For a night on the town, the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, a world-famend performing arts complicated adjoining to South Coast Plaza, options stage and concert halls in addition to repertory and cabaret theaters. The concierge at South Coast Plaza may even handle securing your tickets here and to different space attractions.
On October 15, 2018, it was introduced that Sears would be closing as a part of a plan to shut 142 stores nationwide. The Sears anchor was closed permanently on January 1, 2019, making it the last unique anchor retailer to close within the mall.
Located solely steps away from Michigan Avenue, the Oak Street District continues to draw in millions of visitors every year with walkways that act as pink carpets to posh storefronts and impressed interiors. It is the gem of Chicago’s Gold Coast, one of the prestigious areas in the Midwest and the second wealthiest neighborhood in the nation.
When I was prepared for a break from shopping, I retreated to South Coast Plaza’s VIP Access Suite, a quiet, personal oasis to sit down, chill out and regroup. The concierge checked my packages and offered me with an array of refreshments. This cozy lounge also presents a non-public dressing room, where consumers can meet with a private stylist. Walking into South Coast Plaza feels different from getting into any other buying vacation spot I even have visited. The use of pure mild and a calming indoor water characteristic gave me the impression that I may simply spend greater than a day exploring here.

South Coast Metro Shopping

Walk the bridge of a WW II warship, marvel at the forty four-ft motor lifeboat plowing by way of a wave in a rescue mission. Board the Lightship Columbia, a National Historic Landmark that after guided ships to safety on the mouth of the Columbia River. If recent produce, live music, and local artwork blended with a street market environment is your concept of a weekend properly spent, then the Astoria Sunday Market is a spot you possibly can’t afford to overlook. The second largest market of its sort in Oregon, celebrating its nineteenth season and spanning four city blocks, the Astoria Sunday Market is located within the heart of downtown Astoria.

San Diego: Culture, Shopping and Attractions

Be the primary to find out about unique offers and occasions at Oregon Coast Shopping Center. Our local enterprise directory acts as a tour guide to Chicago’s premiere locations. Peek into the buying, delicacies and best motels in Chicago and browse our part on occasions to plan your schedule out completely. Whether it’s one of the best spas, hotels, accommodations, eating places or a purchasing district in Chicago, Oak Street Chicago lets you discover what you’re on the lookout for.
The LAB Anti-Mall, a longtime OC arts hangout and bohemian buying oasis, honors the pattern-loving shopper within a relaxed open air environment. Urban Outfitters, Buffalo Exchange, Eye Society, Blends, Carve, Crème Tangerine, and Crew Salon are one-of-a-sort retailers circling the LAB Living Room. From your early morning espresso repair at Cafecito Orgánico, café type ambiance at Gypsy Den and delicious vegan bites at Seabirds Kitchen, to dinner at award profitable Cuban restaurant Habana or Calipoke, The LAB eateries will fulfill any palate! While you’re right here, loosen up and spend some high quality time at the famend rust barrel fountain and fire pit, and peruse the classic trailer pop-up retailers sprinkled concerning the whimsical pathways. J. Segerstrom & Sons, based the Festival of Children Foundation in 2002.
The Vons grocery retailer signal instantly catches the eye, but Metro Town Square certainly doesn’t finish there. Convenience is key—one can pick up groceries, use the health club at LA Fitness, or utilize health and financial providers and extra all in one cease.
These Main Street areas regularly host free events for an added layer of fun. A shopping center featuring The Krave Kobe Burger Grill, Menchie's Frozen Yogurt, Mustard Cafe, Newport Fusion Sushi, Pavilions, Starbucks Coffee, Zov's Bistro and more. The SoBECA District, an acronym for South on Bristol, Entertainment, Culture, Arts celebrates fashion, dining, arts and the outside as the heartbeat of Costa Mesa, City of the Arts. The LAB Anti-Mall and the CAMP eco-campus, throughout the street from each other on Bristol, form the cornerstone of this eclectic neighborhood of unique boutiques, one-of-a-type restaurants, artwork galleries, cafés and wellness providers.

Cocoa Beach Surf Company

Showcasing 200 distributors each week with arts and crafts from the unique coastal region in addition to a rotating forged of eclectic musicians, the market is a neighborhood hub properly worth the visit for any traveler. The vibrant food courtroom and quirky vendors border a nearby waterfront stroll that's easily accessible, and the refurbished trolley system offers access to all the remainder Astoria has to offer. Outlets From designer manufacturers to Pacific Northwest adventure gear, Lincoln City Outlets has everything on your subsequent quest on the Oregon Coast. The Space Coast boasts three Historic Downtown Areas positioned in Titusville, Cocoa Village, and Melbourne. All of those districts are nice locations for eating, looking for gifts and antiques, catching a play, or simply taking an afternoon stroll.

As a middle-piece for the group for over 30 years, Kona Coast Shopping Center constantly fills the retail wants of its patrons.
The vibrant food court and quirky vendors border a close-by waterfront walk that's easily accessible, and the refurbished trolley system supplies access to all the remainder Astoria has to supply.
Select South Coast Plaza boutiques and restaurants and all malls now supply SCP 2 GO, a brand new and convenient contact-less curbside purchasing experience.
South of downtown, choices include a contemporary fish market that is likely one of the greatest in the area.
When I was ready for a break from shopping, I retreated to South Coast Plaza’s VIP Access Suite, a quiet, personal oasis to take a seat, chill out and regroup.

