Killers' Tools

Some people love to say, it's not the guns, if someone wants to kill, they'll just find another way. That might be true (although there are statistics that suggest otherwise), but so what? A guy with an AR-15 on the roof can quickly murder hundreds. But if all he's got is a sword or a brick or a garotte, he has to get closer to his targets, and he can only attack one at a time. Even with a really good handgun or a normal hunting rifle, he can't do what the AR-15 killer can do.

 

The Masque of the Red Death

By Edgar Allan Poe

The red death had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal -- the madness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress, and termination of the disease, were incidents of half an hour.

But Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his crenellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts.

They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the "Red Death."

It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.

It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. There were seven -- an imperial suite, In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extant is scarcely impeded. Here the case was very different; as might have been expected from the duke's love of the "bizarre." The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at the right and left, in the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor of which pursued the windings of the suite. These windows were of stained glass whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blue -- and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange -- the fifth with white -- the sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes were scarlet -- a deep blood color. Now in no one of any of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro and depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly lit the room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or back chamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all.

It was within this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. It pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and while the chimes of the clock yet rang. it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused revery or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes (which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of Time that flies), there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before.

But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel. The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for color and effects. He disregarded the "decora" of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be sure he was not.

He had directed, in great part, the movable embellishments of the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fete; and it was his own guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm -- much of what has been seen in "Hernani." There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these the dreams -- writhed in and about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away -- they have endured but an instant -- and a light half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And now the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many-tinted windows through which stream the rays of the tripods. But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven there are now none of the maskers who venture, for the night is waning away; and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of the sable drapery appalls; and to him whose foot falls on the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more remote gaieties of the other apartments.

But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps that more of thought crept, with more of time into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled. And thus too, it happened, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before. And the rumor of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, of horror, and of disgust.

In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the prince's indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood -- and his broad brow, with all the features of his face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.

When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell on this spectral image (which, with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste; but in the next, his brow reddened with rage.

"Who dares" -- he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him -- "who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him -- that we may know whom we have to hang, at sunrise, from the battlements!"

It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood Prince Prospero as he uttered these words. They rang throughout the seven rooms loudly and clearly, for the prince was a bold and robust man, and the music had become hushed at the waving of his hand.

It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of pale courtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of this group in the direction of the intruder, who, at the moment was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker. But from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the mummer had inspired the whole party, there were found none who put forth a hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the prince's person; and while the vast assembly, as with one impulse, shrank from the centers of the rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue chamber to the purple -- to the purple to the green -- through the green to the orange -- through this again to the white -- and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been made to arrest him. It was then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddened with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry -- and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which most instantly afterward, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. Then summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and seizing the mummer whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpse- like mask, which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.


Story originally published in 1842
Red mask photo by Rodrigo Rodriguez on Unsplash
Silhouette photo by Elti Meshau on Unsplash


 

Save Your Internet

If you like having access to Facebook (or online videos, or your own blog, or news websites, or web pages about your hobbies and interests, or Twitter, or games, or anything else you might do online), then you need to KEEP net neutrality.

Without net neutrality, big corporations will get to decide what you can and can't see, and they will be allowed to charge you extra fees for the things you want and force "packages" on you just so you can get access to one or two things - just like cable TV.

Do you want Comcast, Spectrum (aka Time Warner), AT&T, and Verizon to control your Internet access? The FCC wants to hand them the keys.

As of December 14, the FCC plans to take the Internet away from you and place it in the hands of companies you can’t trust, who will squeeze you for every last dime. The only way to stop this from happening is to make Congress intervene. Every member of Congress needs to be flooded with phone calls immediately.

Five Calls will help you make the calls.

Battle for the Net will help you send a letter.


rawpixel.com
 

Obsessed With Golf - At Your Expense



During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump often criticized previous presidents for playing too much golf. Now, he plays golf so much that his staff is trying to figure out ways to hide what he's doing.

At a time when the administration claims it is necessary to make huge budget cuts that are likely to reduce the quality of life for many (perhaps most) Americans, Trump's seemingly endless vacations at resorts and golf courses are costing the taxpayers a fortune.
 

EPA's Effect on the Economy

Good news!

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) greatly benefits the U.S. economy by improving health and creating jobs.

Read about it here.
 

Choose Your World

What kind of world do you want to live in? A world where most people are employed and feel secure in their homes? Or a world where a few unbelievably wealthy elites live lives of extraordinary luxury while the majority struggle to pay the rent? A world where most people can get a decent education, giving them the opportunity to get modern jobs? Or one where the majority of people have no education beyond basic reading and simple arithmetic, and are suited only for difficult, menial jobs?

Would you prefer a world where mentally ill people get treatment, or one where they live and die in the streets? A world where elderly people, who have worked and paid taxes all their lives, receive the care they deserve in their final years, or one where they are cut off from food and medical care, and allowed to starve and die miserable deaths?

