Bulwer Lytton Part Two
The good always wins out when you observe matters from a distance, gasped Detective Inspector Fred Pickle, dangling from a meathook in a disused Balham slaughterhouse, but it didn’t, really, not for him, nor yet for the guy on clean-up. John Holmes, St. Petersburg, FL
It was a dark and stormy night: the wind whistled like an old man with drugstore teeth trying to teach his grandkids to say, “She sells sea shells by the sea shore,” causing the little shavers to wonder why Peepaw was suddenly talking like Daffy Duck, whether he’d just had a stroke, and if any of them was in the will. Mark Schweizer, Tryon NC
Under a lurid dawn sun, the Usher Property was less baleful than it had been during the past evening’s abode-splitting weather event, and my practiced realtor’s eye – have I not mentioned my profession already? – recognized development potential once the tarn was drained and fissure remediated, perhaps to build an outlet of shopping at which consumers would dawdle, aghast at the scale of discount savings. Brian Brus, Oklahoma City, OK
Although widely despised by his own kind, Kazimir Kilcescu was a hero to a few uninhibited vampires who adopted his “baby talk and Ugg boots” method of victim selection which, when applied correctly, largely eliminated the blood-curdling screams that otherwise left them the choice between letting their swooning prey go scot-free or choking down two liters of curdled O-pos.
Drew Herman, Port Angeles, WA
The summer afternoon was so fierce, Italy pulled off its boot, to wiggle toes in the cool blue sea, as hot Contessa Ravioli slid off her pantyhose. Don Hansbrough, Seattle, WA
He was a bold man, thought Arial Calibri, the typesetter’s daughter, but he wouldn’t recognize a superscript if it was underlined, believed that “strikethrough” was a baseball term, thought italics were people from Italy, and that sans serif was a Caribbean island. Sara Hough, Blacksburg, VA
Even in the noisy gloom of the Oyster’s Pearl, the most frequented bar in town, Sergeant Pete Harrison spotted her the moment she walked in–the young, tall blonde in a tight red dress that clung to her the way those stringy bits stick to a banana after you peel it.
Sylvi Warshaver-Stein, New York, NY
Unlike the effete bun-coiffed duennas back at the English Department, she was just the kind of unassuming dame you liked to find holding down a stool and nursing a smoke at the end of the bar — no more likely to decline a drink than a noun, casual when it came to conjugation, and disposed to end a sentence with a proposition. G. Andrew Lundberg, Los Angeles, CA
Priscilla was a persnickety, perspicacious, and petulant old prude, with a parsimonious purse brought on by pernicious poverty, prone to pettiness, and with an air of pusillanimous if not precarious ways, all proving that the worst things in life are pure pride of place and a pretense of presumptuousness brought on by pouting at the people who preferred prune juice over pilsner.
Linda J. Ashmore, Lynnwood, WA
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Part one was published Friday.
Kekcon At Dragoncon
It was a quiet labor day saturday. PG went to the Dragon Con parade last year, and swore never again. Things were going quiet this day, until a facebook friend posted a call to arms. Something called kekcon had a table at DC, promoting yet another fantasy convention. Somebody got the notion that kekcon was “anti-Semitic white supremacist dweebs.” There was a call to arms… kekcon needed to be kicked out of dragoncon. (If you are losing interest, and want to skip ahead to the pictures, no one will think any the less of you. The pictures are from The Library of Congress.)
PG went to the kekcon site, and did not see what was so terrible. PG then made the fateful decision to comment on the facebook thread… Luther Mckinnon “I looked at the Kekcom website, and I don’t see any “anti semetic white supremacist” talk. What is going on with this hatemongering?” Bill Ruhsam “Do some research.” Bill Ruhsam “Not on their website” Luther Mckinnon “Hey, you are the one throwing stones. SHOW A SOURCE FOR YOUR INFORMATION.” And the show was on. If you want to see the unedited version, go here. The post has been deleted.
