Above the Abyss
Crackpot Combat and Activity, Notes: Portland, 11/18/2023, Leaf Day
This should post at about the time targeted for a doctor check up and a return to coaching in the Mid Satanic.
It was a long, two month crawl to full crutch mobility, then another two months hanging between those things. My current activity is daily:
20 hours typical fast time.
1 hour prone exercises
2 hours writing/reading
30 minutes upright exercises
2-6 hours household chores or walking
2 hours writing/reading
30 minutes prone exercises
4 hours drinking alcohol [I try and live a balanced life]
8 hours sleeping [Morpheus gets 2 Dionysian hours twice a week]
Now, the shambles that was once an over-aged, under-sized aspiring fighter has the following functional parameters:
The compressed right lumbar spine is up to 30% of pre-injury strength, 100% of pre-injury flexibility. Disc irritation is nearly gone.
Torn right hip labrum has not improved and not worsened. The supporting muscles of this joint are at 80% of pre-injury flexibility and 50% strength.
Abdominal strength has gone from 3 to 30 crunches and from 0 to 30 pullovers [1] and is limited in increase by irritation to the femoral nerve after 30 reps and lumbar distress after 2 sets as well as rib attachment injuries in the left side that inflame after 30 pull overs. [2]
Right inner leg strength remains at 10% of pre-injury.
Femoral nerve pain levels range between 4 resting and 8, doing extreme sports like walking at ½ a mile per an hour with cane, on crutches, or without cane. Strength and flexibility exercises for the inner leg irritates the nerve and decreases strength and stability.
Front right thigh stands at 80% of pre-injury flexibility and 10% strength. Attempts to increase strength destabilizes knee.
Walking on level and down hill is ½ MPH.
Decreases and increases in elevations have to be done in a step drag fashion. The lame leg must lead going down and follow going up. Steps are easier than 10% grades. 25% grades reduce pace to half foot step drags. Grades steeper than 30% require switch back walking.
Pushing off with the right foot or stepping back into a right side reverse triangle, and or doing forward shift marches and reverse shift counter marches bring the nerve to a sizzling 8 pain level.
The left hip and left knee have weakened.
The left femoral nerve is beginning to demonstrate irritation down to the ankle and banging spasms down to the knee, though not with the pain associated with this in the right leg.
Both of what I thought of as small hernias in the left and right, after my experience undergoing nerve conduction testing on both sides by Doctor Park, were, and are, obviously impinged femoral nerves in the lower abdomen above the testicles and parallel with the hips.
I can now carry a 20 pound load short distances or in a backpack with crutches, making visits possible.
Shoulders are trashed from crutch and cane. I hope that access to a speed bag and dumbbells will improve this.
I have been able to do light yard work, such as raking leaves, with no irritation.
Cleaning house interior has been therapeutic, with only the mopping of the floors having to be limited in duration.
Twisting could be a disaster.
Bending to the sides is touchy.
Traction exercises for 1 to 5 minutes every two hours reduce end of day compression.
Seated writing with back brace and pillows under knees can be tolerated for 4 hours daily, about the limit of normal eye tolerance of screen time.
…
Activity Assessments
Using current activity and progress over the past 4 months as a guide, I am expecting the following spring activity limits.
Normal walking on the level at 1 mph without distress.
Women’s work in the house.
Lifting and packing limited to an upper range of 30 pounds.
Weapon training limited to walk up defense drills and step drag pocket sparring. The right knee is a total mystery and does not function predictably. I do not expect to be able to even demonstrate triangle steps, shifts or lunges in slow motion.
Boxing offers more possibilities as shown by recent limited shadow boxing. I can do half the foot work in left hand lead and the other half in right hand lead. I cannot pivot on or push off with the right leg. I hope to be able to coach by staying in the pocket and mimicking a power puncher or counter puncher. Boxing from the outside, even in slow motion, is unlikely.
Sean has asked me to coach and corner at the 2024 Man Weekend. If someone is headed there from the Mid-Satanic, I will drag along.
The medicine I am on to dampen the pain in the femoral nerve, which kept me from sleeping for 7 weeks and prevented exercise with that leg, has reduced my cognition, reaction time and expressive acuity. I expect to be an even more limited coach. I hope access to punching bags will enable me to develop power and pocket drills for training as my ability to demonstrate mobility is on the decline.
As I explore the athletic function that remains, I have targeted the exact time of the initial injury to the right femoral nerve in the groin at December 2016, three months after I tore the labrum in the left hip running to catch a bus down Glenoak Avenue. This showed up when I tried to push a floor scrubber that was locked.
Thinking this was a hernia, I did not pursue more abdominal strength which increased lumbar risk over time. Pain in the left groin, which is now expressing down the femoral nerve to the knee, began in November 2022.
The abdominal surgeon who examined me noted that in men my age, abdominal pain that mimics a hernia is often associated with hip injury. Both of my hips have been torn and are at this time injured and not improving. Therefore, setting my goal for a return to: hiking, ditching, wood cutting, fighting, etc., is hazardous and could result in a plunge back into the pit of shrimping, crabbing, crawling and scooting as a human crustacean on some floor. This state did not permit me to write, as I could not stand, kneel or sit.
Writing is the bargain I made with my mind for remaining in this shambles of a carcass under the Shadow of Uncle Satan. The goal is light travel and writing at the current level, which is more than 8 books and less than 12 books per year: hopefully 4 novels, 4 journals, 2 memoirs and 2 histories.
…
Notes
-1. The pull over is done by placing the head on the corner of the bed, grabbing the mattress corner under the head and pulling the knees over the chest and feet over head.
-2. The highest rep prone exercise, that has helped the most with the lumbar, is alternate cross hip leg extensions.
Nerder, Please!
The Graphomaniac Designed a Wargame and Wrote an RPG Setting
I could not help myself—this is an affliction, you know. Cammilia Fragmullah once declared that artistic inclinations are the sign of a damaged personality. It is how I got into writing in 1987.
An Introductory Table Top War Game Simulation
And there is this, ahem, from early on in my dissolution...
A 44-Year-Old Role Playing Adventure Reconstructed
Shrouds of Aryas Available
Inquiries Into the Trajectory of War Band Culture
Chapters: 102
Pages: 583 8 ½ by 11pages set in Lucida Unicode, 15 point
Words: 135,738
Inquiries Into the Trajectory of War Band Culture
Copyright 2024 James LaFond
A Crackpot Book
Lynn Lockhart Publisher
Written, Edited and Proofed by the author
Dust Cover
Here, at the far end of the curse of Prometheus, pulp novelist and lay historian, James LaFond attempts to gather the strands of the past with empathy. Looking away from the hateful lens of the professional historian, the reader is invited to reconsider the past. What does it say that we, here, at the end of known Time, are not permitted to discuss the past as its occupants saw it?
Imagine a distant future, in which the study of America was not permitted to employ the term American?
When discussing the Аrуаns, we must not speak of those people in terms that they would recognize. They must be the Indo-Europeans, something alien to them and their age. Even on the author’s own website, in order to maintain web hosting, the search function has had to be disabled for Аrуаn, Аrуаns and Aryas.
The author, even as his analytic capacity waivers, is, in the latter stages of a ten year investigation into the dichotomy of western warrior traditions, increasingly convinced that the history bequeathed to us through our teachers, is more contrived than the most trope-laden comic book.
Coming to doubt his ability to gather the tattered threads of our past in one sensible hand, the author has conceded to wonder at the past in as much depth and breadth as is left to this investigation, without an expectation of a unified analysis.
Shrouds of Aryas is simply one novelist’s attempt to conduct an inquiry into the past by using the unique historical tool of trust. While academics condemn the dead of having lied or been mistaken about the days of those their lives, LaFond takes the radical approach of trust. Rather than hate the Ancients for having Thrived hard times where we have merely wallowed in sloth, the reader is invited have mere trust them. The only assumption made by the author is that the poets, chroniclers, and inquirers of of the past were not trying to mislead the unborn. But rather, as odd as it seems in our 360 degree gaslit world, the reader is asked to entertain the preposterous notion that most of the writers of the past were simply trying to inform.
About the Author
James LaFond is obsessed with learning from the writers of Long Ago. He thinks he has written 280 books, but suspects that this total is probably off. He promises not to challenge Euclid or Pythagoras.
Inspirational Quote
“If you have a sure knowledge based on experience, of any subject, you will recognize that the news is always wrong about that. Military men, athletes, spread sheet jockeys, experienced people form all walks of life, come face to face with the fact that all news is fake every time they see a report that touches on their area of experience. Yet, when we see a report on some area of life we are not experienced in, we accept it as fact, when in fact, it is fake. News is nothing but abbreviated narrative, and I think that something about your unusual life, reading list and narrative grasp, has enabled you, more than traditional critical skeptics, to catch glimpses of reality through the veils of the obscuring agents that stand between us and our past. I suspect you of using narrative intuition and for these intuitions to eventually be confirmed where possible.”
-Lynn Lockhart, in her final skype call with the increasingly techtarded author
Dedication
For Dan Knudson, my friend
Parts
-1. We Are the Sons of Aryas
Foreword to Sons of Aryas by Achilleas, the Series Reader: 8/7/2023
-2. Historian: Platform Articles for a Proposed History Site
-3. Heaven: Discussions of Myth and Religion
-4. Rome: A 23 Part Summation of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
-5. Dialogues: Reader Initiated Discussions on History
-6. Shrouds: An Incomplete Attempt to Fathom Аrуаn History
-7. Western Civilization: A Seven Part Analysis of the Barbarism/Civilization Cycle
-8. Muse House: Book Reviews and Summations
-9. Epilogue: On the Seas of Fate
Series Books
-1. Sons of Aryas: Soul of the West: Volume 1
-2. Beasts of Aryas: An Inquiry into Аrуаn Culture, Domestication and the Monstrous
-3. Blue Eyed Daughter of Zeus
-4. Songs of Aryas: Considering the Strands of Аrуаn Tradition
-5. Shrouds of Aryas: Inquiries Into the Trajectory of War Band Culture
-6. Norns of Aryas: A Heroic View of Ancient Thought
-7. Of Fey and Fury: Practicing Pulp History
Plantation America 2024
Three Volumes of Un-Veiled American History
Since we have been de-listed by Bling, the twerk engine of Macroshaft, headed by Brill Yates, James has decided to dump his most contentious work on this site before these volumes see print publication.
Once James has completed publishing proofs of these and 67 other unprinted books, his time will be devoted to the completion of the more massive three volume Omnibus In This New Israel: Sowers, Reapers & Inheritors.
In the mean time, the volumes below contain more about actual American history than all of the Great Courses available through academic means.
A History of the True Foundation of English America
Overture to The Thirteenth Tribe
[These are proofs. The subtitle has been retained to reflect the original course of investigation. However, the following omnibus on Plantation America will be titled In This New Israel, reflecting the results of the investigation.]
A Survey of the Conditions, Revolts, Uprisings, Runaways, Resistance, Conspiracies, Rebellions and the Extant Legacy of Plantation America
[Advent America was the overflow from this massive volume, published ahead of time as context.]
To Support this ongoing act of literary suicide...
link › patreon.com/jameslafond
For a video and links to extant paperbacks in the series of accidental histories go to...
Thank you for your support.
Man Weekend 2024 Moved to Pennsylvania
Also, Crackpot Cleared to Fight By Doctor Dread
Sean has asked that you dear meatshields, knuckleheads, goons and brutes, be notified that, due to lack of Cornfed Tennessee interest in fighting, that this event is being removed to its former location in OutOfService Pennsylvania.
Contact him or me for directions.
The schedule:
May
Thursday, 23rd, after dinner
Arrive
Friday, 24th
Training clinics in Grappling, boxing, MMA, stick, knife, machete
Saturday, 25th
Gun range in morning
Fighting and dueling
Dennis and Keith will have an MMA bout
I will box 2 men, one bout taken by my webmaster, duel with machetes, fight with sticks, and finish off the day by doing an improvised weapons versus machete with Erique, who will replicate the coming machete virus while I defend with umbrellas, brooms, shirt, dustpans, etc.
Sunday, 26th
Breakfast, leave by noon.
Bring legal firearms, improvised weapons, gear, booze [to be consumed after the gun range is closed] food, and a Dominican Stripper for James [one strong enough to haul me off the lawn after I am KO'd.] If all you have is two discounted less-than-stout babes, i will man up and make do.
