Hello everybody, if you're here you've probably clicked the linky in my sig to get here. Don't go away just yet pl0x.
I'm planning a podcast of awesomeness. My plans are to make fun of the news, both serious and bizarre, and I'm open to suggestions. The breakdown of my ideas is pretty simple.
Two releases per week, News Day Tuesday and Casual Friday. NDT would be where we (my panel and I) make fun of everything that's happening in the world, rip on public figures, and just have a good time. Casual Friday would center more on the odd news stories (like changing the chemical structure of cow farts to combat global climate change).
Both releases would have some recurrent features, like Dick Move of the Week, Dumbass of the Week, Study This: (interesting science/health studies), and e-mails from our handful of listeners. I've got about fifteen of these ideas. Which ones are used each week would depend on the stories we have to deal with.
So I'm open to suggestions. Ideas for format, or features? I'm planning on recording this business through Skype; anyone interested in being on?
I've got some writing ideas. Do you have any sugge
I wrote a short story this spring for my creative writing class in which a guy is stalked by a mysterious man in a suit. Nobody else can see him, so the guy decides he's a hallucination; it turns out the suited man is his reaper, and the protagonist dies in a car accident on the way home.
I thought about how to revise it for a while, and then it occurred to me that this story would make a pretty good first chapter for what became my newest novel/novella idea: This newly-dead character experiencing the afterlife. I'm hoping to start writing it within a week or so because I'm almost through planning, but I've decided to open myself up to suggestions from the general populace. Here's my general plot plan as of now:
-Percival (the protagonist) dies. -He learns about the afterlife, which is known to its inhabitants as Reality. -He takes a job in this new world as a reaper and is trained as such. -After a few targets, he discovers that a girl whom he happens to have quite a thing for (and quite a lot of respect for as well) is scheduled to die soon. -He tries to prevent this.
So if you've got interesting ideas, lemme have 'em. Here's my only guidelines and suggestions: -No religion. I plan on Reality being a place that still has different religions, rather than being a Heaven/Hell or Nirvana or Valhalla or whatever. -Any historically famous people you'd like to see in Reality? (I already have a plan for Darwin.) -What reasons might Reapers have for taking people? -Love or hate the plot outline? Ideas? Suggestions? Possible themes emerging (beside battling Fate)? -Any ideas for my world building? Reality needs to explain several (not all) of the unexplained phenomena of our world. What Realitian structure can account for what paranormal activity? -Possible titles are always welcome.
I got Warned back in April on another night when all the mods were offline and a spamtroll was wreaking havoc in the Pit. I spammed one of his reported threads and was Warned. Since I never received an e-mail saying this, I was unawares when I spammed a reported thread tonight with the ironic message
...... b& fasho
Soon after I find I'm unable to view the Pit! What's this? I check my email: Banned! LOL WUT?
So i hop over to FoTB and here's how it went down. You should check the dramatized version against this one for my idealized fantasy of how it should have gone down.
ME: Oh noes, you don't have permission to post! What's this?
I check my e-mails and apparently [REDACTED] banned me for having two
active warnings. I haven't received an e-mail informing me of a warning
since I was warned by [REDACTED, different person] on December 4, 2008.
Therefore, hear my plea:
Mod: #6. Warned by [REDACTED] (04/20/2009)
posting in a spam/reported thread: [REDACTED]
#7. Warned by [REDACTED] (05/06/2009)
posting in a spam/reported thread: [REDACTED]
#8. Banned by [REDACTED] (05/06/2009)
2 warnings=ban
Not sure why you didn't get the one on April 20 seeing as how you got the most recent ones.
4/20? Perhaps the servers were high?
[QUOTE REDACTED FOR SPACE]
Damn that's ironic
If I'd known I was on warning I wouldn't have been posting in such threads.
<____<
Wait a minute, my first warning isn't kosher. Check the timestamps on that thread, I was one minute after the first reporting.
