD tags above the rear bumper, which was smeared with blood, grew closer, bigger, more real.
‘Shit, man, this looks bad—looks real.’
The two men stepped up to the rear of the white Crown Vic and the Major spat on the dried blood and growled, “Nigger juice on the bumper, Sergeant.”
“Major, he was a might stout. I don’t think you over did him—some uses of force cannot be avoided, even when we are in the covert way.”
Sergeant Crook jingled a set of keys, inserted one into the trunk lock, turned it with an ominous click, pried open the trunk, and there were two men in underwear, one a thick set black man with a badly broken-broken, indeed crushed, nose and a bloody rag stuffed in his mouth, who, looked dead, bailing wire binding his ashen, swollen, wrists, one broken ankle kind of tied around—‘ouch’—a sound ankle with a belt.
There was also a terrified, tall, thin, white man who had a gag on that had not choked him to death. His ankles and wrists were bound together with bailing wire to the point where they were purple. He glared in shock-laced fear up at the Major who absently declared, “Shit fer breakfast, Sarge. They don’t make niցցers like they used to. I thought he’d be fine, a tough somb bitch—kind a liked how he wasn’t ready to lick boots like this prick, rear-echelon major. Guess we overdid the bailing wire. Good job cramming them in. Looks like he’ll lose both feet and a hand in any case. Shit fer lunch, too.”
The white man in the trunk was now crying and whining, gagging and—the Snakeskin version of the Major slammed the trunk shut.
“Drive it down the slip at Watersedge. Crock will need another zombie.”
Crook walked around to the passenger’s side, opened the door for the Major, then walked around to the driver’s side and pointed to the rear driver’s side door, “Behind me, Son—Nat Star is going on his maiden journey, and believe you me, your civilian cherry is about to be popped!”
The door slamming shut encouraged the bound thing in the trunk to mumble and bump and otherwise disturb the suspension. This was happily discouraged, or drowned out, by the engine gunning and the cheery sound of the Segeant’s voice, “Sir, white zombies seem to dysfunction at an ominously reliable rate. Might I suggest the old fellow under the bus stop at Logan Village. Won’t be missed a lick.”
“The guitarican, you mean?”
“None other, Sir. Called himself Da Playa From Dah Himalaya, if I am properly respecting his rounded sense for the enunciated consonant and the accented dangling vowel.”
The over long chimp arm reached back on the passenger’s side rear seat, grabbed a gray felt Stetson, from atop a gray slicker and a set of smart felt dress grays. The hat was set with a brass CSA stamped set of crossed sabers, such that the emblem seemed to be a belt buckle repurposed for a hat band clasp, that hat band being a red silk sash with white stars, of which he would not be disappointed in finding 13 if he were permitted to count them…
And there was a brace of long barreled, .50 caliber Texas Ranger pistols, a Bowie knife, all on a belt, with a bandoleer stuffed with rounds, tucked behind the front seat.
Behind the driver’s seat was a web belt with a 1911 .45 APC, an ammo pouch with what he reckoned were two spare clips, and, ‘No fucking way,’ a burnished photo, worked into a brass whiskey flask frame, of Ronald Reagan, leaving Marine 1, a great Sea King single rotter chopper, on the White House lawn, being saluted by none other than the man in the driver’s seat, who seemed to read his mind as he pulled off and looked into the rear view mirror, “Do not molest the belt, PFC Star, but do acquire the forty-five, eject the mag and the round in the chamber, and be prepared to administer a pistol whipping to whichever one of the Major’s chattel he deems worthy of your attention.”
When he reached out for that snapped-down holster, the rebel in the back of the DOD cruiser, which did have the paint job to recommend it, felt as if he reached out for Eternity.
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posted: October 20, 2024   reads: 135   © 2024 James LaFond
Hubris, Folly & Madness
Grunt Role Playing Game Character Transformation #3. C
Hubris
If a player has a 6 endurance score, and he rolls a 6, then the Furies are aware that he is testing his mortal limits. In this case, he makes a mania check with 1d20, which is less likely to succeed then a coin toss, with even the most maniacal heroes like Achilles or Alexander having only a 9 until they have survived various misfortunes.