04.24.24 vaxx zombay du gaulle — im showing up without bubble gum with the intent to kick ass. it will be my
1st showing. the rest of you cowards should show up too. if i can do it ...
if the crackpot can do it ... so can u. come wipe some cripples
Meeting James LaFond
James Anderson: Portland, Oregon, November 15th, 2022
Since James LaFond so often recounts his meetings with friends and strangers I thought it would be interesting, especially to those of you who have not had the pleasure of his acquaintance, to describe my first meeting with the crackpot.
Portland, Oregon, November 15th, 2022.
It was a sunny and crisp day, I was in Portland visiting my then girlfriend, and had just dropped her off at work. I had reached out to a certain James LaFond a few weeks prior via email, knowing we would both be in the area at the same time. I did not know what to expect. I had been reading his website and books for some six years at that point. I was turned on to his writing by the wonderful Wrath of Gnon twitter account, an unexpected but perfect source.
We had exchanged a few texts and emails and spoken on the phone briefly before today, mostly about the kind of training we were going to do and a little about my background so James had an idea of what he was working with. I was anxious; this man with his depth of knowledge and experience whose writing I had admired for so long and who was so willing to meet and train, simply hearing his voice over the phone was a strange experience.
I pulled up to a small house in a neighborhood of Southeast Portland at the agreed time. Right on schedule a man clad in all black opened the door. He had a white duffel slung over his shoulder (the sign I was told to look for), and a black headwrap pulled low on his head. I stepped out of the car to greet him. As he turned his long white beard was revealed, and I could see the headwrap was pulled low over one eye in particular, an Odinic figure straight from the sagas.
We exchanged greetings and shook hands, he was stocky, shorter than myself, but spry and his grip was firm. His eyes (or eye, that I could see) have the shine of life in them, that unmistakable glint of real feeling and deadly intellect only a few possess. After looking me up and down he remarked, “I hope you can’t fight”.
We drove a short way to a nearby park, James graciously lent me some sparring gear and we got right down to business trading sticks. As soon as we began I could feel the raw fight skill and knowledge he possessed. Despite my height and weight advantage he kept me well at bay, and I could tell if he truly wanted to could have cracked me several devastating blows.
His coaching style is quick and effective, you pause, he points out something to work on, and you work on it the next round. The kind of insight gleaned over years of deliberate training. I learned more in one session with James than in weeks at conventional fight gyms.
After our session, which included sticks of varying sizes, double stick, boxing, and knife, we talked for a while and I offered to buyJames to breakfast, which he graciously accepted. We drove to a nearby dive bar. I immediately began to grill James on his thoughts about Robert E. Howard and the Conan stories, what his favorites were and so on.
James is a thoughtful conversationalist, and answered my questions fully and patiently. He speaks with the care and mirth that only experience can produce. It is clear he is someone who has lived, and reflected on the living. Just as he appeared an Odinic figure at first sight, it felt as if I spoke with a wizard of the violent arts.
After our breakfast we said goodbye to the friendly older waitress and I drove him back to the crackpot garage. We agreed I would send him some writing and exchanged farewells. He walked back to the front door, duffel bag full of training tools slung over his shoulder, and went inside.
There are people you meet every once in a while who have the spark of true life in them. Real warrior-scholars, who exude energy and a terrible joy, and are happy to share it with you. James LaFond is one of those men and we are lucky to have him.
Read more at: jamesrandersen.com
A Brief History of the Future
Wednesday, November 8, 2023, Yakima Nation, Washington
Travel and health have taken their toll on the yeti hoodrat hobo writing output. Once again, today, the eye is sizzling. In order to complete SPQR, a full length novel, Slave a novella, and make significant strides in Plantation America and Aryas histories, I shall decline to do any travel writing. If I get mugged, it will go into a novel. This journalistic declination, this reporter retrograde, will occupy this entire winter. When spring comes, I’ll began writing travel again. This jives with my current happy home residence being predicated on my not writing anything about my time with those kind people who have offered me shelter after I lost my garage spot and all my winter clothes.
In the meantime, I thought that you long suffering readers deserved…
That’s right, crackers, more suffering!
If I survive my time on this cozy Indian Reservation and get back to the dive bar in Portland, I shall schedule this post to appear on January 1.
…
Near Future Predictions
-1. All cause death under USG tranny tyranny shall continue to increase, with cancer, stroke and heart problems leading the way.
-2. PIGZ, AKA police, will continue to rob people. This activity, being to the good, as Aristotle would say, since whining unarmed slaves will be being taxed by their armed masters, will continue to increase, with God’s Blessings. Yes, I do BELIEVE that I can speak for Eternity on this count.
-3. PIGZ, due to defund the police lack of overtime and raises, will begin hiring out, in uniform, out of uniform, on duty and off duty, as private thugs for rich people. If you go and date some rich dude’s ex wife, I told you so.
-4. Federal cops, like ApesTokingFemurs, DickExtensionAssociates, FecalButtInvestigators, and such are going to get in more directly on cop grifts. Where, before, select feds took a cut of interstate grifts like BPD PIGZ robbing people of things in high demand in Philly, feds are just going to go for it, straight up robbing you in airports, train stations and on interstates. They will call it something cooperative or compliant, but it will be a tax.
-5. Drug use and associated eugenic cleansing deaths will continue to increase.
-6. Drunkeness among your friends and associates will continue to increase.
-7. Weed psychosis will continue to increase.
-8. Meth psychosis will continue to increase.
-9. Gawd on Gawd murder will continue to decrease slightly, due to… Dazz, rite!, ‘cause da hunt fo Whitey! It is on, open season on your crackers! Why shoot a fellow Groe, even if he bangin’ yo bitch? Even iff ‘cause his bitch ass is a snitch? Shiee, home invade some white man! Why, ‘cause yo can! If he shoots you, you hit the jack pot. Tell the poleese he said da N word!, that you wrecked your car and were asking for directions…
-10. Violent crimes by Groes on Ghosts will continue to increase. Why? Why not!
-11. Investigations, prosecutions and convictions of Groe on Ghost crimes will continue to decrease.
-12. Prosecutions and incarcerations of Ghosts for the crimes of interfering with Reparations Recovery by their dark masters, will continue to increase.
-13. Global warming hysterics will continue to increase, even as, and especially because, actual cooling is ongoing.
-14. More war distractions from USG tranny tyranny will keep the Dough Joy nation looking, away, away, away over there.
-15. The DupeEasementAasswaxers will be looking for a purpose, with increased legalization of drugs. Being one of the most corrupt tranny agencies to begin with, I suspect that this organization will be repurposed for internal terrorist activity above and beyond the rampant pillaging of random citizens its operatives will increasingly engage in.
-16. A new factory made disease will appear.
-17. A vаccine will be ready to combat this menace.
-18. Americans will continue to grow more obese.
-19. Cheap residential construction will continue to increase in suburban areas, as urban blight from Groe displacement of ghosts and rural displacement of ghosts by The Liches continues to increase.
-20. Home ownership will continue down as rentals increase.
-21. Either an asshole, a medical experiment or a bitch will become clown in chief of this phony nation and people will continue to care, beef over, and even experience grief, hope and belief over whoever the USG clown puppet is.
…
Bonus
That was a lame set of predictions, as betting on continuation of trends is the easiest thing one can do. So, lets go out on a limb here:
My only chancy prediction, is that Major League Baseball will somehow get involved in the presidential elections, just as the NFL got involved in state and senate elections in 2022, perhaps by declaring stadiums poling places.
Clutch the Snitch
Motherboard #3
A vision of dainty competence dressed in a black uniform and wearing a cute nurse’s cap appeared in his right eye, waking him. As the left eye opened to a dimply lit room he recalled as his healing place, the mechanically inclined nurse in his inner TV eye hissed, “Poppy, a breach is imminent, three hostiles—your kind of folks.”
A fire rose in his brain, behind that image of his saving maid, ‘No one violates this House!’
He swung out of the cot onto his strong right leg and it folded like a noodle. As he crashed to the floor with a crunch and a clang he recalled, ‘The rabbits say I’m all broke up. Guess they’re right—but I still got some bite!’
He heard the distinctive sound of plywood being hooked and ripped by a steel pry bar. With a grimace, a growl and a whirl, he rose and turned his back on the boarded up window. He could hear that there were two boards. He had a few moments.
He looked right and saw her there, dressed up like a news reporter, reciting news to a little mechanical monkey sitting in a miniature little willy jeep on the stainless steel table.
She looked up at him and winked, a wink of darling confidence that said, “You got this, Poppy.”
With a snarl of fury, and the cracking of something in his back, within the greater noise of the plywood being rent behind him, He regarded the weapon rack, balancing on his one left leg. There were his two crutches, the hooked one and the one with the drill bit.
‘Not enough space,’ he considered.
He then reached for the shotgun, pulled it down, opened the breach, held the gun cradled in his left arm, and reached for the two shells, encased in yellow, 20 gauge bird shot he recalled. One shell fell from his hand and he somehow knew that he could not get to the floor and reach under the cot in time.
‘Gimp!’ he snarled within as he slammed the breach closed, slung the barrel over his shoulder, felt there that he had not cocked it, pulled it down, cocked it, and put it on his shoulder again.
The outer board was being torn away by the pry bar and four hands.
‘The Bowie knife, oh yeah, baby!’
The inner board was being kicked in.
‘Turn around and hobble right. They will want her. Get to the dark side.’
He hobbled over to the far right corner with a “click,” a “drag” and a “clack,” put his back to the wall behind the dresser and watched calmly as the plywood was kicked into pieces. A hard leather boot attached to a long denim leg thrust through to the knee.
He let his right hip fall into the nice cherry wood dresser as the Bowie knife came down of its own accord, and clove with a meaty, bone shearing sound.
A human howl sounded without.
The pretty mamma at the table continued to educate her mechanical monkey, focused on that motherly task.
Rather then pull their fellow back and tend to him, two snarling men shoved their point man through the remaining board, the entire panel swept from the inner margins of the window by his long, lean figure. The gouting leg gushing blood on the rubber-coated stainless steel floor, the brassy belt buckle, followed by the particle-coated flannel shirt, and the blond bearded face of pain and dismay, draining to pale in mere seconds, was launched butt over dresser into the center of the room.
Beyond, the pretty mechanical nurse dressed like a news reporter, was spreading out a tin of 27 dominoes and using them for the mechanical monkey’s math lesson, a thing just born already in elementary school…
A face peered into his, a dirty face, framed by greasy blond hair under a Make America Great Again hat, worn to a greasy billed rag, no longer even red, but nearer to black.
The barrel of the shot gun was leveled at that face. As the invader’s mouth described an “O” of doomed surprise, the trigger was pulled and the hammer fell, causing, rather than a roar of face blasting ruin, a smokey hiss.
‘Kibble and snittle!’ groaned his inner force.
The mouth closed and creased into a toothy grin, and those teeth were smashed in by the smoking steel barrel of the primitive shotgun. That man had some fight in him! His eyes burned with a fury as he yanked that barrel from his blood gushing mouth, stripping it from the one older and damaged hand with an ease that infuriated Poppy.
Angrier still was Steely Jim Bowie, Poppy’s prized personality, the closest member of his toolkit.
That steely fellow sank into the black leather jacket and the black hooded sweatshirt, through to the rib cage, and still that man held a hateful grit, twisting in his sure death to throw himself down and away and snap his neck draped in dirty blond locks, taking Old Reliable Jim Bowie to Hither Hell with him.
The girl described the tile in her hand to the monkey, “The six/four is the best tile to lead off with.”
The third man kicked Poppy in the chest, driving him back over the whole leg of the bleeding-out man, to fall just right of dying and far right of dead, to bounce with an uneven crunch.
The girl charmingly chirped, “Little Joe Willy, you don’t want to go to the boneyard…”
And the lean, older, gray-haired man, looking like a father to the two felled hostiles, leaped, too spry by half, to jump stomp with his engineer boots on Poppy’s more narrow chest.
Tearing something in his back, and something less painful and suddenly wet in his side, Poppy rolled left upon and over the gushing stump of denim leg.
His attacker, wearing all denim, looking quite sharp actually, a purple Ravens knit cab with beanie on his head, wielded a rod of sharpened rebar, squatting to thrust that 2 feet length of iron through Poppy’s chest.