Quote: [REDACTED FOR SPACE]
Is it because that post didn't say *reported*? Even though it was blatantly obvious (well, I thought) that was my intention?
I think I remember that night. Didn't you say you were warning
everybody who posted in that troll's threads? I think that was the
first one I saw, actually, though if I'm lying the timestamps will tell
otherwise so feel free to check and correct. Thought I was okay because
I was in the time window and never received the e-mail.
I deserved the new warning, no bones about it, but is there any kind of
mercy since I thought I was currently clean, especially since my first
warning came in the two-minute window?
Actually you were warned for posting AGAIN in the first thread, long
after it was reported. Scroll down a bit more and you will see what I
mean.
So no, no mercy unfortunately. sorry.
Oh. Maaaaaaaan, there I was with my legal argument, and you show up with a cannon.
But still no lenience even though I had no notification of the first
warning? I really didn't, for serious, though I'm at an utter loss for
how to prove it. You could get around these scenarios in the future by
requesting a receipt for warning e-mails or something, send one a day
until you get that receipt.
It's just really frustrating to get banned because I didn't know I had a warning already.
It is unfortunate that you didn't get the email, but that doesn't mean we can just let it go. No system is 100% perfect.
It doesn't excuse the fact that the rules were broken. We don't let
other people go because they didn't get emails, so it wouldn't be fair
to them if I let you go. Sorry.
All right, I understand.
I shall serve my time quietly after this post (save profiles, of
course). Done with my rebuttal. But I've got a long-standing bone to
pick with the rules, and I by no means expect it to make a difference
in my sentence, and that isn't my intention anyway. I just want it out
there. Maybe you mods can have some kind of discussion about it, or
something.
I went on to argue that punishments should fit the crime, IE lesser offenses generate shorter bans than worse ones, then gracefully bowed out. Looks like a bunch of time just freed up for me to write, record, and do MS Paint entries.....
If you're checking this blog, you're probably wondering what I've done to get banned. Here's what happened.
Me: WTF is this shit, assholes!? How can you ban me for having two warnings!? I haven't been warned since December!
[mod]: Dude, OMG, I banned you? Dude I'm so sorry, but for your general information here's your warning/ban record, and you'll see you were warned.
Me: This! Is! SHENANIGANS!!!! My post in that first thread was in
the two-minute window. I never got your god-damned tire-licking
mudkipz-hating /b/tard HOMOSEXUAL--I said it--email either! You and all
of your buddies are going the fuck down if you don't straighten it out
right this minute!
[mod]: I know, I know, it's balls, I'm really really really sorry about
all this, but if you just take the time out of your important and busy
schedule to scroll down farther, sir, I'm terribly sorry for all of
this, sir, but you did post again.
Me: Oh. Well I see you've got me right knickered then. Won't you lift
my ban anyway, O Minion? Won't you see to it that e-mails are received
for warnings to count?
Carmel: This is off-topic, but I want Steve's babies. Sorry. As you were.
[mod]: It sucks, it sucks, I'm soooooo sorry about ths, but we can't
just let you go because you didn't get the email, I don't know how it
happened but we can't because we don't believe most people when they
say that and if it got out then we'd have to let out everyone. Perhaps
a nice BJ will calm you sir?
Me: I don't need your whore mouth on my penis. Tits or GTFO, mods, and
as I have no tits, I see to it that even I, who is completely just in
enforcing my own rules when even I break them, must GTFO. I'll see you
in a month.
I've got an overwhelming urge to post a blog, so I'll just slam out whatever deep thoughts I can manage in hopes of reaching underlying, inherent truths. Or lawlz.
The LOLFace Persona on Firefox is the greatest thing man has ever invented. All I have to do is look near my Google bar and that guy cheers me up.
Unless your intent is to torture students, never make everything due at the end of the semester.
Confucius say, 'He who stand on toilet high on pot.'
SteveHouse say, 'Confucius had shit grammar.'
Toast and strawberry jelly never fails to make me able to study / do homework. I suspect research studies are underway to explain this.