Do you want to live in a world where science, medicine, and technology continue to advance and make our lives better, or one in which progress stops (and maybe goes backwards)? Do you want your tax money to support programs that benefit you and your neighbors, or do you want your money to support gold-plated mansions, yachts, and fancy vacations for arrogant aristocrats, while you drive on streets full of potholes and you can't even afford to take your kids to the local amusement park?

Would you like to look at blue skies while you breathe fresh air, or would you like the view to be hidden by yellow clouds of chemicals that make you choke? Do you want to drink clean water, or would you rather be poisoned? Do you like the current world where most people in this country have a life expectancy of more than 80 years, or would you like to go back to the days when the majority died before age 50?

Do you want your children and grandchildren to have a great future? Or do you want them to live lives of fear and misery?

The first kind of world is the one most of us want. We want decent lives for ourselves and others. The second kind is the one our current Congress is trying to create. They want enormous wealth for themselves and their rich sponsors, and they want ordinary citizens to pay for it. They truly do not care what happens to us. In fact, many of them actually prefer a world in which the population is mostly poor and sick, because people who are suffering and struggling just to live are too weak to fight back.

While we are paying attention to the things the president posts on Twitter, state legislatures are quietly and rapidly introducing hundreds of bills that would make life much worse for normal people, while handing over yet more wealth and power to people who already have everything. The majority of people in Congress do not represent the people who voted for them. They represent the wealthy business people who pay them.

It doesn’t matter what party you belong to, where you live, what your background is. These people do not care about your interests. They will say they do, but then they will vote for laws that hurt you and help only the one percent. The only hope of stopping them is to call them and tell them that what they are doing is wrong, explain that they will no longer get your votes, and then vote against them when they run for re-election. Get rid of these people who use your money to live luxurious lives at the same time your life gets worse. Forget party loyalty. Be loyal to yourself, your family, and your neighbors.


Resources:

  • GovTrack will help you find the names and numbers of your representatives. Just enter your zip code.
  • 5 Calls suggests some issues of interest and will guide you through the process of making calls.
  • This government website links to information for federal, state, and local officials.

 

Don't Let Them Stop You From Voting

Some political candidates fear that they cannot win an honest election. Rather than face the truth and accept defeat with grace, they proclaim that any result which doesn't go their way must be "rigged".

What they really mean is that they haven't been able to rig it in their own favor.

So, in desperation, they decide that their only chance is to prevent people from voting.

In some locations, bullies and thugs will be present at polling places, attempting to interfere with the right of citizens to vote. In particular, they will target people of color and people whose first language is not English. They may also target people they think might be poor, gay, Muslim, college students, or members of almost any ethnic minority.

They may do this simply by hanging around the polling place, possibly wearing fake badges to make themselves look official. They may call out insults to the people who are in line to vote. They may try to intimidate voters by taking pictures or videos of people coming and going from the polling place. They may try to conduct "exit polls" of people leaving the polling place.

Some may carry this further by challenging the eligibility of voters. They may try to claim that you are not properly registered, or that you are not who you say you are.

Some may try to use other kinds of scare tactics. For example, they may post flyers near polling places, claiming that people with outstanding parking tickets or unpaid child support can be arrested when they identify themselves to vote. This is not true!

Here's the good news: This kind of voter intimidation is uncommon. Most of us will not run into anything like this. Even though you may have heard a desperate candidate encouraging his supporters to do these things, in most places it will not happen.

What if something like this does occur in your town? Don't be intimidated. Voting is your right. The system cannot work unless everyone has a chance to participate.

Remember:
  • If someone is trying to intimidate voters on election day, notify the poll workers. They know the rules and know how to deal with the problem.
  • Before you go to the polling place, write down the phone number of your local election board. If you run into a serious problem, you can call them for help.
  • You do not have to tell anyone how you plan to vote. If you are approaching a polling place and someone asks you how you are going to vote, ignore them and keep on walking.
  • Some news organizations conduct exit polls so they can report the progress of the election. Some intimidators may conduct exit polls as well. You can participate in an exit poll if you want to, but you do not have to. You can simply say no thanks and keep on walking.
  • If your eligibility to vote is in question, ask the poll worker for a provisional ballot.
  • Do not get into an argument with anyone at or near the polling place. This will not solve the problem, and it could get you in trouble. Bullies and troublemakers should be ignored or reported to authorities.
  • Don't let anyone scare you. If you feel a little bit scared, breathe slowly and deeply to calm yourself. Then vote.

 

Vote

Please don't let anyone convince you that it's a done deal and that there is no point in voting. We need every vote, now more than ever.

In addition to the presidential race, there are many people running for Congress and other offices.

In the area where I live, we have 17 propositions on the ballot!

Don't let bad weather or long lines or other people's opinions keep you from voting. This election is extremely important, and in many places it is likely to be a close race. Every vote will matter.