Noodle Leg finally served a purpose other than to drag and foretell his approach. Poppy sold off that lame limb by raising it so that the sharp length of rebar pierced the tibial band above the knee and ran all the way of to his hip, causing a terrible shoot of pain.
“There you go, Little Joe Willy—way to lock up the board!” sounded the angelic voice to his left, beyond the plexi-screen.
‘I bet she’s pretty, with a voice like that.’
The man atop him abandoned the rebar and drew a .25 auto, pressed it to Poppy’s chest and fired a round into his old breast bone, which sizzled along the bone and got caught between the two central ribs.
Poppy’s left arm then pushed the other old man’s elbow across his chest and used his right hand to strip the pistol, driving it butt first into the Raven’s beanie and blowing a whole in the base of his own right hand below the pinkie.
‘Real slick, that was,’ groused his inner judge.
The man snarled and began head-butting Poppy in the side of the head, causing his ears to ring like those long unheard electronic church bells.
‘You’re fading fаggot—fight!’ snarled his inner critic among the ringing.
He was being punched in the gut, which was thankfully still hard from the crutching.
He took the beating, as the headbutting man was now blind in his left eye from the cap sliding down, the beanie bobbing soggy red above.
Poppy reached down, drew that length of rebar up out of his leg with a sizzle of well-earned agony, turned it out far right, so that the man on top of him with his knee in his pelvis could not trap it, flipping it in his hand as his bottom left rib was snapped off with a savage punch.
Unfriendly Cousin Re-Bar, a newly adopted family member Who would ever be cherished and welcome among Steely Jim, Hook Crutch and Drill Crutch, sang like a meat grinder with a hundred dull teeth as the sharpened point was sunk and driven through the guts of that menacing man, to pierce the spine from within, and pop out through the back of the denim jacket.
The man of a sudden quit atop him and gurgled, “Awe fuck, Clutch—you sho’ badass fo’ a snitch.”
“Thanks,” drawled Poppy, “But I ain’t Clutch...he live down da way.”
Then nodding to his crutches he mumbled, “Dey calls me Crutch down dataway.”
The man then groaned in dismay and began to cry, “Awes fuckklebe, done los’ all ova’ a missed-pronounce-eation.”
Poppy felt said, “You a tough sumbitch, man.”
“Tanks,” the man sighed as he lay his head down on Poppy’s aching shoulder and pulled out a blood soaked knot roll of money and mumbled, “Dis were scalp price on Clutch da Snitch. Ye earned it, ‘ave a beer on Three Boot Crew.”
The man gurgled out his life to the sound of the young woman, called Mamma by the Rabbit, who chirped, “Triage Little Joe Willy, First Aid before Graves Registration…”
Poppy raised his head to look into the next room and raised his bloody right hand, thumb to the ceiling, as the pretty lady in the mechanic’s suit and the nurse’s hat, wiggled and giggled, “Cool beans!” and clapped her hands together and cheered, “Poppy’s in the house!”
‘She changed her outfit in a heartbeat?’
‘Either that or I was out.’
The room swam as a mechanical monkey with a beeping whirly gig hat climbed over the gory fallen and looked down into his outer eye with two green lenses and declared in a tin like voice, “Poppy down, Mamma.”
His surly inner voice snarled, as the room spun for its last time, “Oh, you sure enough done for, son…”
Favourite Books?
A New Reader is Curious about a Sequel to Of Lions and Men
Favourite books
Inbox
Thu, Apr 18, 12:40 PM (3 days ago)
to james@jameslafond.com
Hi James
My name is Nicky. I am currently reading Of Lions & men and love it. I have recently been put on to your work by another writer. I was wondering what are some of your favourite books ? Also are you writing the next in series to Of Lions ? I look forward to hearing from you and reading more of you work.
Kind regards
Nicky
The shill in me is glad I didn't wait another three months to check emails.
Nicky, thanks for buying Of Lions and Men. My niece gets that money, which makes me glad.
By the way you spell favorite, i am honored to find that you are from a civilized nation beyond the destestible spawning pool of cadpoles that spewed me into the world.
Of Lions and Men was an historical look at masculine traditions, kind of aside book to the main series, which progressed like so:
Taboo You, on Lateral Masculinity
Incubus of Your Sacred Emasculation, on Hierarchical Masculinity
The Third Eye: on Masculine Standpoint [the worst of the series]
At the End of Masculine Time, on Vestigial Masculinity
These three titles are anthologized, with additional chapters in Under The God Of Things
Masculine Axis: the first book I did with Lynn Lockhart, which is a metaphysical look at masculinity.
Sir, it is my opinion that the only books that succeeded as concepts, in which I did not lose focus, are, in order from best to less:
- Taboo You
- Incubus of Your Sacred Emasculation
- Barbarism versus Civilization
I recall Of Lions and Men starting out strong and then scattering into an anthology of articles.
I would also suggest He: Gilgamesh Into the Face of Time.
For the most complete listing of my books see these two links, as much of my work is shadow banned and Bling, the search engine of Macroshaft and Brill Yates, has delisted us.
Hardbacks Books edited by Lynn Lockhart:
link › jameslafond.com/print
Paperbacks from Gaiazon, edited by my Dumbass:
Sir, thank you so much for your support.
I check my emails when I have internet and a computer that can get online without dying on me, which is about 4 assorted months a year depending on what region I am in. I do not read comments or answer them unless my webmaster threatens me.
He is so mad that i eschew commentary on my work using a function he built from scratch that he trolls me with pop up comments and emails—which i rarely see!
I think this will come to blows soon. We may have a medically retired boxing match over this personal feud.
He asked me how to train for it and I recommended he adopt a strict diet of chips and beer.
Storm of Bawdy Sprites
Act 7: Bruno the Younger, Lictor at the Gate of Pipes
Dusk, Caesarsday, Second Day of Sepulcher
Bruno gloried inwardly in his post. Outwardly he was the very shy shield of modesty.
Though a mere Lictor of the First Grade, he was a veteran of 8 years scrapping with the mobs. also the treasured son of a father who had retired honorably, after 40 years service, 30 a Lictor, all that was allowed, and ten as a corporal, a duty he liked not. Bruno the Elder had advised his son against promotions in Lictor rank, said that such “false elevations” opened one up to mob hit men, Censorial graft and paid little for the honest law man. Only the crooked kind of law man made money on promotions through bribes and such. For a fellow that was a simple, straight away servant of the Censor, in particular Increase Publico, that rare descent politician, Bruno the Younger had been advised, that a “bonus post,” by which well to do and even descent men might tip coin into the hand of a helpful Lictor, was the best path to a good life in this bad world of strife.
Bruno the Younger, all of 26 years, still in possession of all of his clean teeth, which he picked and polished quite regular, had met with some success helping young women of the good sort to their distaff factories, and even secretarial maids and dames of the banks, factories and merchant offices where they sorted and scribed for men of high account. Among these he fancied he might soon find a good wife.
He knew better than to involve himself with whores, though those wicked women preferred nothing but a hit man or a crook for a regular paramour than a Lictor. The money customers were such a wicked wench’s stock in trade. But a protector, only the live in concubines—usually the maid of the wife in order to keep up appearances—enjoyed the actual protection from bawd, pimp and snipe [0] that a Lictor might afford.
Bruno avoided this wretched road, and according to his good Christian upbringing, protected those poor misguided sons of Mammon, those rich fellows that sought concourse with the Bawdy Sprites, who owned whoring at Bell Station, and in return was often awarded a fair tip of the silver coined hand. As each such man left the Well of Sprites, quitting himself of one of those famed acrobatic harlots, Bruno the Younger gave to this man a prayer pamphlet recommended by Father Unctius.
Father Unctius provided these to Bruno every Ascent Day after mass, usually inscribed with a psalm. Additionally, for those who might be smitten by venereal taint, Bruno, as a concerned officer of the law, carried the card of Surgeon Pendelton, who was a fast partner of Hatter Brunt, sharing the same office and the same quicksilver supply. The genius twain’s pueter tankard filled with quicksilver, embossed with the image of the Angel Mercury, had been set up by none other than Bruno, it being so valuable and him in “high trust as a slave of the law,” as it were.
And as well, for such as run afoul of Bruno and the laws he was charged to enforce, there were the cards of Barrister Barnes. All three of these leading men of learned society were his exclusive accounts. Then there was Jude of Mirrors, the crazed alchemist who set up his weird array next to the very Grand Bell, charging persons a view of men of means negotiating beyond the locked gate—the gate for which Bruno held the key—with the acrobatic lurids above.
For turning the key, a shilling.
For each voyeur or private investigator who used Jude’s device while Bruno was on duty, a few pence—but these added up and bought Father’s brown ale.
Bruno did have to wear ear plugs—provided by Surgeon Pendelton, gratis—to protect against deafness. Even his whistle, ever at the ready, could harm his ears. This, and the soot, were the hazards of his trade. However, the gray uniform of Lictorkin did not show the smoke stack soot right off.
Bruno kept his threads clean and creased with an iron, and as well kept his eyes on 24 more years of service. Father said that “Corporal duty will rot your soul, laying on lashes well upon the backs of so much of suffering humanity, so that the devils driven fourth might leap into one’s own soul.”
Indeed, Bruno had passed this Christian test, by turning down silver pounds and shillings by the sack, for beating slaves and children, even wives.
In honor of this pledge, Father Unctius had bestowed upon Bruno a brass chained bronze rosary with 4 petals [1], 3 empty and one having been filled by a petal shaped medal by that holy priest, embossed with the image of the Cross around which was scribed the banner of the parish, that of Divine Unction.
The great bell geared up and the hundreds of bats fled for the darker creases of the narrow ways before the brazen thing that always shivered his soul, rang, announcing the Fullway Train, the mainline that ran from Execution Dock, through the city, and across the river up Patrician Way. Fear ever gripped Bruno at this time, causing him to press his hand to his four leaf clover rosary, hung discretely under his vest. Some great dignitary might be upon that mighty train that even now whistled.
‘Might my simple, blunt honesty offend such a one?’ worried he, ever and verily.
The bats were gone with a flutter. A dark cloth screen shielded the doings in the well from the ordinary gaze. Jude was up charging some patrician for a better view of a paramour being hauled up the well to a sultry balcony… and a commotion from down Bell Alley squeaked out like a fury of tykes, “Mamma, a boss o’ bloody sand done kilt Check, the Bigs, the Twigs, and a right few Gigs! He commin’ Mamma!”
Bruno acted with a just hand and shoved the patrician gambler’s two men off to the right along with their curtain to the sound of Jude’s rude gripe, “Fer Chrise’s very Sake, Bru—its commin’ out a yer take!”
Bruno never forgot that such side business as Jude provided were based on his fine record as a Lictor, and if he wanted to keep his post at the gate, a good post from advent, thru noon and closing out at dusk’s end, that he would well and good keep the order at this gate.
Below, and before him, stood Tyke, the very brashest, randy and entitled of the wee gang of Pipes. He held a sharp pipe in his left hand and a brass dart in his right hand. He sneered up at Bruno then back at the shambling paragon of the arena, a man that Bruno could not mistake, Max Scott one of the Brothers Born, hatched it was said in a dragon’s ancient nest, as scandalous bastards to Queen Beatrice the Whore, actual mother of Caesar, who ruled all of North Pannonia from Augusta, less than a day by steam or train from Bruno’s very post.
The little shit pleaded with the Bawdy Sprites above for help. Yet none of them would raise a Pipe into their midst, lest whispers of incest, a crime far worse than whoring, begin to circulate among the gathering shadows. The creeping gloom was not altogether kept off by the cressets, or the new gas light just installed above the great bell that yet hummed from its ferocious call.
Bruno was worried for the patrician gambler up there and bawled, “Now Gentleman Jem, mind yer couch and stay back lest the mischief o’ Pipes and Sprites stain your fine jacket of blue.”
Betty Sprite, the senior of them, cursed down from her balcony, “Mind your own gray bees wax, ye miserable licker o’ boots!”
The limping and battered form of this most storied gladiator, followed by a gaggle of Jap children in white scribbling upon pads, came forward as stately as he might, his shoulders nearly brushing the alley sides, his helmet dented, his black and silver tartan spattered with blood. A great steel pipe was in his hand, decorated with blood, scalp, brains and even blond hair. The gladiator used a blackthorn cane as a crutch.
The great man nodded to Bruno, “Lictor,” ground out the voice like a many cracked bell.