The black guy on Krod Mandoon is still alive, which is confusing to me. He's breaking movie stereotypes. Well done sir!
A stack of dishes is good; a pile is bad; a mountain might be a volcano.
I've found it impossible to work on homework, any more. Luckily, because class is over... But I've got a ton of shit due on Monday and Tuesday as finals. How the hell am I supposed to write a 400-word response to a reading out of a writing reference? 400-word response to the parts of speech and sentences. What, the, flying, fuck. There has to be a better way to demonstrate that I looked over this shit. I'm freewriting to try to get myself going again. This might go on for a really long time, and because something interesting might happen, I'm doing it here and then posting it for you, the unfortunate reader, to happen upon and read/throw up on. Hugh Jackman is on Daily. I'd turn the distraction off but I can't work without background racket. Ugh. So much to do, so little doing of it. I don't know what's happened. I've always been able to just pull up my pants and do it. There's a gnat in my face.
So check it out, UG. Here I am. Sitting here. Writing something relevant to my homework that is not my homework itself. All this stuff is due Monday, and all my fiction stuff is due Tuesday. I put it off too long, I waited too long, I'm going friggin insane. I got home five hours ago with the intention of working. Decided I was hungry instead and ate. Then I found out I was under a tornado warning. Started trying to work but there's just nothing to say about "a noun is the name of a person, place, thing, or an idea." Nothing. At all. Fuck you. How do you respond to this shit. How!? And I've got like four of these left. Four! And a four-part take-home final for this class, AND a four-page paper. The same day (with the same teacher!) I've got a final at 8:30 in the morning in a different class, then this shit is due later, then my fiction shit is due the next day. I've got three days to accomplish this and four to accomplish that, which would be doable if they didn't overlap for most of the days.
I'm gonna try to work on something for that final I mentioned. This was a good idea.
Custer's First Stand [Original Short Story] Part 2
Current mood: accomplished
The local news picked the story up gleefully, and somebody even contacted CNN with it. Howard and his campaign vehemently denied the allegations in public, calling them “shameful rumors” and “mud-flinging on a level that is unacceptable in today’s world.” When Congress recessed for a few weeks, he never talked about it at home. He spent most of his time campaigning, shooting commercials, holding town hall meetings at local churches and schools, the usual Congressman business. Even when he was at home he was often just a few steps from the telephone, waiting on somebody to tell him what’s going on with this or that event. It was like this every election year, so I was used to it, but it was still frustrating.
One day I was sitting on the sofa in the living room, browsing the Internet on my laptop, when the phone rang shrilly, barely audible over my headphones. I chose to ignore it, instead bobbing my head in time with the beat in my head.
“Patrick!” my mom called from the kitchen. “Will you get that?”
I pulled one side of the headphones off my head. “You know it’s for Dad. Let him get it.”
“Patrick!” my mom called again, after another peal from the telephone.
“You know it’s for Dad!” I called back.
“No, it’s for you!”
I let the headphones fall around my neck, bass still pumping out of them. “Really?” The cordless handset was on the end table next to me. I picked it up and answered, “Hello?”
“Why won’t you answer your cell?” It was Amanda; I hadn’t heard from her since the finance news had broken a week earlier.
“Oh.” I pulled my cell phone from my pocket. It had no missed calls. “Cause it’s no longer for this world. Let me go plug it in.”
“Yeah, good call. You know the Patriots.”
“Thanks for the tip. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Bye.”
I hung up the phone and removed my headphones, detaching them from my computer. The rhythm pulsed pathetically from its tiny speakers, TOP, seh, TODDOP-seh. I quickly muted this, looking up to see the crawler on the bottom of the TV screen: “CUSTER RUMORS GAINING STEAM.” My mind labored as I stood up, looking for any excuse to get me out of the house for an hour. I walked into the kitchen.