The Avenue Viera is an open-air pedestrian friendly purchasing destination that includes premier national retailers, select local retailers and specialty eating places. For visitors in touch with their inside artists, there are artwork galleries within the downtown areas and in Eau Gallie Arts District. Looming large with purchasing on the Space Coast is Ron Jon Surf Shop, the world's largest surf store that visitors need to see to believe.

Curbside Pick-Up and No-Contact Delivery Services at Oak Street District

Park in one of our shade-coded pickup zones and call your boutique or restaurant. Check our web site day by day for probably the most present record of boutiques and eating places. Other shopping choices in North Bend embody the Pony Village Mall, The Myrtlewood Factory, and Ko-Kwel Gifts at The Mill Casino. North Bend’s quaint downtown provides shoppers a blend of gift, vintage and outfitters to select from, including, Painted Zebra, Petal to the Metal, Books by the Bay, Josies Art Lab, Fat Cat Antiques, Mossy Rose, and lots of others. Beach Books is a regionally owned book store that includes best sellers and titles by regional authors.
The basis hosts the annual Festival of Children at South Coast Plaza each September. In March 2006, the Robinsons-May retailer, historically the first retailer at South Coast Plaza because the May Company, was closed as part of its merger with Macy's and re-opened as Bloomingdale's in May 2007. Upscale Italian, progressive American, authentic Chinese and Japanese, classic steakhouse are among dining choices that indulge the senses and revive the diner, permitting more time for exploring. In the center of downtown Chicago, the Oak Street District is the town’s destination for luxurious purchasing. A neighborhood of historical buildings housing the world’s most sought-after brand names and designers, it's a mélange of each charm and culture.

Top Spots for Independent Shopping on the Coast

You’ll discover the posh way of life boutiques Chicago’s downtown district shines for and discover Chicago’s best points of interest the casual vacationer overlooks. We’ll help navigate downtown Chicago, so you'll be able to stroll confidently into one of the best restaurants, motels, hostels, accommodations and clothing boutiques the town has to supply. Browse Oak Street Chicago’s native enterprise directory for a thorough catalogue of boutique purchasing, and eating places and also you’ll know exactly what to select on your destination adventure. Simply name them to order spring fashion or meals and you’ll receive a choose up time.
Six galleries, the Great Hall, and the Lightship Columbia interpret the area's rich maritime historical past. Visitors of all ages expertise what it's prefer to pilot a tugboat, take part in a Coast Guard rescue, and stay in Astoria in the course of the height of salmon fishing. Explore marine transportation from the times of dugout canoes, via the age of sail, to the current.

Boomster Blog: Local Coffee Spots on Florida's Space Coast

Since 2007, South Coast Plaza has held "Fashion Plates", an annual 10-day Restaurant Week-like promotion of its high-finish eating places at discounted rates. After a full day of buying, prepare to be wowed by the region’s wonderful sights, such as the beaches lining the pristine coastline of Orange County. A go to to Disneyland, for example, is an expertise the entire family can enjoy.
Other surf shops dot the coast together with Cocoa Beach Surf Company in Cocoa Beach and Longboard House on Melbourne Beaches. With so few reviews, your opinion of Newport Coast Shopping Center could possibly be big. Yelp customers haven’t asked any questions yet about Newport Coast Shopping Center. embodies all the comfort of a neighborhood shopping middle, boasting a wide range of retailers and companies that assist each the native business and residential neighborhood.
Everywhere I seemed, there was one thing that caught my eye – clothing, accessories, shoes and extra – especially since I received a 10 % off Visitor Savings Pass only for being an international customer. In the cosmetics division, I obtained fantastic personal service and a makeover. Macy’s at South Coast Plaza really has a lot to be desired, including a separate store only for males. Merritt Square Mall on Merritt Island and the Melbourne Square Mall in Melbourne provide traditional shopping mall venues.

Literary Destiny: Primary Weapons!

Hey all, 30,000 words later, I've finished the rough draft of my thesis, so I get to reward myself with this!
It is an attempt to catch all the literary references in Destiny's flavor texts–I did armor last week, you can find that post here!
Obviously, since I'm not a writer in Destiny, nor do I know any of the writers, this will not 100% complete–but I read a lot, so maybe it'll be close!
Without more ado about nothing, here's the primary weapons! They're organized by class, and then roughly in descending order of rarity.

Auto Rifles

Fabian Strategy: Wait for enemy to make a mistake. Die. Stand by for Ghost Resurrection. Repeat as necessary.
Interestingly, despite its name being the an actual military strategy, the use of Fabian Strategy really doesn't seem in line with that strategy. The actual strategy is one of attrition, guerrilla warfare, and light skirmishes, as opposed to the frontline fighting the gun espouses. The strategy itself was named after Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus Cunctator (can't make this stuff up), a Roman dictator who pioneered it against Hannibal, a legendary Carthaginian commander. Fun fact, his cognomen–or honorary last name–Verrucosus, means 'warty', a reference to a wart on his upper lip.
((GENESIS CHAIN~)): ~if(input(SIVA)) // echo Shirazi // output(death) // ask(not in vain)~
I think this is a reference to James 4:3:

³You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.