Bruno nodded back, “Scott,” silent like declining to have his voice peep in the departing shadow of that great crowd pleasing tone, and pleasantries were formalized. Bruno felt sunken and out of his depth. Lictors had no authority over men of the Twelve Sworded Houses. These were crusaders and above the laws of common men. In addition, Bruno and his kind had all been trained by the least of these men, the House of Rods, lesser even then the Boxer House. Before him strode a Scott, and not just any Scott, but Max Scott, first Highlander of them all.
Yet the chattering bawl of the very scourge of Tykes dominated the scene before him, on his wee, gutter stage.
“What be these wee Jap tykes a scribblin’, Tyke?” asked Betty, as the gladiator emerged into the round well surrounded on most sides by stone wall all around and by 12 acrobatic whores above hung menacingly from their balcony. Some held hair pins, some iron fans, some heavy clay roof tiles from some other building, some bricks from another and some pipes…
“Same as dese behine’ dis boot licker gate o’ gates, Maw!”
As the train brakes hissed already back down the tracks and the steam pipes above banged, the iron foundry whistle blowing the break of Dusk, Bruno realized that a crowd had gathered at his back. Among the very pants knees, coattails, dress bottoms and boots, between gate and crowd, scribbled a like troop of tiny Jap tykes in white, drawing furiously like angels reporting to God of things done down in this sordid world.
“They are so sweet and right, like candles in our night,” declared a well to do lady, flanked by her footman and maid.
The gladiator, Max “Scott” Born, then said in a level voice, looking up at Betty, whose looks were about faded, but formerly a great beauty, “Madam Sprite, I apologize for my hurried scrap with ye tykes and would atone by gold, blood or favor.”
As the women looked at one another with calculating minds and communicating criminal eyes, the maniacal little Tyke stabbed that gladiator in the right thigh and bawled, “Dis mug done kilt us all!”
This was punctuated by a snarl from the giant as one with an armored back hand that sent brash Tyke flying back down the alley, bowling one Jap over and unconscious.
That action, along with the knowledge that at least one whore upon her balcony had just received news of the death of a son, at the very hands of he who stood beneath them, ignited a fury, a very storm of Sprites. In the middle of that 18 foot round, a mere three paces for that big man, the gladiator with manica and rod in one hand and a great pipe in the other, parried bricks, tiles, pipes, bottles and sharp hair pins to his front, yet was bricked, clubbed and stuck upon his broad back and battered upon his armored head and shoulder from the sides and behind. Without that helmet of House Scott upon his head, Bruno would ever warn new recruits, who were prone to complain about wearing helmets in summer time, that even this storied brute would have been dead. [3]
…
Notes
-0. Bawds run whore houses, pimps street girls and snipes “Fifth Floor Girls” for the patrician class.
-1. This is based on the False World institution of NYPD officers giving pass cards to friends and family, and is present in SPQR as a Church device copied from military and gladiatorial medals, who use the same bronze four leaf clover pattern for acts of mercy. Gladiators receive such a medal, embossed with their house device for each time they show mercy in the arena and look to the editor before dispatching the fallen foe. A man who held a four leaf clover medallion full of such petals from Church or a Crusading Gladiatorial Order, was assured of high esteem.
-3. King Phyrrus of Epirus, father of the “Phyrric Victory,” the best military commander of his age, was slain in a street fight by a roof tile hurled down from a second story window by a woman, in Corinth, a city famous for its women of the night.
-JL, 11/9/23
‘The Empty Places in Their Hearts’
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon: Summation 15
14 times have I listened to this masterful treatment of the early Christian church. I have supplemented this with one listen of Saint Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine and two of C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity.
Gibbon was read in the most resent scholarship on Christianity and had conducted a comprehensive reading of the Ancients. This reader must quote the full chapter heading.
“Chapter 15: The Progress of the Christian Religion, and the Sentiments, Manners, Numbers and Conditions of the Primitive Christians…
“A candid but rational inquiry into the progress and establishment of early Christianity…”
This was essential to Gibbon’s history of Rome in that the empire that had bound some 30 nations as collective slaves, before it was conquered by barbarians, was first overthrown from within by a meek minority of Christians. The historian seeks to understand “the Secondary Causes” for this. For the primary cause, in his mind and in his heart, was the Truth of the Gospels and the Divine Authorship of the Faith.
This three-hour reading constitutes a methodical inspection of the secondary causes for the internal conquest of brutal, pagan Rome, by meek and non violent minority collectives, and the continuation of Rome as a no less brutal Christian Empire. [1]
“While that great body was invaded from without and decayed from within, a pure and humble religion insinuated itself into the minds of men.”
Gibbon goes no to point at that his time was still part of a 1300 year Christian “revolution” and that Europe, “the most distinguished portion of humanity in arts as well as in arms,” still professed the Christian Faith. One can see what a problem Gibbon’s work would be for the teachers of today.
He does note that “this inquiry, however useful and entertaining, is attended with two particular difficulties: the scanty and suspicious ecclessiastic materials” [2] the historian describes an “uninspired” intellectual climate that placed a “dark cloud” over the early church. Yet he proceeds in faith…
“The theologian may describe Religion as descending from Heaven arrayed in Her native purity…” yet the Historian has “a more melancholy task…he must discover the error and corruption She contracted in Her long residence on earth among a weak and degenerate race of beings…”
“...by what means did the Christian faith achieve such a remarkable victory over the established religions of the earth?”
The historian concludes, “it was owing to the convincing evidence of the doctrine itself and to the ruling providence of its author.”
Secondary Causes for the Triumph of Christianity under Rome
-1. “The inflexible” and “intolerant zeal of the Christians...”
-2. “The doctrines of a future life...”
-3. “The miraculous power ascribed to the primitive church...”
-4. “The pure and austere morals of the Christians...”
-5. “The union and discipline of the Christian Republic...”
First, Gibbon notes that the intolerant hatred for other peoples and their belief systems held by the Hebrews of Antiquity made them a marvel of the ancient world, for ages occupying its lowest rungs. He declares that the Mosaic law was ideal for defence of its believers. He uses biblical quotes to emphasize that Jews of the Greek and Roman period were far more pious than those of Exodus who had evidence if God’s immediate favor and wrath, that something about the Chosen People being abandoned by their God made them stronger in faith under his displeasure then in the immediate wake of His deliverance. It would fall to early Christians, being Jews in the earliest phase, to retool this defensive faith into an offensive faith.
Second, the gloom of pagan doctrines on the afterlife, left such motivations in the hands of eastern mystics, who were reclusive rather than socially proactive. The duty to witness with zeal was central to early Christian expansion.
Three, miracles were witnessed and related by respected people. Gibbon does discuss doctrines of his age that debate over when miracles stopped, with many authorities siding with the Reign of Constantine, though Increase Mather related a series of miracles in 1675-6 New England.
Four, the superior morals of the Christians and the various vowels of poverty that wealthy Christians would make upon conversion, gave a sense of moral incline in an age of deep moral decline.
Five, the most important of these in terms of their appeal to a warrior like Constantine, with little patience for administration and an adore for life in the saddle, was the Christian Republic. Prohibitions on engaging in civic life with pagans, and the fact that it was an urban faith of the lettered elite, insured that there was an underground system of civics growing stronger as Rome grew weak. Also, that many Christians, even under Diocletion, worked in government and in the army, the faith of an afterlife having particular appeal to soldiers. Gibbon makes one wry aside that the only type of idolatry that Christians engaged in was the use of money imprinted with pagan gods. Prophets were accepted in the early church along with the Presbyrs. By the time of Constantine, such figures had been banned by the Bishops and doctrine would rule over revelation, making The Church a ready made civic government to replace the complex pagan government that had recently been shattered by he and other warlords.
I have noted that ancient pagans accused Christians of atheism and that modern atheism as a doctrine stems directly from the Judeo-Christian traditions. However, there is one way in which the modern Christian and Modern atheist may disagree with the primitive Christian.
The Empire of the Demons!
Primitive Christians did not agree with ancient Platonic, Cynic and Epicurian philosophers, and modern Atheists and Christians that the pagan gods were make believe fables used to control the rural hayseeds and urban mob. No, the early Christians saw, as did Tiraldus the Norman in his composition of the Song of Roland, [3] the pagan gods as the demonic angels who had revolted against The Creator, against “The Divine Author,” as taking on the role of such gods as Jove and Apollo, in that their only possibility for comfort, was in making humanity share their fallen misery.
I suggest that Eddison, in the novel The Worm Oroborus, used Gibbon’s sketch of the Empire of the demons for the setting of his epic.
Side Notes
-A. The Christians that took over control of Roman government under Constantine lead congregations that numbered but 5% of the urban population and had under 1% or rural representation.
-B. The Nazarene Christians
“The first 15 bishops of Jerusalem where circumcised Jews.” It was apparently not until the reign of Hadrian and the putting down of a Jewish Uprising that the Early Christian Church severed its ties with the parent religion. The Nazarenes under the bishops of Jerusalem retired to Pella for some 70 years. Those who sought to reaffirm their link with “the church of nations” then elected a Latin bishop, one Marcus, and returned to Hadrian’s new colony. The remainder seemed to languish in Syria and eventually dissolve into “the church or the synagogue” rejoining the parent faith or abandoning it for the new faith.
From the Death of Christ to the reign of Hadrian, a hundred years with no schism, no battle over Christian doctrine elapsed. Until this time the battles on doctrine were between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians in regard to Mosaic Law.
-C. The Gnostics
To be “released from their corporal prison,” to be freed from their “cage of flesh” and the various doctrines of future states among the polytheists are discussed in depth by Gibbon, a pious Christian of the 18th Century, with a sense of empathy for the teeming dammed of antiquity, who wields a sharp sword upon his class analogues of Late Antiquity. The Gnostics were wealthy and literate and throve in the 100s, declined in the 200s and were suppressed in the 300s. Gnostics provided doctrinal opposition against the church at the same time that they attracted Neo-Platonists and other seeking souls, and thus helped feed the church and also sharpen its claws.
Notes
-1. Civic laws in Christian Rome included throwing bakers into their own ovens when found guilty of increasing bread prices and making other criminals drink camel piss, from the camel urethra in public.
-2. Augustine was an ideological shape shifter who had been a Manichaen Gnostic and reads like a secular ideologue of our own political climate in many spots, having as much in concord with an ancient Epicurian as with a modern Christian. Turtellian, despite his comforting fanaticism, seems obsessed with temporal civics.
-3. Gibbon cites Milton’s Paradise Lost as an accurate inventory of The Empire of the Demons posing as ancient gods.
The Fate of Western Civ?
What Happened to that 7-Part Series?
Comment from JL website
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Comment by Anonymous
Hey James What happened to the The Fate of Western Civilization series? This was the last one posted:
Respond on the website
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Respond by personal email
[HP]
Sir, I am sorry.
Thank you for your interest.
Those chapters will appear in Shrouds of Aryas, which has been complete for 2 months and should be for sale on this site soon.
These have also been sent to Ms. Lockhart for posting on substack.
A Plot Revealed
By James Anderson
The cold mire of the street did little to sober the man hurled into it.
“And don’t come back!” Someone shouted, they sounded muffled and far away.
Rising out of the sucking mud, the man staggered to his feet. Swaying from side to side and wiping his face, he turned toward the door to offer some rebuke, but was met with the bundle of his effects striking him in the chest. “Damned mercenaries,” came with the slamming of the door.
The man, Jean D’Vigny, was indeed a mercenary. As were many at the close of the 16th century, with Europe torn apart by religious and secular wars. He likewise felt damned, penniless as he was after a failed campaign, reduced to labor, hungover, and soaked in caking mud, unable to afford even a room for himself.
“In better days we would have burned that place to the ground and taken all the wine for ourselves with that swine groveling at our feet!” He thought as he spat with indignation. Picking up his things and shaking out the mud he started down the road.
He stirred at the sight of a stream winding away into a nearby wood. Washing himself in the bitterly cold water, the mud fell away to reveal a handsome countenance aged prematurely by a life of vice and violence. A long scar ran across his left cheek covered partly by a long and thick black mustache, which contrasted deep-set hazel eyes bewitched with a sword-edge cunning.
Sobered by the ice-cold water, he buckled his sword belt around his hips from which hung the only thing of value he possessed; a longsword, of Milanese make, which he had looted from a campaign many years ago.
“Help! Oh God, have mercy!” A cry came suddenly through the trees.