“Hey Pat, would you run to the store for us?” There the man stood. My father. Once an uppity idealist, now another tool of the system. His thinning hair was still combed over to the right. Luckily, whatever whim he was sending me on this time gave me an excuse to leave.
“Sure, what do you need?” I asked. “I was just about to go find something to do anyway.”
“We need eggs,” my mom replied over her shoulder. She was neck deep in the refrigerator.
“Is it urgent?”
“No, I just noticed we’re out. I’ll need them to make dinner tonight.”
“Yeah, I’ll grab them on my way home. Need anything else?”
“Don’t stay out too long,” Howard said. “We’ve got that fundraiser tomorrow and I think another family talk is in order.”
I sighed inwardly. “Sure,” I said. “Another family talk will make me genuinely want your figures to improve, or make Emily care at all. It’s exactly what we need for family morale right now and for your campaign to not tank at these finance rumors. Good luck proving to the entire district that you didn’t launder all that money. I don’t even believe you, you know?”
I didn’t say that second part, any of it after “Sure,” but I really wished I had as I got into the car.
I started the engine as I opened the glove compartment. The secret phone fell into my hands. I turned it on as I pulled away. A string of digits appeared on the screen beneath the title “Missed Calls.” I called this number; I never kept numbers stored as names in this phone just in case.
“Hey you,” answered Amanda.
“What’s up?” I said.
“Where you headed?”
“I figured I’d grab a coffee or something. Where is everybody?”
“They’re getting ready for tonight. You are gonna make this one, right?”
I sighed. “I have to go to a fundraiser tomorrow. Howard would kill me.”
Amanda sighed back at me. “You aren’t making excuses again, are you, Custer?”
“Of course not,” I lied. “I’m gonna make one of these things as soon as I can.”
“You realize what it would do to his campaign if you publicly stood against it, right?”
“You realize what it would do to my family life, right?”
She laughed harshly in my ear. “Probably. I’ll meet you at the coffeehouse.”
Amanda and her boyfriend Carl, the eternal, natural salesman, were already sitting down with steaming coffees when I walked in. I passed the short line by and just sat down with them. “What do you guys make of this whole laundering scandal?” I asked.
“I think it’s hilarious,” Carl said with a shrug. “Absolutely typical.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I protested. “He’s not a bad guy.”
“Just a bad Suit,” Amanda added.
“Yeah.”
“But really, were you surprised?” Carl needled.
I shifted my weight to the other butt cheek. “No, not really. I just don’t know why he did it. That’s the only bit of this that gets me. And they do still think I believe his public ‘I am not a crook’ face, but I’m not sure how long I can keep that up.”
“I really wish I could get you openly on the good side,” Amanda said with a shake of her head.
“I wish I could be.”
“Look,” Carl said, opening his massive hands like a marketing director with a Hot New Plan. “Tonight we’ve got guys hitting the entire city. Let me sign you up for your neighborhood. It’s perfect for you, man. No one needs to see your face against Howard, but you can still fight his bullshit.”
I almost laughed aloud. He knew I’d already told Amanda no once. “I can’t. They’d know, and I’ve got a thing we’re leaving for in the morning.”
He actually leveled a finger at me, and this time I did laugh aloud. “Come on, you’re gonna love this. You can’t say no to me forever, man.”
“Watch me,” I wanted to say, but I didn’t.
“Then maybe next time,” I said instead. It felt completely inadequate, but it had to be done.
“It’s not illegal or even big this time,” Amanda felt some deep need to add. “Just signs in yards. Come on. You can even put several in people’s yards who really support Howard. It’ll be hilariously ironic.”
“I don’t have any signs,” I said.
“Everyone’s popping by my place to pick some up tonight,” she explained.
“Then I really can’t,” I sighed, standing up. “Sorry guys, but I’ve gotta run. I’m supposed to be grabbing some eggs for my mom and then we’ve got a family talk. It’s gonna be the most fun I’ve had in ages.”
“Wish we could have you, man!” Carl called after me.