The roll of exactly his mania, a 1 in 20 chance, results in simple success.
A roll of less then his mania indicates that the Furies are pleased, and results in a number of concurrent advantage checks equal to the die difference and the applied to all consecutive actions. No saving these blessings. So, if Private Ed, the natural mechanic, was about to unjam that .50 Cal mounted on his dead captain’s Little Willy Jeep, and his roll of 6 against his 6 Kit ability, brought other-wordly attention. Forced to roll his pathos of 5 or less or face disaster, Ed scored a 2 on that 1d20, his next 3 actions will all be blessed with an advantage re-roll. If he rolled a 1, aside from the above advantages, he will check his Rout mania to see if he can go Audie Murphy on those Krauts. He has a 0 Rout, so gains a 1-3 [1d6 halved], rolls a 3, which becomes a 2, gains 2 Rout mania and, for now, 2 additional advantages.
Advantage re-rolls, if the first is not successful, may be used against the same failed result, Ed, if his player is bad enough with the dice, possibly burning up all 5 of his re-rolls, trying to knockout that Kraut armored car.
But, but, what is more likely, is that this smart ass who can fix anything, as he is about to turn the tide of battle against the Natsy counterattack at Kaserine Pass, has been singled out for punishment by the Furies, that he rolls a 10 against his 5, and his next 5 successful actions incur a disadvantage check, which means a re-roll of anything that DID succeed.
Folly
It is sometimes thought that a fool, a person who has a hopelessly low ability in something, is, on occasion, favored by Fate, for she is a she and does dote on certain mortal pets.
A person who has been cursed with a 1 ability, and is forced to make an ability check, might declare that he is praying. In such a case the roll of 1 is still successful, but a roll of 6 is also successful.
IF successful, this adds 1 to the player’s pathos.
If the character was successful by rolling a 6 he also gains an animism point [A huge deal, possibly resulting in increasing his Rout mania].
If he fails with an odd number, the 3 or 5, he is also afflicted with a disadvantage on his next action.
If he fails with a 2 or a 4, the even numbers, and yet survives this test, he has learned something and adds 1 to his 1 ability, increasing it to a 2.
Warriors, in GRUNT learn in action, not in some fencing school or training camp. Those venues, if there was any formal training at all, are regarded as already in their past and part of their active make up.
No ability may exceed 6. [Except with beasts and monsters, see Chapter 8.]
No overall ability may exceed 18, except for pathos, yet pathos checks of 19 and 20 still fail as per the rules.
Manias may increase through player action and exterior actions, though do not exceed 18.
Madness
If any character has a play result that would increase a mania beyond 18 he earns a madness point. When a player has earned 7 madness points he commits a suicidal act, hopefully taking many enemy with him, like Samson in the Philistine palace.
If he has 6 madness points and he rolls a 6 on his madness check he goes nuts then and there, doing as much damage to the world as possible, as he earns that 7th madness point. If he wins that battle, he dies by his own hand or in a fit of melancholy, perhaps burning himself on a pyre like Heracles.
Until that Herculean end, any time this player uses his pathos or mania, or is called upon to check his pathos or mania, he must make a madness check with 1d6. If he fails, rolling higher than his madness score, then he commits a mad act of combat, with his increased madness score, increased to that number he rolled. He may then return to the margins of sanity and continue his career of mundane rapine.
If he succeeds, there is no reprieve, he gains a madness point.
Berserkers
Intentional, functional madness, is the subject of this rule. Berserkers are a type of suicidal warrior who inflict madness upon themselves by going into a fury before battle, perhaps the night before, in some ritual. Once a berserker has inflicted madness on himself through whatever ritual he uses, he will always be subject to that condition, even if he declines more rites. Reversing this condition through a journey to a shaman or wizard might for the basis for a retirement adventure?