“Shut up old man!” A cruel voice retaliated.
Read the rest at:
Aspects of Ocular Overrule
Observations on Updating Agrarian Civic Controls: 8/29/2023
The past few days of normalized TV watching has been mighty instructive. Re-reading Jeth Randolph’s letter on our plight as orphans of a kind helped tint the following observations.
Friends in the Rockies have informed me that the geese flew south from Canada a month early. Strange and anomalous whether patterns have ranged from storms to unusually hot in some places and unusual cool here in August.
The news briefly mentions that World Healer, Elon Musk has sent up a space vehicle to dock with an international space station. There is no mention that since this grifter’s array of satellites began streaking across the skies that valuable real estate in the American West occupied by working Americans have been hit by strange street fires, sometimes melting parked cars and missing adjacent trees as houses on the other side of the trees were burned.
Then there is a directed energy weapon attack on an America island in the Pacific in mid August. During this event police herded escaping home owners back into the fire too die and before the embers were cool billionaires and Slave Rock, the world’s most evil real estate company, rolled in to take over the historic housing areas where the owners had refused to sell to make way for a “15 Minute City.”
The media has become obsessed with social control.
An entire news cast focuses on getting kids back to school after three years of Covid and getting them there on time. Children standing in line and administrators speaking from podiums are the common images.
An 11 year old carjacker has been arrested about 12 times for robbing people. This suggests that this little fooker has gotten his hands on 12 guns! The police must release him and authorities may not charge him, by law. This has brought a call for putting laws on the books to imprison children or their parents. An “Adaral” crisis is afflicting schools, as a shortage of drugs for controlling boys is discussed by medical advocates, citing a shortage on the production end and calling for more drugs from Big Pharma. This odd synchronicity in the news suggests a near future combining school systems, medical systems and private police corporations in policing children and youths. The stated legislative aim, pioneered by Congresswoman Karen Stern, [1] is convicting parents of child criminals for the acts of their spawn.
Covid 19 announcements are beginning to dominate commercials and public service announcements. My health care provider is sending Covid news constantly. ‘Tis the season.
At the very least the multiplying satellites will serve to observe, to feed more images of our scurrying kind up into the ocular web of power that confines us. The steerage cults know that earth is beginning to change and that cataclysmic events will challenge the ether shackles we willingly where. Putting more hard control assets in place, locally, and corporately [2] is a priority. It is interesting that using this laptop in places that have internet which I do not have password access to, still permits the computer to update with the platform owner! That says something about these systems.
A game show, Master Minds, features 5 straight geographical questions answered by a contestant and a mulatto “genius.” I groan as the Taj Mahal is listed as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Neither one of them are able to pick Sitka out as the Russian and then American center of 19th century Alaskan government. The night before, the mulatto master mind missed all 5 questions as did his opponent. Earlier, the female master mind missed all 5 questions, the mulatto only 4. History and geography utterly elude the selected smartest minds paraded before the TV lens.
Baseball at last. Unfortunately, football is the first thing discussed on the telecast, the fact that an entire team dependent on a running quarterback must be rebuilt around his injured status, a status to be easily predicted. Football is a game of industrial social control, which I discussed last year and the year before as having entirely reinvented itself to conform to Wokery and align itself with USG and Global Medical doctrines. It is a game in which officials get thrice the time on the field as players and in which players are literal meat puppets controlled and commanded from the sidelines like video game avatars. Officiating and arguing and commenting on the play occupies over 75% of the televised game.
I then view the baseball game and note that more rules changes have occurred this last season than in my life time. This seems to be a bid to compress time like football and corrupt the time lax agrarian game of baseball, a game arranged in acts rather than in time segments, into something more media friendly.
Over the past two years the NFL has switched from pickup trucks as their primary commercial to military recruitment and military medical commercials. The play has focuses on switching the race of the offensive team captain, to include supportive rules changes and the restructuring of entire teams around a running quarterback, the Tennessee Titans and Baltimore Ravens being the best example. Sidelines coverage has expanded to focus on racial diversity of support staff and management. NFL stadiums are also now polling places, where get out the vote public service announcements focusing on support of only one of the two political parties. That NFL stadiums are now voting centers is a chilling.
The following are some of the changes in Major League Baseball.
-Increased diversity recruitment of martyr Americans with long tendons and short muscles has resulted in the most popular players of godly hue being injured at high rates. The teams are then forced to bring high functioning crackers up from the minor leagues who are actually better players, steal bases as fast as any gawdling, etc.
-Prancing [3] and wearing gaudy props and spitting out great gouts of water from their mouths have been institutionalized as post scoring rituals engaged in by all players, replacing the low time preference stoicism that has been the hallmark of the high functioning hitter for over a hundred years.
-Recruitment of golden hued players from Latin America, who generally decline to cavort like American NFL players from the ghetto, behaving more like the crackers on the team, has somewhat frustrated the overt negrofication of Big League Baseball.
-Baseball hitters now wear armor with the catcher now armored up like a hockey goalie. This has been a gradual thing since 2020.
-Most intrusively, the Postmodern Pitcher on the mound, who now throws closer to 100 MPH than 90 MPH as in my youth, is being robbed of his poise by being put on a time clock. This has had the immediate effect of increased officiating by umpires in imitation of NFL referees. Umpires are getting twice the face time they did last year while speeding up the game, rather than slowing it down like NFL officials. This is a genius move. In the short term it is corrupting stats [the heart of the game] making more drama, bringing team managers out on the field at twice last year’s rate to act like pro wrestling managers. In the long term it is going to mean more injured shoulders and shorter careers for pitchers.
Baseball is being dumbed down. But it is still maintaining its character as players from honor cultures like Latin America and Asia are being brought in for diversity of race but are maintaining the high and relatively stoic morality of baseball over other ball sports. The forced antics after scoring are stayed by NFL standards, with no choreographed butt wiggling dances after a score, but something more like an “ataboy,” as some stupid prop is inserted for the increasingly lower IQ fan
Recalling the public service announcements to stand in line and do your part by getting vaxxed from 2021 and 2022, I have noted one frightening thing about Major League Baseball:
At the end of the game, support staff and players resting in the dugout are now commanded to file out onto the field and greet retiring players after the last inning. Where baseball players have traditionally jogged in after a standard game or rushed into a celebratory huddle as individuals after a championship victory, they now file in quasi military fashion.
Such subtle methods of aligning itself more closely with USG are shrewdly calculated acts to insure that Baseball does not fall into 3rd place in America’s pantheon of civic distractions. It is doubtful that the increasingly slavish and dull American mind will ever return to the most civil of team ball sports as its primary focus. Industrial spirited, armored football will remain Kang in the cattle-like Murkin psyche. But, in all of these sports, the calculations to reduce the humanity of the players always fail in spots. Two examples stand.
In the NFL, the switch to a running, injury prone, weak throwing quarterback, which is intended, along with Tom Brady’s letter to future quarterbacks, read by Morgan Freemen in late 2022, to change the image of “Captain America” from pale to dark, backfires in two key ways. First, the long and lean leaping wide receiver, always dark, who was supposed to make of scoring an all dark event, is being cut out of the scoring by his dark captain’s in ability to throw like an Аrуаn. Rather, the dark captain has increasingly come to rely on tall, broad, smart and combative, Viking-like tight ends to catch short throws and then run over numerous small West Africans. So the conspiracy to relegate the cracker to the management staff on the sidelines, has merely flipped the scoring dance that used to feature a cracker throwing to a blacker and now increasingly features the opposite.
In baseball, I would cite Cedric Mullens, the smallest member of the Baltimore Orioles, a towering blacktino pitcher named Batista and a Dominican beefcake named Santondare. These were to add to the NFL flavor of the team, to dance and wiggle after scoring like some of the existing Orioles of color.
The two big, dark Latinos act like any expert cracker of old, paragons of power and technique who calmly salute the crowd rather than dance like some American slave on his master’s porch. Mullens, the only normal sized man on the team, has made the most remarkable plays of the season, and insists on comporting himself with a quiet dignity.
The great Over Eye might see all, but its calculations are so invested in appearance, that, like its most suffering subjects, the Master too is frustrated at every turn, as terrible IS and DOES forever intrude upon the fantastical realm of SHOULD.
…
Notes
-1. Her real metaphysical name.
-2. Contractors, security
-3. The best imitation baseball players do of the NFL slave jig is to prance in line and occasionally jump bump!
04.17.24 Bones @FiveGunsWest — F word! What a hot piece! What great concise insights across a wide ranging
variety of topics. Spot on brother. Thank you and thank you Lynne
04.21.24 maud'dib — sports ball is dead, only chucks watch/root for slavers
Bucket Hat and Dreadlocks
Warding off a Wretched Set of Groes in a Baltimore Alley: 8/22/2023
It was nearly 3 PM on Monday morning. The Brickmouse would be home soon. Before our after work conversation about refrigeration, rather than begin another article or site feature, a cup of coffee while musing upon the first chapter of the novel SPQR, would be a fine way to end the writing day. I now enjoy being able to stand long enough to fill the pot and heat water for coffee. For the last two months I have been downing a slurry of instant coffee mixed in room temperature water.
A knock came on the front door. A package of fresh from the farm food no doubt.
I shuffle to the door, taking a half step with the left and dragging the dead right leg up to the left heel until I reach the door. It was Preston from across the alley. He and his sister of about 14 walk their mother’s poodle up alley and street. He seems to be growing, about 5’ 5’ and 120 pounds.
“Hey, what can I do for you?”
“A man was on your truck and he run up the alley. I went around, didn’t let him see me.”
“Thanks for lookin’ out, man.”
I shut and locked the door, got my crutches and headed out back, up across the big grassy yard, around the spring house and into the alley where the small pickup truck is parked. The windows were intact and the tool box was locked.
I crutched around in the alley by the truck and Preston, across the alley concealing himself behind his mother’s shed, pointed up the alley, “That’s the man.”
Three houses up I saw a light heavyweight Groe buck who was looking at garage backs, vehicles and back fences.
Ed, three doors up, pulled into his garage and looked at us concerned. The Brickmouse Bride had joined me and was acting appropriately, observing and communicating with her husband by phone. I know many women who would have called the cops in a show of fear and weakness or have went of after the Groe in a fit of vaginal authority.
Boomer Ed didn’t get it but did talk to us later and asked if we called the cops and we explained the following in brief. Ed seemed troubled that we took care of it, but relieved as well.
This alley is a main travel route for a set of Groes based 4 blocks to the west, uphill, next to a notoriously crime-infested sprawl of low rent town homes on the City-County Line, called Dutch Village. I have narrated numerous Dutch Village adventures from 2016 and 2017. It is a case where the adjoining Baltimore County sector is worse than the immediate section of Baltimore City. But, the territory to the east, where I catch the bus, is where the turf of two other sets meat at the intersection of Harford Road and Northern Parkway. I have been on the bus with the shot caller for this set when he offloaded in the morning and took directly to the alley, the bus to his back, covering him from the rivals across Northern Parkway. [1]
The Brickmouse rolls down the alley past the Groe in his work truck, is briefed by myself and Preston who says, “He the man with the bucket hat.”
Our hero jogs after the Groe, [who is not dressed heavily enough to be armed with anything but a razor or folder] who is now clearing out at a springy walk. I am worried, hanging between the crutches, until he comes back five minutes later and relates to us:
“I just jogged until I got close, so I didn’t run up on him. I engaged him in conversation right where the alley met the street, asked what he needed in the alley and he says, ‘Look you can see I ain’ dressed fo no burglary, so no need ta call the poleese.’ [Meaning he wore no hoody!]
“I said,” pointing to my phone, “Oh, I’m not calling the police. This is a medical billing call. I was simply concerned for your welfare. You know, people look at that nice clean alley and think its safe. But it can get dangerous back there. You know, just a few months ago I fine young man, an upstanding citizen, was gunned own not three alleys over. We wouldn’t want a concerned visitor such as yourself to suffer any mishap—I mean, there are very few witnesses back there. Now you have a nice day!”
We laughed and I said, “That is some Big Ron levels of diplomacy.”
We decided that this was the perfect time for him to drive me to the bank. Securing the house we pulled out and there, at the base of the alley, was a bicycle Groe of the same age, about 19-21, patiently waiting on the side to let us pass. This guy is not bull parading, nor even surly swaggering or carelessly spit walking. This was odd. This fellow has an open button shirt and long dreads. The attire says knife to me, possibly gun. When we both try and make eye contact to thank him for his courtesy, he avoids our gaze, not by looking submissively down, but disdainfully away.