New Revised Standard Version. 'Ask not in vain', as it were. I'm not 100% about this one simply because it's not a great fit, but 'ask not in vain' is a pretty iconic phrase.
Monte Carlo: There will always be paths to tread and methods to try. Roll with it.
Uhh, so this is a reference to the Monte Carlo method, which, according to Wikipedia, is, "a broad class of computational algorithms that rely on repeated random sampling to obtain numerical results." If someone with relevant expertise could explain this better, I'll edit it in, but for now, I'll take a whack at it: as a part of risk analysis, Monte Carlo methods allow you to simulate a large number of possible outcomes, so you can better make decisions under uncertainty. Of course, it is also a reference to the Monte Carlo principality in Monaco, particularly its opera-house-cum-casino, from which the RNG of the Monte Carlo method takes its name.
Abyss Defiant: We will not go quietly.
A reference to Welsh poet Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night", all of which is fabulous, but I will quote just a short stanza here:

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

As Guardians, we're pretty conditioned against the 'dying of the light', so this one definitely feels like a good fit.
Arminius-D: Unleash a torrent on your enemies with the Häkke Arminius-D.
The name is of Arminus (german, Hermann), a legendary German commander who lived in both the BCE and CE, and gave the Romans their greatest defeat at the Battle of Teutonberg, in 9CE. Arguably one of the most important battles in history, it likely stopped Roman advancement past the Rhine permanently–which is likely the "torrent" referenced in the flavor text.
Zarinaea-D: You provide the will, and the Häkke Zarinaea-D provides the way.
A Sacae woman, who also fought in battles. Wife of the Parthian (ayyyyy, see pulse rifles, below) King Marmares. Her story is related in Ctesias' history of the Persian empire, Persica.
Paleocontact JPK-43: An auto rifle, modified by Dead Orbit's superb technicians and specialists.
Paleocontact is the idea that aliens rendezvoused with early humans and influenced civilization. It is generally considered a pseudo-historic theory at best, and falls under "Ancient astronauts". No idea about the "JPK-43" part, unfortunately.
Questing Beast: You'll never catch it. But that's not the point.
A reference to Arthurian legend, the Questing Beast is a vicious monster, and a, "... subject of quests undertaken by famous knights such as King Pellinore, Sir Palamedes, and Sir Percival". Its description was quite ferocious:

The strange creature has the head and neck of a snake, the body of a leopard, the haunches of a lion, and the feet of a hart.^[1] Its name comes from the great noise that it emits from its belly, a barking like "thirty couple hounds questing". 'Glatisant' is related to the French word glapissant, 'yelping' or 'barking', especially of small dogs or foxes.

More contemporary incarnations can be found in The Magicians series by Lev Grossman, and possibly South Park? Unsurprisingly, it also makes an appearance in the Merlin TV series. Thanks to Phoenity1 for pointing that one out!
Zero-Day Dilemma: There's no defense against it.
A reference to zero-day vulnerabilities, which are computer vulnerabilities found and exploited before the developers can come up with a solution or workaround–thus the 'zero-day' moniker.
For The People: I stand against the state of nature.
A reference to Thomas Hobbes' "natural condition of mankind", from Leviathan. A 'state of nature' was the theoretical idea of man's existence before society. A really interesting exploration of that idea is Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, a philosophical work by Ibn Tufail–Arabic, أبو بكر محمد بن عبد الملك بن محمد بن طفيل القيسي الأندلسي– which tells the story of a young man raised entirely in nature by animals, who only comes into contact with society later on in his life.
Izudabar-D: Millenia will pass, and still your name will ring out.
"Izdubar" was the initial translation of the name Gilgamesh, who of course is the protagonist of the Epic of Gilgamesh a fabulous (and surprisingly short!) ancient Mesopotamian epic poem, which is considered the first example of the genre.
Bronzed Miyamoto-D: An aggressive Häkke auto rifle, earned through glory in the Crucible.
A reference to the later-era (1600s) Japanese swordsman and strategist, Miyamoto Musashi–Japanese, 宮本武蔵–and likely not the co-founder of Nintendo! In his later years, he wrote The Book of Five Rings, a treatise on strategy, tactics and philosophy.
Galahad-E: This extraordinary multirole rifle boasts a smartmatter frame, the key to remarkable capabilities.
More Arthurian legend! Sir Galahad is the illegitimate son of Lancelot and Elaine of Corbenic, ironically renowned for his purity and gallantry. He appeared quite late in the Medieval Arthurian legends, but became much more common in the later narratives, like Le Morte d'Arthur. Ultimately, he is considered to be the only night of Arthur's table worthy to see the Holy Grail and ascend to Heaven.
Shingen-E: The exemplary Shingen-E is built to pop skulls.
One of my old favorites (still sad I sharded it, though :( alas for small vaults), it likely references another 16^th century feudal Japanese lord, Takeda Shingen–Japanese, 武田信玄. A commander of "exceptional military prestige" during the Sengoku period, his alleged death by sniper was depicted by Kurosawa in the movie Kagemusha. It will be the 444th anniversary of his death on May 13th!
Longespée-A: When all around you is chaos, the dependable Longespée-A won't fail you.
A reference to William Longespée (literally, 'long sword' ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)), 3^rd Earl of Salisbury. Renowned for being friggin' huge and having a friggin' huge sword. Go figure. He died in 1226, and was buried in Salisbury Cathedral. Five hundred and fifty years later, his tomb was opened, and a well-preserved rat was found inside his skull. I guess you could say it was skulking around? He got ratted out, though!
SUROS TYR-14: Stable. Dependable. Rapid-fire. SUROS.
Reminding me of how much I hate Suros' flavor text style, I'm not 100% sure about this one, because most of the 'cheap' Suros weapons have three-letter acronyms at the end of their name, so this might be coincidence. But, Týr is an ancient Germanic/Norse god, either the son of Odin, by the Prose Edda, or Hymar, by the Poetic Edda. Associated with war and might. Had his hand bit off by Fenrir, and is therefore known also known as 'The Leavings of the Wolf' which is an honorific, rather than a dig at him. His name is also where we get 'Tuesday' (Týr's-day)!
Cydonia-AR3: The City can't rely on a steady supply of programmable matter, so the multirole AR3 uses it only sparingly.
A region of Mars, but also a surname of Athena. That region of Mars was also where we found 'the Face of Mars', a rock formation whose shadows made it look like a face. Pretty neat.