1 point of madness is gained in each of these rites.
In certain formal societies, these rites must be observed, if battle is known to be nigh. In other societies this process might be a lone, personal rite. In such a case, a second rite could be engaged in to intensify the state.
If the battle or duel, or fight is not pre-meditated, then the berserker gains his powers for the battle, increasing his madness by 1 at its outset.
Every time he survives battle, a berserker then makes a madness check. If they fail, then their madness increases by 1.
A check that succeeds increases one body or spirit ability, and possibly also a mania and his pathos.
The berserker’s powers are three:
#1: His animism ability is added to his body ability for combat. This may not exceed 18, though his Hit Points may. This is a separate distinct temporary ability, which, combined with the other abilities below, causes the berserker to make his madness check the night after the battle. So, he can fight until night in this state, in as many battles as he can survive.
#2: His madness score is added to the damage he does when he strikes—yikes! A few points of damage is a big deal in Grunt.
#3: His esoteric score is also added to his hit points, which are his overall body/madness points, permitting him to fight with mortal wounds, like a bear. That night, as he loses his powers and makes his madness check, if his wounds exceeded his body [hit] points at all, he shall die. This is the Furies’ price for being able to fight at negative body points when a none berserk man is incapable of fighting at 0.
Now that we know how your Grunt functions under stress, let’s go onto forms of play.
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posted: October 19, 2024   reads: 132   © 2024 James LaFond
An NYC Subway Attack
As Witnessed By Barry Bliss
An NYC Subway Attack, As Witnessed
On Saturday, October 12th, 2024, in NYC, I was taking the subway train home from work, at approximately 945 PM, when the following occured:
The train was set to go express from 86th St., where I boarded, to 125th St. It was then to move into the Bronx stopping at all stops. Somewhere between 86th and 125th, while underground, it stopped.
After a minute or so, someone came onto the intercom and announced that on the train in front of our's a person had been in between train cars and had fallen off. That person was now on the track in front of our train.
"Uhhh"s went up from some of the passengers. A woman said to someone else "We were going to take the bus."* A man said "I was going to wait until I got home.." He then pulled a bottle of liquor out of his bag and took a swig, before putting it back.
I was standing by a door, and to my side sat a young man, a little overweight and soft of body, of Latin mix perhaps, looking at his phone. The seat beside his was empty and the seat beside that one was occupied by a larger black man with straightened hair and cotton garden gloves on.
The larger man said to the younger man "Touch me again and I'm going to bust your face. Break your glasses. Touch me again".
I looked to see if the young man was in any way touching the other man and saw there was a considerable space between the two. The young man had not been moving around and just kept looking at his phone, not responding to the larger man.
About a minute past and then the larger man said "I told you if you touched me again....." and stood up and punched the young man in the face. The young man bent over sideways and laid on the seat beside his, pulling his arms and hands over the back of his head as the larger man rained down blows.
Everyone but me had gotten up at this point and moved to the other side of the car.
(Here I must remind the reader that this is NYC. Fights and other such drama are a regular thing, and you never know if there is a backstory or history between the people. In this case though, it struck me as pretty likely that the two men did not know each other.)
At that point, after maybe 4 blows to the young man's arms covering the back of his head, the attacker stopped, got up and said "Where's my hat?" I was standing right there, and he looked like he was perhaps considering punching me, but he didn't. Instead he walked off and left the car.
At this point, we were all still stopped in place underground.
To be as short as possible, half the young man's glasses, minus the glass, were lying on the seat, along with a drop or two of blood. The young man's lip was busted and bleeding as well.
I asked the young man did any teeth get chipped or knocked out and he felt them and said no. I said
"That's good." I then asked him if he had work the next day and he said "I'm 16".
Others (who were now coming back down to that side of the car) said "Ohh" and "You're sixteen?"
Then there was lots of discussion about where the attacker had moved off to (in some other car) and how they needed to tell the police what happened, etc.