We pass him and the Brickmouse looks at me with a question in his eyes and I note he has had no adrenaline dump, [2] “The posture and expression do not match his unusually polite action and his appearance is suspiciously timed. He’s the same age; local sets are all same age groups until they expand. Buckethat is a low ranker. This guy is probably Number 2, maybe the hitter.”
“Circle around?” he asks.
“Absolutely,” and we unhook our seat belts.
We come back down the alley and run into Dreadlocks who is now peddling and not showing as much courtesy, because he does not want to stop and become the filling in a peanut butter and cracker sandwich. He does not like using the bike and is tired, suggesting he was hastily dispatched.
“This set uses the basketball court behind the high school for a rally point and their supply center and mass transit hub is Harford and Northern, closer than the shopping center at Perring Parkway and Oakliegh.”
The Brickmouse says, “He mentioned that he went to the school up the street but was too old and headed the wrong way to be getting out of school.”
I continue, “Buckethat should not have put hands on anything and should have waited to give a report to the set about easily jacked valuables. He’s probably being dressed down by his supervisor now.”
“Should we drive by the Basketball Court?”
“No, that would be a threat. Thus far both parties have acted defensively. Your parley was literally on neutral ground. If you had crossed Old Harford it might have been perceived as a threat. Escalation or retaliation are the only answers they have in their territory. This was perfect.”
“How about if my next door neighbor drives by?”
“Sure.”
The neighbor, who is a studly light heavyweight, confirmed that the court was their rally point and that Dreadlocks was a terrible bicyclist. His wife wanted him to take a picture and I said not to, that this would be a threat. We now had numerous visual impressions of the duo. Preston had been afraid of Buckethat, which told me a lot. He was careful to stay hidden. We gave him $50 and the description of Dreadlocks to be wary of.
I suggested keeping a good old fashioned square brick next to the driver’s seat in the small pick up. A brick in hand and an undeployed knife at close range, beats the knife or gun that Dreadlocks had in his waistband under that open button shirt.
This was a good off the cuff operation employing sub threatening but warding actions and words, and expanding the resolution with the calling in of our own scout in the form of the next door neighbor.
…
Notes
This is a subset of a larger Dutch Village association, which should not be antagonized as they are capable of ruthless nocturnal activity [I have been hunted by them twice at night] and have very good preteen scouting patrols and commit regular daylight attacks in their territory, where we shop. This is a key organization for cross County/City operations. They feud with the Oaks Crew where I used to live. In 2018 I cleaned up .45 APC brass leftover from one clash.
The grid to the Southeast of the main intersection in the city has been run by a serious crew since at least 2015, led by men who use cars. It seems Harford Road itself is something of a free-for-all.
-1. Just south across Northern Parkway is a poorly organized foot set of older teens and younger men.
-2. I think this is because he was still in work clothes and mode and jogged to the parlay.
House of the Brickmouse
Motherboard #2
The awning of painted metal green was held up together and aloft by vines with leaves of a deeper green, as if the earth were announcing the overtaking of Mans’ ambition, and that some of her viney children took pity upon this place and were holding aloft this one handmade refuge.
‘Why is it called the Brickmouse House?’
‘It is brick and a house? Perhaps it is home to a talking mouse?’
How he loved this awning, this porch below, of thicker metal coated in rubber, upon which his steely canes had such good purchase. This was a magical place of healing and he naturally, wounded as he was, wanted in, wanted to whine.
‘Yes, an open sesame, a code,’ he thought as he saw the speaker and screen on the brick face next to the door, “Buzzard to Nest.”
‘That was witty.’
The screen on the brick face lit up with a vision of that pretty Asian girl, smiling as she worked at a work bench with a power drill, dressed all in black, “Poppy, welcome back, come on in.”
With that the door, actually a door that should be on a gun safe, opened outward. Then another door, a refrigerator door, opened inward. He walked into a bedroom, a place he now of sudden recalled sleeping often. As the twin doors closed behind him he noticed that there was a bricked in window to his right. Ahead, over a dresser that should have been a sink, was a window that was blocked in with plywood. Screens showing what one would see outside with the naked eye before the kitchen turned to bedroom was fortified reflected a vantage that was once provided directly by each window.
‘They will come in through the plywood,’ came his inner voice.
Behind him was his cot, a bed that looked so cozy, over which hung a weapon rack from the wall with shotgun and swords, and an I.V. drip system, a medicine go-round thingy with bottles of pills. Next to that was a basement door, another gun safe door.
Do north, opposite the bricked in window, was a bullet proof glass panel. Behind that panel was a workshop built around a stainless steel table. Here that pretty Asian girl with red hair, a surprisingly big butt and bodacious rack, tinkered with what appeared to be a model of a little Willy Jeep from WWII.
‘Wow, she’s pretty. No wonder he has me guard this place...who is he? Who am I?’
She beamed up at him, clicked her wrist pad and said, “Come on in, Poppy!”
With that a portal in the panel of triple thick plexi glass bolted to steel beams top, bottom and sides like a great window, opened. She looked at the thing she was working on and said, “We’re done. Clear the workspace, Willy.”
With those words, the jeep seemed to sprout little mechanical monkey arms and dragged itself down off the table, retracted them, engaged its wheels and whirred into the front room, which was dominated by a stainless steel commercial elevator shaft—so strange for such a nice little brick house. He noticed that the insides of the house were reinforced with steel beams, and plates, like the steel plates that used to be placed over gaping holes in city street repairs way back...when?
She was stronger than him, really strong and was moving him around, unstrapping the stuff on his back and shoulders and cooing, “Poppy, you are the best, amazing! We are so proud of you, all the progress you made since you came to us. Tinman and Cline are going to be over the moon about this juice. They have a big contract and the Forty Feet have cut off supply on the low line—its all by zip line now.”
She sat him down at the head of the table.
He burned, she was dabbing him with alcohol. When he winced, she chirped, “So sorry, Poppy,” reached under the table and placed a great big bottle of Jim Beam upon it. Next to that she placed a bottle of Fireball and a bottle of Don Krew 151 rum. “Start out light, Poppy. I have a lot of work to do here. Your friends were playing rough today.”
Something behind him began to squeak and he felt a deep pain. A shot glass was placed in front of him. He went right for the Jim Beam, understanding by long experience that the Fireball cinnamon whiskey was just a pallet cleanser. Extending his left arm and grabbing the neck of the bottle—the caps had all been thankfully removed—he lifted the heavy bottle and something popped in his shoulder, sending a terrible pain down his spine.
“Sorry Poppy—on it. Pour with the right hand.”
He tilted the bottle and lifted with the right hand. But that hand shook like a plump Dominican ass and he could not get the mouth over the glass.
“I’m so sorry, Poppy,” she said, and reached forward with a blue rubber gloved hand covered in blood, deftly poured that first shot and then helped steady his arm as he tilted glass to mouth and drank.
‘Yes,’ and he shook a little less.
“Good, Poppy…”
He seemed to have leapt forward in time and noticed a wider glass, like a fancy iced whiskey glass, before him, into which he was dumping Fireball with a steady hand, then 151 in the small dram, a touch of Tabasco for kick.
“Take a big drink, Poppy,” and he knocked them both back.
As he poured a straight shot of Jim Beam he heard a loud ping behind his right ear and a terrible pain shot right up into his brain. The table began to spin. He reached for the 151 and his left hand could not make it, the right one seemingly out of command.
The table rushed up to meet his one working eye.
He was jerked upright, was blind in both eyes, had hot rum poured into his mouth as two caring man hands held his head and asked, in a gentle voice, “The gasket behind the ear? Are you sure?”
Something was yanking on his hip with a whir of wire as pain coursed through his spine and legs, “Motherfucker,” cursed the sweet Asian voice, “I installed it—you bet I’m sure!”
A TV screen appeared before his right eye—actually in it—in horizontal lines of static, and there, before him, as his left eye began to clear with a kind hand wiping it free of blood and Bucket Head juice, pulling back the eye lid, he heard the kind man voice say, “Should I reattach—I have…”
“You have shit, this isn’t the roof top. It’s not a fucking shingle. Here, slap this on, its better, just refurbished it.”
“Sorry, Buddy,” came the kind voice with a pat on the chin.
Then the TV screen was filled with a vision of a Dominican dancer, so well proportioned that the waistband of her G-string was lost in her tiny obscured waist, an expanse of stupendous hips and enormous breasts swaying before his questing vision.
“Oh, my, should I drape a towel over his lap?” sounded the man.
She giggled, “Poppy’s not dead yet!”
“What is he seeing in the ocular unit?”
“I think her name is Ruby—don’t worry Poppy—reconstructed from an interview with the casualty. That’s right Poppy, Ruby is coming to town, she’s going to be down at Jaseman’s Cafe tomorrow night!”
“What the fuck?” came the kind, soft voice.
She then snarled, as Ruby so lusciously danced, “Motherfucker, I’ve got the tweezers—more rum.”
“You bitch!” he said as more hot rum coursed down Poppy’s throat. The woman was yanking on his hip with pliers while using a ratchet wench in his back, and purred in seductive agreement, “Don’t you forget it, Tinman.”
“I love You!” he exclaimed to her as Poppy’s vision began to blur; in his left eye looking at the liquor bottles growing fuzzy and in his right that vision of cushy grace pixelated into black static.
He heard, but did not feel his forehead hitting the steel table…
…
He woke upright, seated before a washbasin and faucet that had popped up from this end of the steel table, the cute Asian babe stitching his head. He was sober, so this must have taken some time.
‘Wow, she’s pretty.’
“Okay, Poppy, wash your hands off, I cleaned up the rest.”
Something creaked and a pain shot up his back as he leaned forward. Seeing the oil and grime and blood on his hands he was self conscious, reached for the soap pump, filled his right palm and turned on the hot water.
‘Damn that’s hot,’ he winced inside as he pulled his left hand back, as she giggled.
He soaped both hands and plunged them back under the running water, which should have surely calmed down—
‘Who even had hot water anymore?’
“Awe,” he gasped as he pulled his scalding hands back and she giggled.
‘Sissy,’ he indicted himself within, rubbed the soap together and put them under the water, holding them there and scrubbing away the dirt as he grimaced and hissed.
She giggled again as he jerked his hands back in pain. A few breaths and he rubbed more soap and went to challenge the scalding torrent again and her pink nailed little hand stopped his blotched, scarred and hairy arm, “No! You can’t adapt that quickly. You will hurt yourself—please, let me add some cold water so that it’s just warm.” [1]
“You’re a doll,” he confessed as he became suddenly tired and the syringe she was draining into his hip with her free hand emptied.
He looked down at his hip, which seemed to have a gear box attached to it, “I’m wearin’ my old fight shorts—thanks…”
She hauled him in a fireman’s carry through the plexi glass door to the dream cot where she lay him down. The room spun and his head swam in the spinning whirl as she plugged the IV into the port she must have just installed in his left hand.
She said, “Dim, ambient two,” and the lights softened as if spake to by the very Queen of Night.
Old Poppy, secure at last in his identity, but a bit hazy as to the name of the Tinman’s mechanically inclined bride, drifted off upon the waves of a dark and turbulent sleep.
Notes
-1. This happened in September 2023, when I was washing dishes next to my Hostess as she cooked, just as I was recovering strength enough to help about the wonderful brick house, after living in stages as a shrimp, crab, monkey and then man, at first on her living room floor and later in the loft.
Ambuscade
Act 6, Concluded: Tyke of the Orphan Pipes
Dusk, Caesarsday, Second Day of Sepulcher
They ran hard like lads. Then it occurred to Tyke that they were rightful Mobhounds, bold Bigs and Spry Twigs—and he hissed, just like that, as if he were the boss, “Psst, sell it, mates. Sell it.”
He then turned and hurled one of his darts, fine iron darts, good and oiled and, rather than feathered with feathers, fitted with clamped tin feathers that glimmered in the vary-lit murk of the alley depths. That dart sailed right for that open visor. As if trusting Tyke’s aim more than he did, the gladiator shut his visor, worked in steely tartan pattern. That dart sparked upon it and then stuck, canted cross-corner [1] and decorating that steely mask.
The pack had slowed, getting his drift that the intruder was moving too slow to plunge headlong into the ambuscade. They now walked backwards, picking up the bricks intelligently spaced for such a defense and began hurling them.