Pulse Rifles

Herja-D: Devastate your foes with the deadly precision of the Häkke Herja-D.
More from the Prose Edda! This is a Valkyrie (demigoddesses of war, they would ride into battles and pick the worthy dead to come with them to Valhalla) specifically named in one of the two Nafnaþulur lists. Etymologically, it is also related to the Old Norse herja and Old High German herjón, both of which mean 'destruction' or 'devastation'.
Apple of Discord: "For the Fairest."
Huge shout-out to G3vanB, I'll put their analysis here:

Eris, godess of strife, supposedly throws one:
An apple of discord is a reference to the Golden Apple of Discord (Greek: μῆλον τῆς Ἔριδος) which, according to Greek mythology, the goddess Eris (Gr. Ἔρις, "Strife") tossed in the midst of the feast of the gods at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis as a prize of beauty, thus sparking a vanity-fueled dispute among Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite that eventually led to the Trojan War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_of_Discord
The Apple was inscribed with ΤΗΙ ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΗΙ The translation is the Gun's flavour text.

Interesting to note the Goddess of Strife's name ...
Hawksaw: A northwesterly wind is blowing.
Perhaps one of the more well-known references to our dear Bard, this is from Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2, Line 351:

HAMLET I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.

We're all mad, mad I tell you! Thanks to pocsaclypse for pointing that one out!
Parthian Shot: Who's got the last laugh now?
A military tactic turned literary term, a Parthian shot is an insult or retort delivered as the speaker was leaving. It eventually evolved into the much more well-known 'parting shot' in a delightful little bit of linguistic movement. It comes from a strategy developed by the Parthians, ancient Iranian peoples, where they would ride their horses away from the enemy while firing their bows at said enemy. Of course, it was also before the development of stirrups, so this was a technique that required a truly sublime mastery of equestrian skill. Imagine shooting a bow, while riding a horse, that you're only controlling with the muscles in your legs. Insane.
Smite of Merain (Adept): Barrel etching: "He parted them like a sea, which closed upon him again."
It's not exact, but any references to any parting of any seas are of course biblical in nature–Exodus, 14:21-15:19. Just taking the most similar quote I can find:

26 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand over the sea, so that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots and chari- ot drivers."

14:26, NRSV. As usual, that particular act of God is followed with a great deal of praise.
The Messenger: From deep within the shadows it came—a messenger borne on black wings.
The personification of death often includes a pair of black wings. Crows and Ravens (and many other members of the Corvus family), often thought of as battlefield scavengers, are black. This feels like it should be a specific reference, but honestly it's more a trope than anything.
Hopscotch Pilgrim: It's a long road. Enjoy it.
In a seriously impressive bit of detective work, JohnnyFlack found that this is actually referencing:

Oh oh i found this while reading about the origins of hopscotch...
"In Cuba and in Puerto Rico it is called "La Peregrina" (meaning "Pilgrim Girl") and the squares represent the 9 rings the pilgrim traveler has to pass in order to reach Heaven from Purgatory according to Dante's Inferno."

Here's the Wikipedia article!
Moriaen-D: You are a child of many peoples, a protector of all cultures.
More Arthurian literature. This is a 13^th century romance, called Moriaen, whose story of the titular hero follows him as he first attempts to find his father, and meets with famous knights of the round table, like Lancelot and Gawain. Once his father Aglovale is found, they return to his mother and take back her rightful lands. He is Moorish after his mother, but obviously is also a part of the Arthurian tradition. Thus the 'child of many cultures'.
Lump Distribution: This nimble rifle's on-board tactical systems keep a scrupulous tally of combat stats.
Besides looking totally neat, the gun refers to a Lump-Sum Distribution, which is, "... the distribution or payment within a single tax year of a plan participant's entire balance from all of the employer's qualified plans of one kind (for example, pension, profit-sharing, or stock bonus plans)." Thanks for that, IRS.
Painted Apollo MSc: A highly accurate Nadir firearm, earned through glory in the Crucible.
Our first Nadir gun! Apollo is the Greek god of, among other things, music, poetry, art, oracles, archery, plague, medicine, sun, light and knowledge. Wicked important, very well known. Has a sister, Artemis.
Painted Neptune MSc: A high velocity Nadir firearm, earned through glory in the Crucible.
I'm sensing a naming trend, though perhaps not a consistent! Neptune is the Roman god of the sea and freshwater, and is the counterpart to the Greek Poseidon.
Hotspur-A: Piezopolymer paneling makes the Häkke Hotspur-A a balanced war machine.
Hey! This is interesting. The green Häkke weapons are named after English noblemen! This one is after Henry 'Hotspur' Percy. Led a bunch of rebellions against Henry IV and was eventually killed at the Battle of Shrewsbury by an arrow to the face. Get rekt kiddo. He also featured as a character in Shakespeare's Henry IV, part I.