The young man, who had remained calm the whole time and was saying little, told me that if he told the cops it would take a long time, as if he was considering not immediately reporting it.
He was able to get through to his father and his father was going to meet him at 125th. The train soon began to move, with the announcer saying the man that had been on the tracks was alive.
When the train doors opened at 125th some witnesses got out, but as I looked around on the platform from the car I never saw the young man again. I also saw no police and did not see the attacker.
I stayed on the train, and continued on my way.
The next day I searched briefly on the internet to see if there was any news report about the incident, but found nothing.
* Quotes are not necessarily verbatim.
======================================
Barry, this is a very well done piece of reporting, as good as anything I or Chris Pfouts or MacYoung ever wrote.
I saw this behavior on the bus a week ago as a tall black man of 40 or so stood and began objecting to imagined slights by the driver, a 30 year old black, who he claimed was speaking to him and looking at him through his mirror with "disrespect." The driver ignored him, safe in his cage, until the stop came. When the driver stopped, the man threatened him for not stopping correctly promising, "Ta comeback on yo ass!"
I have noted an increase in such threats on foot, by bus and by train. The violent speakers are all of the same demographic. I have no desire to expand on that.
What i have noted is a high level of ambient hostility that has continued to grow in the culture, the whole culture, from senators down to wolfing welfare slugs.
I know people, in fact most of the people i know, have been sucked into ambient hostility. The men who drive me around are more and more angry at the other drivers, who are even more angrily acting out than my driver. Last night I went to coach karate students in boxing. Only two boys were there. Yet, upstairs from the basement school, where there was once a dance studio and a fencing school and an accounting firm, there are three mental health clinics!
Next door to our main entrance, where there was once a nice used book store, is now a weed shop.
People are quietly losing their minds and their memories and their ability to read a book right in front of my eyes. Dozens of people that i care deeply about, long time friends, fellow fighters HATE people who they have never met, HATE them by name obsessively, violently. How can you hate someone you do not know? The wonderthug enthusiasm of those two 12 year old boys last night was a relief compared to the seething discontent, confusion, distraction i observe in adults every day.
Was Cornrow insane?
Is he just lonely and unknown, perpetually overlooked and underlooked by strangers mesmerized by their phones, strangers who might once have taken note of his menace with a shuffle of fear, a dropping of eyes, a declaration that he was welcome to their seat?
Sixteen, probably took less of a beating than if he would have fought. He was wise enough to ignore the fellow and shell up and to not call in the goons, knowing what pigs are. Less than 1 in 100 men his age, far less, probably 1 in 1,000, are willing to engage in any activity that would have given him an option better than a beatdown. At least he had a father to call, where most young men of other murkan bloodlines do not.
Barry, thank you for this.
2008 began the Knockout Game, recreational group ambushes of atomized souls.
2016 began the HATE Game with insane persons attacking anybody without cause, simply to express their hate for the world that ate their soul.
2020, increased insanity by X4, at least. Insanity supported by media mind sodomy and massive legal and decriminal drug augmentation has placed many of us in the well of despair, far inward and away from everyone, everywhere.
Please keep reporting.
j
10.21.24   Maud'Dib — Well the Ebony favored class can literally kill a child or stab a young pale face female and not be charged because their IQ is tool low to stand trial. Below 70 is "mentally defective".
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posted: October 18, 2024   reads: 269   © 2024 Maud'Dib
‘What Books Influenced You?’ #3
Mister Grey Asks About Crackpot Influences: 4/24/24, Baltimore
What follows, by way of crooked conclusion, is an easier and more bland, I am afraid, record of a discord of perspective in my prime, effecting books I have read since my 30th year. After spending 12 years firmly invested in raising a family, kissing ass at work, working super hard, and collecting over a thousand standard history books and encyclopedias in order to overcome my weirdness and self induct into the world order, I had hit some walls:
Those who succeeded in climbing the ladder at work lied, a lot, and constantly.