Maryam Payne “It’s not that hard to connect the dots if you take a look at their Twitter account, if you’re genuinely not understanding it. You do know that white supremacist groups are going to try to fly under the radar and use coded language in larger forums, right? Because on their website, that’s obviously what they’re doing. Members of the made-up “nation” that they have hashtagged on their Twitter account was present (complete with flag) at Charlottesville. Guess which side they were on? (I’m not naming or linking any of this garbage, so you’ll have to look for yourself).” Luther Mckinnon “OK So you don’t like their opinions. They have the right to express these opinions. Why are you so special that you have the right to shout them down? Maybe YOU are the one who should be kicked out of your overcrowded costume party.” Mariana Pannell “Because their opinion lead to genocide and part of WW 2. They are not free of the repercussions of hate speech, no matter how coded the language is” Kekcon is guilty of saying offensive things, because they post a picture of a frog.
If you have ever been in an argument over religion, you recognize the stages. The first stage is where you are talking about ideas. One of the parties disagrees with some of the ideas, and their mind is not changed by the arguments offered in support of those ideas. The next phase is the personal insults.
Hope Ranker “What’s your bag, Luther? Crush on one of the organizers? Got called a gamergater at some point and didn’t know why? Or is all just fun political theory to you and you haven’t actually processed yet that Kekistan gamergaters literally find it fun to ruin people’s lives?” Luther Mckinnon Hope Ranker “We talked in a parking lot seven years ago. Until now, I am not a Dragon Con fan, or an Alt Right person. However, I am disgusted with political correctness run amok, which is what this seems to be. This will give me material for a blog post, but will be of little value to anything else.” Hope Ranker “Do some research, Luther. Pepe the frog. Kek. Gamergate. The culture around those things has literally been having fun at ruining people’s lives for years. This is not the post to educate you: It’s the thread for alerting people to the threat. If you want an education on the matter then go to Google. If you just feel stressed out and threatened by all this, then work out that stress somewhere else.” Is there an etymological connection between arrogant and airhead?
Hope Ranker is the facebook friend whose post PG saw. PG and Hope talked in a parking lot seven years ago, and became facebook friends. Since that time, there has been no interaction between the two people. This is a problem with facebook. People post things that should be of no interest to people, but, for some reason, it catches their eye. You can get dragged into a conversation you have no interest in. The only thing that got PG’s attention here is the ugly spectacle of people who decide that their opinions are the only ones that can be heard. In this case, once they get your attention, they refuse to answer basic questions, and tell you to go away. FWIW, Hope Ranker unfriended PG during this episode. Unfriending people, to punish them for having contrary opinions, is pathetic.
Luther Mckinnon “Last year, I went to the DC parade, dealt with the mob scene, and swore never again. This year, I get in a facebook quarrel with thought police. This is a much more comfortable way to participate.” Hope Ranker “This isn’t fun or comfortable for anyone else on this thread.” Hope Ranker “I know him, it did years ago. He’s not a first-hand alt-righter. He’s just accidentally spewing their arguments for them because he didn’t know what he got himself into.” Miranda Compton “What a Troll shit stirrer you are. Back off.” Luther Mckinnon Hope Ranker “I am not spewing anyone’s arguments. I am just asking for evidence for your claims. I did research, and did not find anything.” Hope Ranker “This is not the place to explain gamergate to you, Luther. It’s the place for coordinating a response to their threat. If you’re not here to help with that then please show yourself out.” Luther Mckinnon “Eventually I will leave. The more you argue with me, and insult me, the longer I will be here. I don’t see much coordination going on. Just insulting someone who asks what you are talking about. All you have to do is show a link. The only link I have seen in this thread is to the discredited SPLC.” Bill Ruhsam Luther Mckinnon “you are choosing to stand by racists and misogynists and fascists. That makes you complicit Congratulations. You’re an alt-right bigot.”
Sheerluc Birchfield sent the SPLC. link in a private message. Luther Mckinnon “the splc is discredited plus, that article does not say what is wrong with kekcon, other than having a picture of pepe on their site” Sheerluc Birchfield “O it says quite a bit about what’s wrong with those people. I can see I made a mistake by trying to help. You said you did your research but obviously you did very light and sloppy research. Hope was right on the mark for deleting and blocking you.” *You Cannot Reply To This Conversation* This is where the story ends.
Chamblee54 
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