Scout Rifles

Fate of All Fools: *"The wise man knows his fate. The fool merely finds it."
I orignally thought this was a reference to Matthew, but turns out it's not–check out the story below!
A really excellent explanation of this from Voroxpete, which makes much more sense:

The Fate of All Fools - This one is actually a reference to a videogame... Specifically, Marathon, the series that Bungie created back in 1994, and from which many, many elements of both Halo and Destiny are derived. Rather apropo, given that the weapon was originally gifted to a long time fan who was recovering from brain cancer.
The specific reference is to this scene from Marathon 2:

Tycho's ship has been destroyed. The crater where it annihilated itself on Lh'owon's inner moon is still glowing. There were no survivors. With a focused message laser I burned his epitaph into the surface near the crash site, in letters three hundred meters high: "Fatum Iustum Stultorum."

The speaker in that scene is Durandal, an incredibly powerful rampant AI (wow, gee, its almost like Bungie have some kind of fixation on powerful rogue AIs or something). Tycho is another very powerful AI, acting under the control of an alien empire and sent to destroy or capture Durandal.
The phrase in latin at the end is a little bit wonky (hiring experts to get your dead languages right wasn't exactly a thing in nineties video game design), but it's more or less agreed that the intended translation is something like "The just fate of the foolish"...
Or "The fate of all fools."

Cocytus SR4: The Omolon Cocytus SR4 will drown your enemy in a river of pain.
Thanks to scapulargolem for this:

The 'Cocytus' is referencing the black river surrounding Dis/Hades (The underworld) in Classical mythology. It's mentioned many times in Virgil's Aeneid book 6. It's flavour text reflects this.

Incidentally, in some versions of the tale, the ~~Cocytus~~ Styx was supposedly the river Achilles was submerged in to make him invulnerable. He was held by his ankle, thus making his ankle his only weak spot–his Achilles heel (thanks to thyrandomninja for that clarification!).
And some additional context from Owasippe_Ninja! Thanks!

Awesome. Also, in Dante's Inferno, Cocytus is the frozen lake of the Ninth circle of hell, encasing not only Lucifer himself, but those who betray a bond of trust with others like benefactors, countrymen, and family. The ice is formed by the tears of the Old Man of Crete, which are described as being frozen sorrow and pain, and the frozen winds blown up by the wings of Lucifer. The worst betrayers (who aren't being devoured in the three heads of Lucifer) are fully encased in the ice in a the region called Judecca, named supposedly for Judas Iscariot (although there's more to Judecca than just Judas, check out its use in medieval city planning and general attitudes of Italian Christians of the time to Jews). So seems to fit the flavor text of "drowning enemies in a river of pain."

Additional small bit from another stealthy person, thyrandomninja:

is not just a reference to a literal river, but the Cocytus is also the river of lamentation, or mournful woe. It not only drowns the enemy in front of you by shooting them, but their friends and family are drowned in mourning as well.

Tuonela SR4: Hell will freeze over before the Omolon Tuonela SR4 will fail you.
Ahahah funny joke, Bungo. In Finnish mythology, Tuonela is the equivalent of Hades. In Finnish Christianity, it is the word used for 'Hell' in translations of the Bible. In terms of a literary reference, though, Tuonela is featured in the Kalevela, a Finnish national epic. The protagonist (roughly speaking), Väinämöinen, travels there to seek the knowledge of the dead. It, uhh, went okay.
The Hero Formula: It's just so satisfying!
Okay, this is referencing one of two things: either Heron's formula, alternately spelled Hero's formula; or the Hero's journey, which, frankly, makes slightly more sense? The first is a mathematical formula that gives the area of a triangle by requiring no arbitrary choice of side as base or vertex as origin, where A=√(s-(s-a)(s-b)(s-c)). It's satisfying, I guess? Math isn't really my thing. The second refers to the 'monomyth' or the "common template of a broad category of tales that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, and in a decisive crisis wins a victory, and then comes home changed or transformed". The idea was originally put forward by ~~Jason~~ Joseph Campbell in his 1949 book on the subject, The Hero With a Thousand Faces.
Lethe Noblesse: Do not forget. Never forgive.
Many thanks to Johnny_Dirtbird for this one:

Good job. One other that I had in mind is the Queen's scout rifle, Lethe Noblesse. The flavor text is "Do not forget. Never forgive." From dictionary.com - Lethe is "a river in Hades whose water caused forgetfulness of the past in those who drank of it." Noblesse is a French word that means nobility. I know it from the phrase 'Noblesse Oblige' - nobility obligates. Putting the words together, my guess would be something like 'forgetfulness of nobility.'