The owners, though they believed the liars, valued the occasional honest employee, but could not trust the poor, and were convinced that the poor idiots beneath them could not handle the truth, and thus lied, veiled and concealed facts and intentions, constantly, even to those few underlings, me among them, who they valued as honest sorts set morally apart from the general herd of slackers and criminals.
Marriage, the institution, was nothing more than a means of enslaving the man and empowering the woman, who alone had direct backing from all governmental entities.
Although I had been told I was a home owner, I was not even an active home buyer. Not a dollar I paid on the mortgage note for 10 years had gone to pay for the $45,900 house!
Although I was told I was king of the world due to the glory of my pearl skin, I was constantly hunted by both black-hued thugs and blue-uniformed crackers.
This later situation, including numerous murder attempts, moved me to a return to the combat arts I had pursued until age 20 when Ed Jones, pro kick boxer, kicked my rib cage in while sparring. My rabid devouring of books on fighting showed an almost complete lack of actual knowledge by “experts” with everything based on theory over actuality.
My search for the science-fiction time machine that I had hoped Randy and Dale could build for me so I could help Alaric more completely destroy Rome in A.D. 410, was now replaced with a search for a means of fighting off the packs of hoodrats that the goddess Civilization had unleashed upon me.
In this state, the books that helped me return to my earlier viewpoint of Civilization as a Conspiracy against Mankind were, in the order I recall, numbered below which is messy as I returned to these books often.
-13. 1982-90, The Devil’s Horseman, read 8 consecutive Holiday’s at my Brother in Law’s as his only really interesting history book. I eventually purchased my own. This slim history of the Mongol Invasion of Europe, was superior in violent vision to any book written on the subject and far superior to any authoritative liberal history of anything, that I sharply questioned all academic conventions henceforth.
-14. 1990, The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolf, a brilliant prediction of where Civilization ultimately leads, to social, physical and spiritual cannibalism by elites of the teeming chattel beneath them. Continued into a total of 12 books in three cycles.
-15. 1990, Shadows in Zamboula, also titled Man Eaters of Zamboula, a Conan story by Robert E. Howard, reread as my working life fell apart in the face of crime and lies, that almost exactly depicted my nocturnal life as a hunted stock clerk in Baltimore City, a situation that continued until December 11, 2017.
-16. 1990, Moby Dick, read a decade later than normal, permitted me to see Melville’s adventure for youths, rather as a metaphor for how Civilization in its industrial form uses and corrupts mankind in his tribal form through the manipulative hand of the Devil’s Boatman of Modernity, the managerial class, which is opposed to all things naturally created by Eternity rather than by civilized man’s paltry arts.
-17. 1990, The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman, on the pursuit of policy contrary to self interest, leaves a consistent record, in which the great lady of letters, who also wrote The Guns of August and A Distant Mirror, two brilliant narratives, declines to direct her microscope at the criminal actors. Rather, she declares that the most powerful men in the world were routinely idiots or fools, rather than the conspirators against “their own people, and own nation” that they were. Through reading A Distant Mirror, it is obvious that she knew of, and knew not to illuminate, the fact well known since the Pharaohs, that the ultimate enemy of any head of state is his or her own sentient, and potentially awakened, tax herd.
-18. 1994, Of Arms and Men, O’Connell, the best general history of warfare up through Time, helped navigate the general academic lunacy concerning the subject of warfare.
-19. 1996, Reay Tannahill, Flesh and Blood, A History of the Cannibal Complex, Dorset, declined for publication by the major houses. This book squares the obvious cannibalistic mechanics of Civilization with primal antiquity.