A brick bounced off of the armored head of that limping Sandman and its thrower, Joey Pipes barked, “Take that, Gimp of a sand turd!”
They laughed.
The Sandman limped, pulling out the dart as Tyke let fly another right at his cods!
That dart hit the big bulging spot and stuck as if in a Sergeant of Lictor’s saddle.
“What, even an armored prick!” observed Brash Pipe, their most limber Big.
They yet walked back, two more bricks lifted and hefted on big shoulders by Wire Pipe and Grog Pipe, both good and true Bigs.
Sandman stopped, an easy mark, pulling the prick dart out with his manica hand what had the walking stick in it.
They heaved those bricks and the Sandman surprised them with a one handed cast of the pipe, not like a spear, but tumble-wise like an ax, cross-corner, whirling like brains ready to hit the drain.
The bricks hit one in his vest-covered gut, having no effect and the other on his armored left shoulder, having less.
Tyke ducked, above and behind Grog’s face smashed in like bread pudding, the rest breaking at a run.
The Sandman broke into a run as well as Brash Pipe looked down at that great steel pipe and—ate a dart through his face that sent an eye to dangle as he mewed and mumbled listing off drunkenly.
Tyke threw wildly and ducked low at a dodge as another dart, thrown with mechanical like force like from a crossbow, sunk between Wire Pipe’s shoulder blades and sent him to the floor with a godawful wheeze.
Like that, their three sharpest Bigs, other then Check, were down with the Devil.
They dodged around the corner into Horseshoe Alley and set-to. Here, at the head of this short alley was a steam pipe vent lever that a boilermaker had installed for them, taping into the main line far above off the roof, in return for a go at all 12 of the whores at the Well. Joey Pipe and Check manned that on their knees.
Behind them stood Able Twig and Bony Twig, each with a braining pipe and a brick.
Tyke was behind them both.
Right before the turn they heard Sandman pick up that pipe with a long meaningful drag.
They then heard the riot stick knock the alley floor with that ironwood on concrete knock that had once echoed through New York as through the alleys of Ireland when the Scots came to put down the ready mobs.
“Dastard-ass Scott, Sandman!” sounded the angry voice of Tyke, who fancied himself Irish, though none could know for certain among his discarded kind.
Just around the corner, barely a step before his face was scorched by steam, the Sandman stopped and spoke, “Drop ye bricks en pipes en duck walk out all nice like en yer littles ‘ill have some mobhounds what to thieve their vittles.”
Check snarled, “Awe fawk off S—”
The steel pipe, winged around the corner with a flash of that brassy manica, thrown from the left hand side arm, taking out Check’s teeth and knocking Joey piss for broke. The big mug was crafty, having sounded out their level before throwing blind around that corner.
The man walked around the corner bold as can be, knobby headed hawthorn riot stick on his right shoulder. Two bricks let loose, one clanging off that off-dented war hat and one breaking on that linen vest of spiked stars on a field of black. The stick came down off that shoulder so wide that it and its opposite almost touched each side of this more narrow alley.
Able went down with a broke shoulder in a wan heap.
Stunned and presenting his pipe like a gift, Bony was simply grabbed by the brassy hand and tossed behind the intruder, an arm breaking against the wall as he whined and crumbled utterly forlorn.
Tyke had been forgetful of his darts holding the packet with the two remaining in his left hand and his pointy steel pipe drawn in his right. There was naught to do but break and run for the Well of Bawdy Sprites ahead of this shambling Sandman.
As he did so he heard the pipe slide up, knowing he had ten spaces to get to the left turn into Bell Alley. Stopping and looking over his shoulder, he saw that the Sandman was not fixing to cut him down with a throw that could not have missed. Instead he shouldered that great pipe and switched the hawthorn rod to his left hand, leaned upon it and offered, “I’ll not back strike ye, Tyke.”
He walked backwards, a snarl of disdain coming to his lips, “Ye mighty fine should ye shamblin’ oaf o’ da sands.”
The man kept pace, leisurely limping, “Now, now, tyke, I left ye a few friends, indeed moved yer sassy soul up the very stairs o’ glory to boss of yer ken. Let’s call a truce?”
Tyke backed around the corner and then lit out like a dead Irishman sure as muck from Mohamed’s infernal stables that the Devil knew him to be dead. [2]
“Catch me if ye can, Sandman!”
Tyke ran, not wanting to taste that pipe, down the long, high alley between the cooler parts of the Iron Foundry and the Steam Works. Here the long pipes vented far above and the Mob of Pipes had never dared build their rickety world so near the Gate of Lictors, with whom they had no real truce and could be spied upon by all those who found the favor of the worldly dames above the Well of Whores.
…
Notes
-1. Cross-corner is mob slang for a shady play in the boxing ring or a slick shot in billiards, meaning diagonal.
-2. Britannic lore has it that Mohamed, close henchman of Satan, Prophet of their greatest enemy, The House of Islam, that rules most of the souls of the Non-Christian world, maintains a hideous dirty stable in Hell to be mucked for eternity by Irish rebels and mobsters, who, according to most civic and ecclesiastic authorities, good and well deserve the chore.
Returning to Baltimore City
Against Crackpot Defense: Baltimore, City, 8/22/23
In the weekly editorial call, Lynn informed me that a twitter person noted that masculinity was in such a state of crisis that people like [James LaFond “You know who I’m talking about, Lynn”] move to places like Baltimore to play at dangerous living. She defended me as simply getting busy as a working man in my ancestral home town.
Thanks, Lynn, but I was less successful than that.
I was born in Baltimore, from whence my family escaped to Pennsylvania where I lived as a teen. Upon the commission of an extremely violent crime, I moved back to Maryland, in Baltimore County, outside the terrible City that had belched forth nearly all of my extended family.
I needed a job so I could leave the apartment of my mother and sister where I slept on the couch. My Grandfather picked me up in his car and drove me to a point on U.S. Route #1, 8 miles from Baltimore City. He said, “When I was a painter, I walked 17 miles to work every day, and then back. You can do at least 10 miles in and back. You have no skill and no high school diploma. Simply put in an application at every place of business for entry level work. Do not turn back until you see black.”
“Yes, Sir,” I answered and began down the road in my father’s ill-fitting dress boots that I bought from him for $70. Doing as he said, having to admit to a businessman, a receptionist and doctor who interviewed me that I had tried to pass 9th grade twice, and failed, and despairing of making a third attempt, quit school on my 16th birthday so I could learn how to do some kind of work “on the job.” They all wished me well, gave me some tips on being interviewed by others, and sent me on my way.
Ironically, eventually, 4 miles from where I now sit in Northeast Baltimore, blisters forming on my ankles from the loose zip-up boots, at White Avenue and Belair Road, I saw a black man, getting on a bus and heading downtown, a janitor who worked at Miller Motors that had a showroom on that street corner. Not knowing that I would spend 4 years managing the local supermarket 3 blocks back on the west side of the street, in the 2000s, and 8 years renting a room on White Avenue as an e-pulp writer in the 20teens, I crossed the street, headed back north and walked into Bel Garden Bi-Rite and filled out a job application at the courtesy booth. Little did I know that a future roommate of mine, known by one and all as “Bonehead,” had just lost a finger on the forklift and that a replacement was needed.
My only work experience had been landscaping, collating [1] in a print shop, and sanding dry wall. The old lady who brought my application out from behind the low white counter, looked up at me with promise in her one good eye, and in disappointment at the white sheet of paper, and said, “We are looking for an experienced clerk who knows how to handle freight… I see here that you have no driver’s license and you live in Perry Hall. How did you get here?”
“Walked, Ma’am.”
“Nobody walks that far anymore. You are hired. You will start at $3.50 an hour and you will be here at 7:00 AM. Do you need bus money?”
“No Ma’am, I have three dollars, that will get me down and back.”
“Then I will give you an advance on your pay after work tomorrow,” informed the matron.
That was in September of 1981. Miss Betty cosigned on a house note for me in 1983, even though I only made $7 an hour. Her status as a business leader and pledge that she would continue working me like a dog for 75 hours a week, impressed the bank adjuster and I became the last person of my race to buy a house 2 miles down the road in Gardenville, 2 miles into “the black” as my step father noted critically. But I could not qualify for a loan outside of the city. This was the house I could buy, the closest one to work that I could afford. I walked 2 miles to and from work for the next ten years as the corridor for the #15 bus was invaded and conquered by my dark hunters.
By November of 1992, I was up to making $10.25 an hour and getting buy making house and car [2] payments on working 75 hours per week. Promises of higher wages and better benefits at union stores beckoned and I resigned in Mid Month, stayed to train my replacement until Thanksgiving, and then began taking 2 to 3 hour bus trips through Baltimore City at night to work at distant union supermarkets for a staggering $11.40 per an hour!
In 1994, working 6 jobs at 118 hours per week, I was injured, lost the car my wife used for grocery shopping and visiting her parents in Pennsylvania and had to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy by 1996. The neighborhood had been overrun, my oldest son sent out of town to save his life and my youngest son and wife confined to the house as I ventured out by foot and bus among the savage conquerors.
By February 1999, my wife and I were attacked by gunmen as I escorted her on her first venture outside the small brick house and she demanded we move.
In September 1999, having saved up 3 unpaid house payments, I, my wife and youngest son escaped to the low rent Baltimore County waterfront of Dundalk. I still worked deep in the City and my commute involved two miles of walking from the County into the City, the taking of two busses, which required waiting on two City bus stops, which were also open air drug markets, and then walking for a mile through the other side of the City.
By August 2000 the small brick house was auctioned off and my credit score plummeted further.
From 2000 through 2017, I lived and worked in Baltimore City and County, never able to afford paying rent with work in the same area where I lived. My wife kicked me out in 2002. For a brief 4 years, from 2006 thru 2010, I worked as the lowest paid store Director in Maryland to help my youngest son through college.
Finally, on December 11th, 2017, the back injury returned and limping to work on a cane, I was attacked by two pairs of muggers. The second pair had me defenseless and dead to rights—two giant Nigerian bruisers of some 6’ 6” inches and 300 pounds—and they found me too pathetic in my commitment to fight in my shredded clothes and let me off the mugging hook, like a fish that was molting and no longer good to eat.
In humiliation I quit work, was unable to sustain rent payments from writing and coaching money, and took to the railroads to visit readers, living in their garages, mudrooms and basements and on their couches.
I have not lived in Baltimore since 2018.
I am homeless.
I return to Baltimore to visit friends and family and reside for a few summer months in the winter of a failed life with a fighter I coach. The least I can do is try and defend his property like a lame old dog, and to document in brief his plight. For the Brickmouse, though born and raised in White Suburbia, and his bride could not afford to buy a house in habitable white flight migration zones. They could only afford a house in the outer margins of the terrible city that spat me out. Being the bard of the Brickmouse might not rank with those who sang the songs of Achilles, Odysseus, Beowulf and Roland—but this kid once dropped a heavyweight with a sneaky left straight and yesterday he ran down a light heavyweight Bantu buck and got his way in the back alley parlay.
There are worse fates for the least-famed chronicler of his age.
My answer in brief, to those kind souls who would defend me on social media, is don’t do it. Double down for them, “LaFond is homeless because he was unable to make enough money to pay room rent anywhere, even in Baltimore! He should be living in a cardboard box but for the kindness of others. He does not have the luxury for urban slumming or homesteading—he’s just a lingering ghost still haunting the house where his identity was murdered by the better members of his dying race.
-James, Tuesday, August 22nd in the 4th Year of Our Lord Floyd
…
Notes
-1. Putting page 1 on top of page 3, on top of page 4...until all 435 pages of the 390some Fox grocery catalogs were ready to be bound with spiral binding. 3 years later, in another state, I would be ordering from these very product lists as a rookie grocery clerk.
-2. A powder blue 82 Ford Escort. This car was driven 1500 miles per year, including the 500 mile annual round trip to Pittsburgh. My wife picked up and signed for my paycheck for 10 years, to the point where she was forging my signature on lease documents 15 years after she fired me. The car had to have 3 new exhaust systems installed.
04.14.24 Maud'Dib — Quote from above
"-James, Tuesday, August 22nd in the 4th Year of Our Lord Floyd"
I've really enjoyed you stories over the years discovering you on the Mot20C.