High Road Soldier: The survival of civilization depends on our willingness to choose conscience over expedience.
Per S0rrowS0ng and JohnnyFlack, this is likely a reference to the common idiom (I mean, it bascially defines the concept in the flavor text) 'take the high road'. It could also be a winking reference to the chorus 'The Bonnie Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond':

O ye'll tak' the high road, and I'll tak' the low road, And I'll be in Scottland a'fore ye, But me and my true love will never meet again, On the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Loch Lomond.

Zero Point LOTP: This much fun should be outlawed.
thyrandomninja has a great and funny explanation:

I'll do what I can to explain. Every object has "energy levels", whether it be an electron, a molecule, a snooker ball, or a planet. The DIFFERENCE between these energy levels is imperceptible to us because we exist on the macroscopic scale (i.e. we're too big to see tiny differences), so to us it looks continuous. On the microscopic level (e.g. electrons, these energy levels are relatively larger, and much more noticeable, which is what ultimately leads to all the "weird shit" in quantum mechanics, that doesn't show up in real life scenarios). Energy states are usually categorised as n=1, n=2, etc, where n is the number of that energy level. (Electrons NATURALLY tend to operate in n=1 through ~20 [give or take whatever - CERN like to add a few thousand/million/whatever n's in their accelerators :P ] territory, whereas a person is always on n = several fucking million) Zero Point Energy is the energy of an object at n=1. There is no n=0 (for reasons i won't get into here), and therefore no such thing as "having no energy". There is always SOME amount of energy in any given object, and you cannot get rid of it (that "some amount" is negligible compared to things we see in our lives, but that's not the point).
Relating to Life Of The Party, this is probably saying there's no such thing as a dead party. There is always SOME fun to be had, no matter what - the very idea a "life of the party" person would embody.
Alternatively, it could be a jab at the "life of the party" philosophy, by saying that "yeah, there's some fun, but it's negligible, and i'm going to go home", meaning the description takes on a more sarcastic approach.

The Scholar: You can't pull an all-nighter when the sun never sets.
Not really 'literature', but too relevant not to include ;)
Also, per goldenboot76:

Everyone probably knows this already, but the other reasoning behind the Scholar scout rifle's flavour text is the fact that Mercury's orbital period and rotational period are one and the same. As such, half of Mercury is in eternal sunlight, and the other is in eternal darkness.
Hence, the "You can't pull an all-nighter when the sun never sets.".

Thanks for that!
Lampad SR4: Let your enemies know: death will be their only companion.
The Lampads, or Lampedes, were spirits of the underworld in greek mythology. They accompanied Hecate and generally went around doing spooky stuff.
Orphne SR4: If death is the Darkness's way, let our Light defy their desire.
Orphne was a specific nymph of the Greek underworld. Also an alternate translation of Caliga, the goddess of Darkness.
Painted Abbadon SR5: A single-fire Omolon firearm, earned through glory in the Crucible.
Sharing its name with the exotic machine gun, Abbadon is either a "place of destruction" or an Angel of Death. Either way, not pleasant.
Just a quick clarification from westen81, thanks!

Abbadon is most usually associated with the angel of destruction (not necessarily death)..

Painted Sorg SR5: A powerful Omolon firearm, earned through glory in the Crucible.
In a large number of Germanic and Germanic-derived languages, 'sorg' means 'sorrow' or 'grieving'.
Primed Díyú SR5: A long range Omolon firearm, earned through glory in the Crucible.
Following a clear pattern here, 'Diyu' is the Chinese conception of Hell.
Silvered Kín SR5: A highly accurate Omolon firearm, earned through glory in the Crucible.
A Turkic word, it means, simply, 'pain'.
Bronzed Yamaduta SR5: An accurized Omolon Scout Rifle, earned through glory in the Crucible.
The Yamatuda are messengers of Death in the Hindu tradition.
Thanatos SR5: Where Death follows, new life will grow. Where new life grows... Death will follow.
Thanatos is the Greek personification of Death. He is the twin brother of Hypnos, the God of Sleep. Referenced in the Illiad:

... then send Death to carry him away, and Sleep who is painless ...

The Iliad, 16.453-4. Richard Lattimore, translator.
Xibalba SR5: Tiled with picocircuitry, the Xibalba SR5 is fiendishly accurate and hungry to grow.
How many different conceptions of Hell can we find? This particular one refers to the Mayan realm of the dead. It shares its flavor text with the Acheron SR5. The Acheron is both a real river in Greece, but also another one of the five rivers of Hades. The Cocytus (discussed above) flows into it.
Naraka SR5: There will always be new hells to conquer.
hahah, no kidding about those 'new hells'. This specific hell is a particularly diverse amalgamate, finding its place in Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Buddhism. Modified to 'Neraka' in Indonesian and Malaysian, it also describes the Islamic concept of hell. Moreover, it also describes the servants and spirits of Hell when modified to 'Narakas'.
Garmr SR1: Death is hungry.
Garmr is a dog (or wolf) of the Underworld in Norse mythology. He is, "the blood-stained guardian of Hel's gate".
Shinigami SR1: Death comes for the City's foes. Let's not keep it waiting.
Shinigami–Japanese, 死神–are spirits or gods of death. They invite humans to death, and rule over the underworld. Fans of the anime Death Note will also remember their appearance in that series.

Hand Cannons

The Last Word: "Yours. Not mine." —Renegade Hunter Shin Malphur to Dredgen Yor
Many thanks to andreisse for this one!