-20. 2005, The Broken Dance, Draft, James LaFond, in the mirror of my own findings, my squid like soul confronted my own myopic thug mind with the fact that everything written bout ancient boxing by modern boxing experts, to include boxers, martial arts publishers, magazine publishers and the World Book Encyclopedia, was either wrong, or a lie. Only the Encyclopedia Britannica and Pierce Egan’s [and a handful of other early 19th century authors] Boxiana has actual historic facts. This clued me in that the separation of the American mind from the British mind, though sharing the same language, had as its three majority features:
-A. a good guy/bad guy, white hat/black hat false polarity,
-B. fantastical origin stories, not to be questioned other than in reference to and possible reversal of the false polarity,
-C. that “historical” “inquiries” are not investigations, but “arguments” along the false polarity, and that the source material is ultimately to be traced to popular news stories or government/elite funded academics, in which actual facts are omitted, slanted or distorted to conform to the false polarity.
This has driven me back to the ancients, which, for the most part, did not begin lying to use down these stairs of Time until about 1700, in order to ascertain as much as possible about our past, present and future. I conduct these inquires in shame for having been mislead by our evil masters through my youthful 20s and mature 40s, only to get down to some serious work 2 years after a negative epiphany experienced while holding a clipboard and wearing a blue shirt and black tie that, I was forever, not as smart as I had been the day before. I immediately began writing a science-fiction novel as an escape from the cerebral corruption engine as I plotted an escape from its economic gripes.
Thank you all for facilitating this escape, for how so ever i remain on the lam.
-James, 5/9/24, the day of Mister Grey, our videographer's return.
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posted: October 18, 2024   reads: 198   © 2024 James LaFond
‘What Books Influenced You?’ #2
Mister Grey Asks About Crackpot Influences: 4/24/24, Baltimore
My apologies to the muses hovering impatient and opalpresent [1] in the fleeting now, and also to my muse-slaying mind nurses waxing a legion in the shrunken and bitter past.
-6. Causes of WWI, a small blue book issued by A.P. History Teacher Art Richardson in 1978, as preparation for a class debate, which I declined to get involved in. I did read the book a few times and confided in this man, who found me a cipher of insanity who oddly knew facts about obscure ancient battles, such as casualty reports, that I did not think it was rational that any one of these nations carried the sole blame for this stumblebum inferno, that would go on to light a greater torch, that the causes were complex. He grinned, said, “Be careful, it’s about the argument.” I simply watched, dooming my team to failure. This book has nagged at me, rising navy blue in the mind’s eye as I marvel in later years that the only thing that historical or public discourse is concerned with is assignment of human blame or a singular cause. What inquiry is left to us is mere, preposterous, singular assignment of blame or sole cause.
-7. Alexander of Macedon by Harold Lamb, in the form of a cloth bound hard back book of red, was issued to me as my book report subject by Art, who looked at my copy of Conan the Barbarian and grinned with his arrogant lantern jaw, “This book is not the best treatment of the subject. But you will relate to it.” A backhand serve that was! The thing that stuck in my mind was how creative actors, such a Phillip, Alexander’s father, who had been a prisoner in Thebes and there, in his mind, developed the first and finest purpose built combined military machine, and his precocious son, defied the world and redefined mankind’s trajectory in it. Eventually, the machine they create to break boundaries, will mechanistically entrance their inheritors, who become reduced by their dependence upon it. This lead to me reading 14 books on Alexander over 20 years.
The following 3 books I found in the high school library after I was ejected form all classes with library passes for the crime of reading books not assigned by the teacher.
-8. Charles Oman’s History of Warfare, reinforced the above realizations and defined for me, in my teenage mind, mankind’s struggle against overrule by the mostly evil Gods, and the subterfuge and underule of women and eunuchs, as a battle between the creative masculine and the seduction of the feminine garden.
-9. J.B. Bury The Barbarians informed me, through his objected narrative, that the fall of Rome, was not a tragedy upon mankind, but a bastardized delivery from the evils of civilization. Reading Bury while completing all 12 Conan paperbacks and Worms of the Earth by Howard, had in me, an intensifying effect of antipathy towards the world order. Bury wrote an excellent annotated History of Greece, which is still the best single volume general treatment of the subject some 120 years later. This finding, in the 90s, would reinforce what Marshal Cavendish had taught me, that post 1930s history, to include that imperfectly compiled patriotic record, are exercises in a mass mind control lie.