When I got home with the eggs, I found my parents sitting at the dining room table with Emily. She had a set of headphones identical to mine, which she still had upon her head. “Eggs,” I said, holding up the carton as I walked by. My parents each lifted a hand in greeting. Emily’s phone vibrated and she picked it up, texting away nearly immediately. The black polish on each thumbnail was perpetually chipped around the edges, even though she retouched them as often as twice a day. My parents were literally worried at one point that if she didn’t open her door once in a while she’d end up fumigating herself to death with the polish and remover, but since she was still with us, they had given up on that front.
I put the eggs in the door of the fridge and returned to the dining room, taking my seat between Emily and Howard. I was like a sort of buffer between the man who lived the system and his daughter who very openly didn’t give two shits about it anymore. Emily, on the other hand, didn’t care who knew she didn’t care. Howard couldn’t stand it; since she’d left the campaign Emily had been outright hostile toward the entire industry. No one really knew what my mom thought about the whole business, but we more or less all assumed it was somewhere between Emily and Howard. Maybe she did or didn’t care, but she was with him til the bitter end.
I sat down with my elbows on the table. “So what’s up?” I asked as pleasantly as I could muster.
“As you both know—“ Howard began. “Emily.”
She looked up at him without moving her head, then finally dropped the headphones to her shoulders.
“Thank you. As you both know, we have a fundraising luncheon tomorrow.”
“We?” Emily broke in.
“Em, please,” my mom pled. Emily rolled her eyes and leaned back even farther in her chair.
“Fine, I have a fundraising luncheon tomorrow,” Howard went on, not the least bit flustered. “Em, you know I’m okay with you not being involved in my campaign, but I’ll still want you to look nice, as usual. The news will pick on anything.”
“I’ll change the polish tonight,” she grumbled. “What do you want, red? Star-spangled?”
“I appreciate it very much.” Howard next turned to me. “I’d like you to introduce me, Pat, if you don’t mind.”
I lifted an eyebrow. What? “Um. Thanks for the warning. Do you want me to prepare something or something?”
“No, actually, my writer’s already got you a short little speech to stick to. I’ll just need you to look it over this evening, maybe read it to the mirror, you know how it is.”
I nodded. “Sure thing, Dad.”
Emily shot me a look that I hoped very hard my parents didn’t catch: I can’t believe you’re such a lying tool.
“Great,” Howard replied. “I’ll have him bring it by after dinner. Now, I’m sure you guys have heard the rumors that Miller is throwing around about my finance operations.” He paused to glare out the corner of his eyes at Emily, who had unsuccessfully disguised a bark of laughter as a painfully fake cough. A wild grin poked around the edges of her fist. “I just want to reassure you all that he has absolutely no evidence behind his claims. Even if they were true, which they aren’t, he wouldn’t be able to prove them to anybody. I haven’t taken anything from anyone I shouldn’t have, and I haven’t used any campaign donations inappropriately.”
“We know that you’re lying to us through your teeth! I’ve seen the papers and Emily found them herself!” I wanted to shout.
“We know that,” I settled with instead. Emily tried her best to melt me with her eyes again.
“I just wanted you to hear it from me, instead of the news,” Howard explained.
That was basically the end of the Family Meeting™. I barely heard the rest of it and it wasn’t important anyway, just the next day’s time schedule, which was sure to be yelled at us nervously at least five times and changed at least six. I felt like my chair would burst into flame at any minute, I was so furious. Howard had never lied outright to us before. He had told us not to worry about things that his campaign was shitting cats over, he’d come up with inane excuses for this or that contradictory vote, which made logical sense but at the same time just didn’t, but he’d never lied to our faces like this. It was more than I could bear.
When the meeting finally ended, Emily and I walked out and headed upstairs to our rooms. “It’d be really helpful if you forgot to set the alarm tonight,” I whispered on the way. She was the only one who knew how to set it.
Emily looked me over curiously.
“That was too much,” I explained.
“Done,” she replied with a knowing nod.