You are the traveling sage, putting forth truth and wisdom. Men/Women are drawn to you because of your hard truths. Sure, you embellish from time to time, but any sage worth his wisdom uses that for teaching.
"-James, Tuesday, August 22nd in the 4th Year of Our Lord Floyd"
I've really enjoyed you stories over the years discovering you on the Mot20C.
You are the traveling sage, putting forth truth and wisdom. Men/Women are drawn to you because of your hard truths. Sure, you embellish from time to time, but any sage worth his wisdom uses that for teaching.
Out of the Cookie
From Baltimore to the Pacific Northwest by Crutch, Train and Cane: 8/22 to 12/31/2023
Copyright James LaFond 2023
A Crackpot Book
Lynn Lockhart: Publisher
…
Dust Cover
After 11 weeks confined to a walker, wheel chair, crutches, crawling up and down stairs and shrimping around on the floor of a Baltimore safe house, the author found himself able to stand long enough to make coffee. At 3 PM, on Monday, August 21st, the most prolific writer of his age, success seemingly as far away as the rise of New Atlantis, pondered the possibility of his greatest work of fiction: focused now away from life’s belittling din.
A knock came on the door. It was Preston, the brown fellow of 14 years from across the alley, whose mother sets him to watching out for neighbors in this idyllic city block where rabbits graze not a ¼ mile from a bus stop where the author has survived some half dozen attacks by Groe thugs. The young man sounded the alarm, that a full-grown Groe buck was “on your truck.”
Powered by ego, like an ancient flint-napping gimp left to defend the women and children at the mouth of a cave when the real men were out hunting, the already worn crutches were mounted like a clamation horse in some children’s movie—and the storied muses faded away as old Crutch Snow sallied forth against Bucket Hat, a minion of Tyrone Crow.
Soon reinforced by still living men, a good six months from recovery, the ghost of a writer decided that crutches would do. Setting Friday, September 29th as his last day among the Groes, he began disposing of his few remaining possessions and fasting to reduce his travel weight enough so that his arms could drag him to the train station. For this very day announcements and commercials heralding the return of the sacred “Vid” reminded the cripple that Uncle Sham might lock down this feedlot of souls again.
Thence the coward ghost went, drag-footed and bent, to do a poor job chronicling the world he fled through his mean intent.
…
Dedication
For Preston and the Brickmouse, homesteaders of an inverted world
…
“Brother, you and I know that the world put the rest of these fuckers here to get us; that’s why we’re the bad guys—even you confined to that chair while you coach me on putting down these two-legged dogs—the world hates us because we are determined to kill the messengers sent to demand we kneel!”
-The Operator, during a knife training digression
…
To the Reader
As the writing light began to kindle three weeks gone, I swore myself not to commit the crime of journalism, to only write novels and history. Here I am, still broke and unable to walk, breaking an oath took before my many muses. Homer, Aristotle and ever-keening Teraldus be damned; the greatest of you return to the further reaches of his addled ampitheatre, Drunk Peter chained and near, but Tyrone Crow and Convict Snow loom larger in the wretched here, now that their slave scribe can sit and poke at these keys.
I note now, in embarrassment, how much of a degeneration I am from Robert E. Howard, Jack London, H.L. Menckin and Shelby Foot, those writers I hope to emulate in may various works in a greater passion—a smoldering ambition—of aspiring to the ranks of Homer and Herodotus. Shelby Foot wrote in longhand. I cannot sign my name with more than a third of the letters represented by anything but a dying scribble. London, Howard and Menckin typed, the latter two able to produce a din of clicks and clacks sufficient to keep neighbors from their sleep.
I look at these keys, which my forefingers and middle fingers wander across, striking sideways as they fall behind the mind guiding them. Two years old, the black keyboard is weathered: E key is a white blotch, R, T, O, A, S, and N have great white blotches conjoined to the letter, I, D, H and N have suffered less disfiguring insults. Reminded of my dependence on modern technology for my prolific output, the ego must suffer the realization that it is a creature of the modern world he inhabits and incompletely escapes in his doomed struggle not to be eaten by the monster that spawned him.
…
Preface
This journal is intended to be as minimal as possible. Written with other writers in mind, my attempts at editing for publication the 86 remaining books under which my darling publisher is buried, included in chronological order, integrated into the text alongside travel, opinion and advice articles.
Last winter it took me 8 cycles of antibiotics to defeat chronic lung infections. With only 1 cycle left, and my new doctor telling me that she is very reluctant to prescribe antibiotics, I’m not taking 2024 for granted. So I head west to visit briefly those benevolent souls, all of whom have had a damned rough go at modern life, who have shown charity to a failed member of their own despised working class.
For those kind souls living to the East, Mister Safranno and Baruch, who paid for sedan rides to medical appointments while I was walker bound, thank you so much.
Also, for The Operator, who sent me transportation money over the past year so that I could “get back to Baltimore to spar” only to have my spine and groin, hip and leg fail me, thank you so much for feeding and watering me during my recovery. To drag myself like a crab missing half its legs out onto the mat and have him sit me up in a chair to coach him while he shadow boxes, is more of a service for me than for him—yet he cuts me a check and buys me a bottle of booze to kill the pain on the way home. To boot, he takes me to a diner, buys me a steak, and then cuts me a check for a consulting fee. One night, down to 140 pounds, I was in so much pain, I couldn’t eat, so he bought me 10 shots of Jack so I could eat a prime rib and carried me into the Brickmouse house where they found me at midnight, in a delirious fetal position, yipping like a dog being eaten by hyenas, afraid to wake me.
The very next day my recovery began, the first night to sleep without getting drunk, the first time to stand long enough to brush my teeth, the day that returning to crutches from a walker felt like running that record breaking 220 at age 13. When I apologized for getting so drunk when I was supposed to be serving as a life coach at a focus session he said, “Mister James, I know you’ll only be hitting the bottle like that long enough to get on your feet. You’ll come back—just take it slow. We are what we are, what we were when we jumped out of the cookie. [1] We’re fighters in a seat shining world, My Friend. I have but one request, that if somehow one of these fuckers does me in, that you avenge me.”
“Yes Sir,” I answered, imagining myself hunting some criminal “fucker” while on crutches under a Baltimore streetlight, and subduing a chuckle as he helped me crawl forth from his car, holding my crutches in the other hand.
Sir, I know that “this stays here,” but a thanks is in order.
…
Notes
-1. 1970s Long Island slang for the mother’s womb and vagina.
Pain and Writing
Pondering the Last Sustainable Work of a Slavish Life: 8/20/23
I had two conversations the other day with good friends. Both of these men have been involved in transporting, feeding and providing liquid painkiller for this broken down piece of white trash these past 10 weeks.
One is a writer and artist who sought semi-retirement from economic toil in order to pursue his artistic passions. Recent health issues have prevented this and he is despondent that the muses might not return. This man has hyper-focus, his artistic strength, which has now turned against its master in making his injury the focus rather than his art. I had my two worst writing months back to back, since becoming a full time writer in 2010, unable to focus on writing in the gripes of higher orders of pain. This has reduced both of us in the estimation of our own mind’s eye.
The other is a reader who learned to write in university. He is amazed at how prolific I have been with writing. He engages me in a diner once a week for what he calls “A Focus Session,” thus promoting me from knife coach to life coach in my injured state. I simply pay attention to his statements, digressions, observations, musings and questions. Those in hand, it is simple for one outside of his field of concern to observe that salient point—kind of like writing. He wondered this past Wednesday, “Mister James, how many books have you written?”
“I do not know. A reader volunteered to discover just that in 2015 and instead began editing my books and is now, tragically reduced to being my medical coordinator, since I’m too damned stupid to open medical emails.”
Then, yesterday, noting that I was pushing my physical therapy, most of which I have made up, my host, the Brickmouse said, “James, just for now, could you please pretend that you don’t hate yourself, and maybe treat your body like a broken buddy who you are helping to heal rather than punishing the wimp still hiding in there?”
We laughed and I eased off on the weights and crunches.
My observation over this stretch of time is that all of my early books were written while I was recovering from work injuries and had time off—when I was in considerable chronic pain, rather than the sizzling vomit and delirium inducing pain I experienced for most of June and July last. The writing has picked up these last few weeks. Pain has returned as a muse, subsiding from the roaring sea of diminishment.
In the middle ground, where I reside now, discipline has been able to battle the pain and write. Just now the knee is exploding, at a pain level of 7.5. But, I don’t feel weak, feel like I can deal with it. The pain is now reduced to the constant background noise singing in my head; now like a sea shell, last night like pressure waves, at times like a screaming fire alarm. It has no pain, only the power to threaten focus. Recently I found myself focusing on the roaring in my head and wondering if it would effect my writing. So, I changed the setting to a noisy industrial space.
The key is where you are focusing. When you are a medical patient, your focus is upon yourself. This is the death of a writer, at least of his hope for relevance down throughout the ages. I can’t get on board with Saint Augustine and the Christians who insisted that a good man must love his body like a man loves a wife and Christ loves the Church. I cannot bring myself to love this vehicle of passage. This, that I have not focused on the failed human weakling born James Theodore LaFond in 1963, at Mercy Hospital in Baltimore had been my keystone. For those two months of agony I was reduced to a modern person and did nothing of possible note. Turning the focus away from me the medical patient still unable to walk has permitted a return to writing, which is observation, sympathy, empathy, investigation and evaluation of peoples, places and things.
In my opinion, the reason why most people who want to write a book, this is hundreds who have confided in me now, claim that they “can’t,” has convinced me that the freakish proliferation of books coming from one special education student late in a failed life, has for its wellspring a projection of this mind away from the Seat of Dismay, to focus on the world as it was, is and might be. So long as the spotlight of my major muse—the managerial one who bosses the ghosts of the many others, some of them among those reading this—is projected away from my backpack empire of crippled impoverishment, I remain a writer.
But for those few dozens of days in June in July, when I did abide by Saint Augustine’s dictum from On Christian Doctrine that declared I may not be a Christian unless I learn to love my body, my focus was on me, my injury, my sleeping berth—floor, bed, couch—and nutrition and medication. During those brief Christian weeks, I was not a writer.
But since I have begun to limp rather than crawl, the unrepentant Heathen in my being has risen to take back this riven soul from the sniveling pit of self-care. I cannot attain any higher state imagined by the Heathen, Pagan, Egyptian, Gnostic, Christian or Modern faiths that have at one time or another tugged at my conscience. I can, however, leave a human stain that might well outlast this misguided sack of stringy bone so long as I write.
There is nothing else left.
To focus forward, I wish to finally put written works behind me and count what is there. Works that span less than the 44 page minimum for POD publishing, will not be included. Games like Pizza Wars, Tyrants of Yitar and certain booklets and lone essays will not be counted. Only a work of 44 or more pages makes the grade. Writers communicate in words the size of their work, readers pages. So each entry will contain both, if I have it at hand.
Thank you for your support.
James, Baltimore, MD.
04.11.24 Bones @FiveGunsWest — I just read in Salman Rushdie's 'The Golden House', the
protagonist was talking about writing and muses, and he says writers just
show up and go to work. I'll be gentle here and just mention the whole
thing is in the final chapter of the aforementioned book for all and sundry
who are interested. It's probably in your local library of if you used
Library To Go or Libby.
That said, Thomas Mann said something like ... A writer is someone for whom it is much more difficult to write than regular people.
You have none of those problems. As I age I certainly am not in live with my body. I've read St. Augustine. One of his lengthier tomes is holding up a piano leg. Prodigious and prolific you are. Your take is sublimely original and as always, quite interesting. Say hi to your publishing house for me. If you're into cats, I'll close with 'May star-clan light your path. The hellishness of living and writing the epic story is always at hand until one my longingly fall into an uncomfortable and fitful sleep. Pardon my typos. I don't know where my glasses are at the moment.
That said, Thomas Mann said something like ... A writer is someone for whom it is much more difficult to write than regular people.
You have none of those problems. As I age I certainly am not in live with my body. I've read St. Augustine. One of his lengthier tomes is holding up a piano leg. Prodigious and prolific you are. Your take is sublimely original and as always, quite interesting. Say hi to your publishing house for me. If you're into cats, I'll close with 'May star-clan light your path. The hellishness of living and writing the epic story is always at hand until one my longingly fall into an uncomfortable and fitful sleep. Pardon my typos. I don't know where my glasses are at the moment.
©2024 All Rights Reserved.
will your self to heal
find a different pain killer
best of luck warrior-sage