-10. Three books, one written by a 19th century naturalist, on the history of Native American tribes of the Eastern woodlands, found in that high school library in the 1970s, made the case for ancient mariners, to include some lost tribes of Isrаel, settling among these folk in antiquity and their extant traditions, still in evidence in the 1800s, contributed to the long, 8 generation, period of coexistence between European invaders and Natives, a state that was in stark contrast to the simple single generation extermination and capture of Western tribes. Technology alone did not explain this. Art had explained to me that Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse had better guns than Custer at Little Big Horn.
-11. Our Oriental Heritage, Volume One in Will and Ariel Durant’s Story of Civilization, drew me back into the academic fold I had so nearly escaped, to be hopelessly lost beyond its reading processes. As a special ed retard I did not want to also be a crackpot! I wanted to be accepted, with words, by the two smart non drug using friends I had made in Trinity, Randy and Dale. Reading the first volumes: 2 The Life of Greece, 3 Caesar and Christ, 4 The Age of Faith, 5 The Renaissance, 6 The Reformation, at the school library and at home, drove me to complete reading the series out of my Uncle Herb’s library in Baltimore, and to later buy the series for my sons and for reference. In the long run, thru my 50s, reading Durant made me a student of the liberal view of graduated emancipation from Eternity thru the hallowed civics of Goddess Civilization. This kept me from tilting too quickly into crackpot conspiracies, enabling me to act as a curator rather than a theorist.
-12. Worlds in Collision & Earth in Upheaval, by Emanual Velikovsky were two books my father had on his shelf in his basement office on Moger Drive next to my bedroom. I read these affirmations of ancient historical records [derided as myth today] in the face of omniscient SCIENCE and saw a fight against the old God and the new earthly God rising. My trusted and learned friends assured me that Velikovsky was interesting and meant well but did not have his sources annotated correctly, and should thus be ignored. For the next 50 years of my life I would be told by friends, family, history books, science fiction novels and stories, magazines and TV media, that current science IS GOD: omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent… and the silent, ink lettered voice of the old Russian psychologist who had predicted many things, including the temperatures of unvisited planets, has echoed in my mind ever since…
To be concluded in #3.
Notes
-1. Not a typo, rather a new and badly needed word. English words are so many that they suffer the lonely ennui of the crowd and need a new friend.
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posted: October 16, 2024   reads: 202   © 2024 James LaFond
‘What Books Influenced You?’ #1
Mister Grey Asks About Crackpot Influences: 4/24/24, Baltimore
Mister Grey and I sat upon his deck after reviewing certain books on video and he said,
“James, I know that your interests have expanded and deepened since we met in 2001. [1] What I am really interested in, is what books helped set up your initial viewpoint? First you did a violence study because you knew that the martial arts magazines were bullshit. Then you rewrote the whole history of boxing because you knew that was bullshit. How did you know that things that other people believed were wrong?
“Some people might write it off as instinct or alienation—and those factors are there. But I have seen you look at the same book material as other people since 2011 and you see thru the veil and others do not: white Indians, slavery, crime, societal decline. Maybe two discussions, early books that influenced your viewpoint and later books that affected it?”
-Amish Country, Pennsylvania, Monday, April 15, 2024
Groan, I wanted to write two chapters in Nihil today. But this fine fellow is coming to town today and his interests, as a reader, trump mine as the writer. I should preface this with the fact that my two major history projects were the product of reader inquiries, not my own curiosity, and that my major journalism categories, Harm City and Travel were thrust upon me by the poverty inflicted by the infotech system that banned and now shadow ban [2] my most salable books. So keen the wicked Norns for our souls.