Under the loud pretense of having lost my phone, I went to the car to retrieve my real phone and called Amanda.
At exactly 1:05 that night, the secret phone vibrated. I looked at it. Amanda had sent me a text message telling me it was time. With a WHOOSH I slid open my bedroom window. New windows are great when you need to escape quietly. They don’t squeak or rattle or anything. I poked my head out into the crisp air, surveying the distance to the bushes below, and threw myself out over them. Five feet later, I landed on the grass in front of the shrubberies and rolled, then got up and brushed myself off as I looked down the street. Amanda’s park lights glowed dimly at the end of the block, the engine purring into the night. I jogged to her car and got in the passenger side door. She looked at me and smiled.
“Well look who’s come to the dark side,” she said slyly.
“Yeah, yeah. Get on with it before I change my mind.” She turned her lights on and pulled away from the curb. “I just can’t believe he actually lied to us. He told us Miller has no evidence.”
Amanda scowled. “He didn’t.”
“He did, I promise.”
“I— But— I was there, Patrick! I saw Emily hand the copies of the records to Carl!”
“Yep. She showed them to me first, didn’t know what to do.”
“That’s really ballsy, in the worst way,” she said, utterly flabbergasted. “I can’t believe him. I mean I can, but, really, I can’t.”
We pulled into Amanda’s driveway—home of the Drew Miller for Congress campaign until the money for a real office came in—a few minutes later. She opened the garage door, got out of the car, and walked in. I stayed where I was and waited. I figured her parents might think it was odd if she was out with a guy who is very definitely not Carl in the middle of the night. A few minutes later, she returned with a box of yard signs and put them in the back seat. As she got back in the car I picked one up and read it: “MAKE THIS CUSTER’S LAST STAND: DREW MILLER FOR CONGRESS.”
“Is this meant to be a joke?” I said, stifling laughter.
“Why, Sir, most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things,” Amanda replied with a smirk. I looked at her for a long time before she finally went on, “Yeah, I’ve had that one on tap. Plus, a little humor grabs everyone’s attention.”
It certainly grabbed my family’s attention early the next morning. Emily and I were roused from sleep by a strange mix of a delicious bacon smell and a bloodcurdling Howard yell. I pounded down the stairs, Emily right behind me, both of us yelling variations of “What’s the matter?” but with no response. We looked in the kitchen, where my mother was looking out the window, bless her soul, stifling hysterical laughter the best she could with the ties of her bathrobe. She looked back at us and said meekly, “Please remember to set the alarm at night, Emma Bean. Did you two get enough sleep?” She put her fist in her mouth and went back to the bacon, which was beginning to burn, as my sister and I went to the front door. Howard had neglected to close it on his way to pull what appeared to be several Drew Miller yard signs out of the ground near the street in our front yard. They had been planted deeply and then anchored further with something that greatly resembled the tent stakes in our garage. Apparently the entire neighborhood was against him too, as every yard sported a freshly cut lawn and a freshly planted “CUSTER’S LAST STAND” placard.
See, I hadn’t seen fit to knock on people’s doors at 1:30 at night, so I simply assumed everyone wanted Drew Miller to win come November and gave them yard signs for free out of the goodness of my heart. I figured the fifteen signs I had left over could adequately speak for me.
Howard dumped the whole bundle into the dumpster and stormed back into the front room. “You kids don’t have any idea who did this, do you?”
Custer's First Stand [Original Short Story] part 1
Current mood: accomplished
I was sitting in a coffeehouse on campus one late spring day, slowly sipping on a fresh cup and studying for finals, when my activist friend Amanda came in the door and completely forewent the counter. I was taken aback; she was the only person who was more of a coffee addict than I. She sat across from me instead.
“I hoped I’d find you here,” she said.
I put my book on the table. “Here I am.”
“Why aren’t you answering your cell?”
I scowled and felt inside all my pockets for it. “I guess it’s not on me,” I finally said. “What’s up?”