I know it's based on a gun, and a speech... I'll try and find it.
The Last Word is likely based on a real-life counterpart called Revolver No. 5. It was a weapon devised in 1928 by Elmer Keith, a "firearms enthusiast" from Idaho renowned for his six-shot expertise. He wrote about this weapon in 1929, in an article titled "The Last Word".
http://destinydb.com/item/3164616405/the-last-word

Here's a link to a .pdf of the article.
Gaheris-D: Balanced and dependable, the Häkke Gaheris-D is a true warrior's weapon.
More Arthurian legends! Gaheris was the nephew of Arthur, and a knight of the round table. He is described as "... valiant, agile, handsome, reticent in speech, prone to excess when angered, and possessing a right arm longer than the left".
Judith-D: Headshots are strongly encouraged with the Häkke Judith-D.
So, there are a lot of things this could be, but most likely it is referencing Judith of Bethulia, an Israelite who beheaded the Assyrian general Holofernes. Headshots strongly encouraged, indeed! Incidentally, that poem is found in the same manuscript as Beowulf–the Nowell Codex.
Kumakatok HC4: When the Omolon Kumakatok HC4 comes knocking, even the Darkness locks its doors.
The kumakatok are three Philippine spirits, who walk from door to door, knocking and bringing bad omens. One is supposed to resemble a young woman, the other two old men–however, they obscure their faces with hoods. Seriously creepy.
The Devil You Know: Let's make a deal ...
A reference to the phrase, "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't", this is the only weapon I know of that actually completes the phrase in game. The Devil You Don't was widely acknowledged to be simply a worse version of TDYK, not only being an impact class lower, but also with worse base range. That's commitment to the joke right there.
Uffern HC4: Omolon's Uffern HC4 sentences the City's enemies to burn.
In what should be a surprise to nobody at this point, Uffern is the Celtic version of Hell. Unfortunately I can't source it beyond a three-word mention in the Wikipedia article on Hell.
A very helpful clarification by Rapstah–much appreciated!

"Uffern" is literally Welsh for "hell". "U" is a near-close central unrounded vowel, or even a short "i" sound in southern Welsh. The sound "f" is represented as "ff" in Welsh, so if you represent it as "yfern" it's clear that it's derived from Latin "infernus".
I wouldn't say it's the Celtic version of Hell, it's literally just what you would call the christian concept of Hell in Welsh.

Byronic Hero: Brood, baby, brood.
A type of anti-hero created and embodied by Lord Byron. Byronic Heroes are: "a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection". Think Hamlet, with a touch of Han Solo.
Also possibly another more modern reference, per getedm8–thanks!

This may be a stretch, but with the Byronic Hero's flavor text, it could be a reference to Saturday Night Fever. More specifically, the song "Disco Inferno" where the main chorus sings "Burn, baby burn!"

Vortimer-D: Where you come from is not important. It's for what you do that you will be remembered.
Vortimer, or Saint Vortimer, was another English legend. He can be found in Geoffry of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britainniae–my copy of which I've misplaced, apologies–where he is a described as a Britonic king with a strong distaste for Saxons. Worked out well, he died though.
Rience-D: You will not suffer these invader kings to live.
Hey, wait, are you telling me Häkke named another one of their guns after an English legend?! Yes, yes I am: Rience was an English/Irish/Scottish/British king named in Arthurian legend. He is variously described as the king of North Wales, Ireland, and 'many Isles'. He had the habit of edging his robe with the beards of Kings he had conquered–by the time Arthur came along, he had eleven. Arthur's, of course, was to be the twelfth invader king that he would crush. Didn't work out so well. Gosh, I really hope that's not a predictor.
LOCK_ARETE: Her excellence lies in swiftness.
A confusing one, because arete-Greek, ἀρετή–is literally 'excellence', especially in regards to efficacy, but also in terms of bravery. Arete is also the wife of Alcinous of Scheria, described thus in the Odyssey:

... Alkínoös married her and hold her dear. No lady in the world, no other mistress of a man's household, is honored as our mistress is, and loved, by her own children, by Alkínoös, and by the people. When she walks the town they murmur and gaze, as though she were a goddess. No grace or wisdom fails in her; indeed just men quarrels come to her for equity ...

The Odyssey, 7.70-8. Robert Fitzgerald, translator.
It wasn't originally my plan for these to go in descending order of references, but hey, that worked out nicely!
As I said in the beginning, I'm sure I've missed some, so don't hesitate to point them out.
Thanks so much for reading, Guardians, I really appreciate it!