The books I read as a boy, youth, and young man in my 20s which influenced my worldview, in the order read:
-1. Sea Hunt, multiple short, graphic novels, about a four man crew of pearl and sponge divers in the Mediterranean, instilled in me the ideal that a handful of men could outwit evil doers and also resist oceanic forces. This really struck me as an alienated boy who was among four other retards consigned to the special education reading class. There were no girls in this class. The World Hates Boys! I knew that, which set me on the path to discovering why, and how I could stab Gaia in her all-drinking eye. These stories influenced me largely because these were the first books I could read.
-2. Guadelcanal Diaries, by a reporter with the troops, whose name I do not know. This was the second book I read and convinced me that the World’s hatred for boys was expressed in industrial extermination of men.
-3. The Marshal Cavendish Encyclopedia of WWII. I read these 25 volumes about five times. This basic information on WWII was utterly pro-American, but did include photos of German peasant girls working in rural fields far away from the front who had been machine gunned by American aviators. As the histories of WWII expressed in documentary, movie, TV, and American news media mythology became more and more cartoonish, I have often reflected back to this relatively deadpan account. It was not real history by the standards of Herodotus. However, in my dawning mind, it gained stature and towered over the increasingly emotive rewrites of that titanic war of extermination. All other wars I studied were covered with decreasing emotion over time. Only this war, was and is, viewed with increasing emotion over time. This realization has grown over time as WWII history has continued on this course. This has convinced me that the leaders of all of the warring nations were cooperating in a great cull of the best and brightest lower order men and that the only disagreement, the contest if you will, was over what version of the mass mind ideology would use that global attempt to eradicate men of agency, as a veil behind which the thousands years conspiracy against mankind would be hidden in service to the emotional farming of the surviving masses. This is my deepest and least popular view, that the greatest war ever fought had no good guys, has a pre historic ancient analogue, and that whatever world leader you think served your cause, merely sought to cull your kind in favor of the fervor in his mind.
-4. Mastermind of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. This old time pulp novel attracted my youthful desire to fight enemies, and to mate with a dark haired woman with the stunning cover. Upon reading it, I found that the answer to dealing with the constant mind control attacks of adults, and the frustrated insanity of my fellow youths, was to escape, like the hero John Carter, to other realms, if in mind only. While my friends all through teenage years drank, smoked and did drugs, I read. I have since discovered, that by not doing what all but myself and two other students in Trinity High School did [drink, smoke and get high] as a teenager, and retreating into books instead, that I emerged into adulthood with an ability to remember events, actions, books etc, that eludes most people, despite dozen of concussions of a brain that had been sub standard in boyhood. Indeed, as I live with numerous folks in various states, half of these families assign me the ask of remembering what they did, what they said, where they laid their hammer, etc. Edgar Rice Burroughs saved me from the stupid juice while my brain was growing and forming in its most vulnerable stage of becoming the brain of a man… who, if he becomes and remains a man, is Enemy of All the Civilized World.
-5. Conan the Wanderer, an Ace paperback by Robert E. Howard, edited by L. Sprague de Camp, I found in a Walden’s book store in the Washington, PA mall, at age 13. My hand was broken from a fight with a 17 year old. I had become enemy of the neighborhood. Seeing the Boris Valejo painting of a small barbarian with a knife standing up to a giant of iron, brought instant identification between the author and my yutish self. The headline story, The Devil in Iron was a brutal piece of social commentary against civil society, that our rulers on earth MUST be evil and that defiance must be informed by wits or we are merely meat that complains before it is placed smoking upon the God’s altar.
I shall continue with the rest of this odd literary memoir in #2.
Notes
-1. Yesterday, here, at the Brickmouse House, the Webmaster told my host, “When I met this guy he wasn’t interested in any of this conspiracy theory stuff. It was just better ways of fighting, history of fighting and weird fiction. Now, this guy is as deep into the rabbit hole as any of us.
-2. Try searching my books and you will be given mostly used listings, not the books I get paid for; and expanded distribution retailers whose cut comes directly from my royalties and not the publisher who makes the same either way.
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posted: October 14, 2024   reads: 266   © 2024 James LaFond
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