“We need to know if we can count on having you tomorrow,” she urged. “I know you know people who would come with you.”
I put my forehead in my palm. The protest again? “You know I’m all over it,” I wished I could say.
Instead I said, “I still have to decline.”
“You’re a huge supporter with people who like you, Patrick! This is an important event!”
“Howard’s against it,” I said simply.
My father was a representative to the Congress of the United States. This was a huge deal to me when I was like five. “Your dad’s gonna change the world,” he’d said, and I couldn’t have been prouder. Well, until my baby teeth started to fall out. Then I couldn’t have been prouder of anything than I was of the gaps in my mouth.
Howard Custer was the man’s name. He ran on a platform of honor, family values, all the normal stuff your Congressperson probably also promises you, year in and year out. The only changes in his message depended on what issues happened to be hot that year. My teachers always gave me some sort of lenience because I was “Congressman Custer’s Kid.” He even came to my fifth grade class (at my teacher’s breathless request, of course) to talk to us about the importance of knowing what’s happening in the world, as if a fifth grader could keep track of this shit, let alone understand it. He told us how honorable a profession politics is, how noble a pursuit becoming an informed citizen is. The next year, when he won his re-election by smearing the other guy and I asked him where the honor in that was, his eyebrows jumped into his comb-over. “How can we change the world if we don’t win, son?” he replied at length.
It was always about winning after that. It took me awhile to see it, since I was growing up with it, but it was there. The goals he took to Washington when I was a kid were slowly replaced with re-election, some important figure at the next fundraiser, rummaging through his next opponent’s laundry for some dirt to throw.
“Howard,” Amanda said incredulously. “So? You didn’t even vote for him.”
“They don’t know that. This protest is big enough to have news coverage. So my family would see me there, and the relationship I have with my parents fizzles. And I don’t know how Howard would deal with it. I’ve worked with him as long as I’ve been able.”
“Do you really think you’d get on the telly by showing up with help at the protest?”
“It’s possible. I’ll tell people about it though.”
This time Amanda was the one to palm her forehead. “Fine. Just tell people about it, okay? If there are cameras, the more bodies, the better. Call me if you change your mind, okay?”
“I will if it happens, but it probably won’t.”
“Oh, and did I tell you I’ve signed up to help the Drew Miller campaign over the summer break?”
I shook my head. “Lucky you. I’ll be in the opposing camp, pretending to help Howard. Like always. Think he has a shot?”
“Of dethroning your dad?” Amanda laughed. “Snowball’s in hell, but he’s the guy to elect.”
I almost made it through finals without another Howard-related incident. I had a day off before my last exam, which was an easy one, and was enjoying the spare time by just relaxing under a tree. Then my phone rang. I looked at it in surprise—Emily? My older sister never called me, especially when she was supposed to be at work; she was an intern in Howard’s campaign office. I answered, “Hello?”
“Hey, Patrick, how’s studying going?”
“It’s, fine? I just have one easy exam left tomorrow, so I’m not doing much, why?”
“Okay good. I’ve got a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
Emily paused for a moment. “When you compile a candidate’s financial records, prepare them for the Election Commission, everything is supposed to add up. If it doesn’t I let somebody important know, and we scramble to fix the bottom line or explain the discrepancy. That is what normal is.”
“Alright?”
“So, if you were compiling Dad’s records for the FEC, and found an amount like a few thousand dollars difference, you’d think this is a problem, correct?” She sounded strained, and there was some kind of echo in the background.
“You aren’t making sense.”
“That’s because—” She paused, then spoke softer. “That’s because this makes no sense. I found a discrepancy of fifteen thousand dollars between income and our bottom line.”
“Wow. That sounds large.”
“It is. And when I told who I’m supposed to tell, you want to know what he said? No ‘Holy crap, did you check the numbers again,’ no ‘You must be wrong,’ no ‘Here’s this ad buy you didn’t know about,’ no ‘Whoa, let’s fix this,’ nothing. He told me that he knew about it, that it wasn’t anything to worry about.”
“That sounds… ‘legit.’”
“I know, totally, right? And then he said to simply deduct that fifteen thou’ from the income ‘somehow.’ He said that word, ‘somehow.’”
“Did you?”
“Hell no I didn’t. There’s something terribly not right at work here.”
“Definitely not the most kosher. Are you at the office now?”
“I’m in the toilet actually.”
I laughed. “Well that explains the background echo. Why don’t you meet me somewhere tonight and we’ll talk about it then?”
We met that night at an Italian restaurant halfway between home and my university. Emily had brought copies of the records in question.
“I just didn’t think Dad would do this kind of thing,” she was saying.
“I didn’t either,” I shrugged. “And you’re sure there’s no trail of where the money went?”
“None whatsoever,” she said. “We are about to put in a pool at home though.”
“Are you kidding?”
“I wish I was. This is the kind of thing I knew goes on, the kind of thing I hate, but I just didn’t think I’d find it here. My own father.”
“Not like you voted for him.”
“That doesn’t count; I didn’t vote for anybody. What should I do with this, Patrick? I’m not about to get caught up in a financial scandal at my first internship.”
“Leave,” I said.
“I can’t just leave Dad’s campaign,” she insisted. “You should understand that.”
“Yeah, I know. He thinks you’re all excited over the opportunity. Hey, have you gotten any other offers yet though?”
Emily frowned. “Actually I did, right after I joined Re-elect Custer. Turned it down though. I guess I could call them back, and I didn’t tell anybody about it.”
“Well there’s your out, if they’ll still have you.”
“But what do I do with this? I can’t just sit on the evidence.”
I thought for a moment, chewing my lip in lieu of the bread our waiter still hadn’t brought. “You know,” I finally said, “I never really did have much of a dad. Howard was always off doing his thing.”
Emily nodded, then slowly the left corner of her lips rose as she tilted her face forward. “Shall we find out what it’s like?”
It turned out the firm that had offered Emily an internship had filled that position, but had just had another one open up. She applied for it and they hired her. Howard was upset, naturally, but he understood that she needed to move on, especially after she told him how burnt-out she was on politics and “corruption.” He knew she’d never really cared about it, she said, but she’d known it was a good opportunity for her even though she hated the business. So Howard let her get on with her new internship and hired some other college kid looking for an in. Emily never told me what she did with the proof of Howard’s mess, but Amanda did when she enthusiastically called me the day after I moved back home for the summer.
“You’re right, the Patriots,” she said, understanding suddenly; the Patriots were what she called my parents and Howard’s operation in general. We were on my parents’ home phone, and there was no way in hell I trusted that line to be secure. I didn’t even want my parents to see the numbers on my phone records, just in case; I kept a secret pay-as-you-go cell phone in addition to the one on their plan.
“I’ll call you right back.” She hung up.
I told my mother I was going for a walk and went outside, waiting for the phone call. I couldn’t believe Amanda restrained herself for so long. I was a block down the road before my phone rang. I answered it, “What did she give you?”
“Howard’s got over ten thousand dollars missing from his campaign fund. There’s no record of where it went, but donations of the exact amount came from an affiliated group of PACs whose issue he said he supports. For the first time. Last week.”
“Emily left because of that.”
“Did she? Oh damn, Patrick, did your dad explode? Does he know we have it?”
“She told him she was burned out and was taking an internship at a big firm in the city. He bought it, but Mom said he still wasn’t too happy.”
“He doesn’t know. What is it with you guys and openly hiding yourselves? How can you do that?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. It’s easier than being openly against our own father, I guess. She didn’t tell me she was giving it to you guys, though, she just showed me the papers.”
Amanda sighed back at me. “Well, Miller’s going to the press with it. I’ll let you know if anything else happens, okay? And you let me know when you decide to come over to the good guys.”
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SteveHouse's blogs, last updated : June 5, 2009
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