[Super & Real] Chapter One Part One

The grocery bags plopped down and he collapsed backward onto his couch, breathing heavily. He shook his head and rested. Wow, he was out of shape. His friends were right; he did have to lose weight after all. “Dammit,” he said, recovering. He’d always been a bit chubby, but since getting full-time at the warehouse, he’d gotten so much fatter. The long hours kept murdering his feet and knees, but after being in poverty for practically all his youth, the money more than made up for it, and his waistline expanded accordingly. Pulling the mail from his hoodie pocket, he glanced at each one. The credit card offers he pitched into his burn pile, and his paycheck he opened and checked carefully. They’d finally gotten his name—Manfred Voren—completely correct.
Taking a deep breath, he huffed, and hoisted the six plastic bags into his kitchen and began unloading. Some of the items he chose carefully, as per a recipe he wanted to try. He read the list and arranged each ingredient. Since the recipe estimated a thirty-minute time of completion, he opened his medicine drawer and popped his medication. For the next half hour, he toiled away at the chicken and pasta dish until it very nearly resembled the picture. Scooping it onto his plate, he chowed down while reading comics on his laptop. The latest issue of Breaker featured the main heroine, a tall, muscular power house of a woman, ripping into the powered armor of a bad guy. He knew the lore quite well.
First Breaker was a favorite of his. He’d been reading it since the mid-nineties, having picked it up at age twelve. What attracted him to it, as he had typed into a conversation defending it against arguments of it being outdated, was how unique it was as a comic. “First Breaker,” he had written, plumbing the depths of his childhood memories for the right words, “isn’t just a ‘hey, ‘let’s beat up bad guys and smile for the camera’ superhero story. The main character is Cyroya, a goddess from the fictional ‘Bakeru’ religion. She’s not actually a savior, or a good guy; she’s the main enemy, the Satan of her people’s beliefs. As the Goddess of Strength, she basically shows up in ancient Rome and nearly ends the world, cutting apart entire armies all by herself. Kareth, the God of Mercy and Creation, defeats her, at great cost and casts her into Pareion, basically their religion’s hell.”
He remembered that exchange and how heated he became, even though he realized he was only staring at a computer screen. He’d also introduced several of his friends to it. “Cyroya is cast into the bad place for her many murders, and here’s where it really gets good,” he’d defended. “Where most comics from the late eighties to early nineties—the so-called Dark Age—were just blood and gore for no end, we see her get tortured in Pareion and repent her crimes. That’s when Kareth sends her to the modern world and she must use her powers for good to save humanity, or else spend the rest of eternity in Pareion.”
“So,” his friend Shawn asked, “if this Kareth guy is so powerful, why doesn’t he intervene?”
Manfred took that as his cue. “Because eventually, they encounter threats even beyond the Gods. There’s literally a moment where a guy tells her she can help him take over the universe, and she has a perfectly good chance to kill Kareth and be free of his threat forever. Instead, she helps him defeat the bad guy. It’s great because she’s clearly a recovering villain. You see her have to struggle with the fact that, no, these humans aren’t insects merely there to satisfy your violent urges. You see her literally become a better person.”
He remembered the friend basically answering with, “that’s great, Manny,” and leaving it at that. It was his favorite comic. Shoveling pasta and chicken into his mouth, he pressed the space bar to move forward. Doctor Richard Felaru, the bad guy in the power armor, Manny read, clearly had thought his machine could duplicate the Godess’s power. He’d had her against the ropes, but with the strength of will, she ripped his armor apart. Manny felt like a little kid again. This storyline had been going for the better part of a year, and he was glad to see it end.
“Wow,” he mouthed, reading the last page. The story had ended exactly as he wanted. After finishing his sizeable meal, he washed his plate and silverware, setting it in the drying rack and picking up his laptop. Sitting for too long made his legs hurt, so he walked around carrying it. He shopped for comics online before reading some other issues he had on his computer. Furious Thunder Comic issue 682 appeared full-screen, him clicking on it. He enjoyed it, even though the writing hadn’t always been great. Unlike First Breaker, Furious Thunder was a very traditional super hero story, although not the same as many others. Unlike most of the traditional stories that started in the early Silver Age of Comics, Furious Thunder had started with a female lead. A female lead character, in 1952, was unheard of. Somehow it had managed to avoid being absorbed by the bigger studios, but had suffered in the sixties thus.
The new timeline, he saw, wasn’t quite as good as the one before, but he still kept reading. One of the things that annoyed him was that when the character was first drawn, she was a decently curved woman for sixties standards. Now, she was almost anorexic. It wasn’t unique; many of the big studios had the female supers being model thin, but she was supposed to be a major hero. At least she wasn’t drawn with comically exaggerated breasts—even being a guy, it became annoying and distracting after awhile. Once more, he noticed her pulling her cousin’s pod out of the river. Before it had been a mountain landslide, and the original reboot had it be a river. He knew the story by heart: Michelle Delanter, having been examining archaeological ruins in South America, touched an artifact and was magically transported to another world, where she was forced to fight for her survival for a hundred years, somehow not aging. When she finally succeeded, it was revealed the whole ordeal was an illusory test to see if she was worthy of the power contained within the artifact. She then became Capacitor, a hero that utilized otherworldly energy to possess great strength, speed, and energy abilities.
He read on, seeing that the origin deviated just slightly, with her finding the artifact and the whole training ordeal montaged in a series of six panels. She apparently explained to her cousin that he had been put in stasis because of his disease, and the pod had cured him, right before the earthquake diverted the river through the area where the building was. She grabbed his hand, and shared some of her power with him. “We’ll talk later,” she told him. “Right now, help me save the people downstream.” The next few pages were of the two of them using their powers to save people from the flooding and earthquake. It was nice to see they’d updated her age. In the original 50’s and 60’s comics, she’d been a teenager and her cousin the same age. Now, she was five years older than him.
His cellphone rang and he set down the laptop. The caller ID read a familiar name. “Yeah, Joey? What’s up?” he asked.
“You still hanging out on Saturday?” Joey said.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Manny explained. “Shit, as much as I work these days, it’s the only time I can.”
Joey let out a breath of a laugh. “Ain’t that the damn truth.” He coughed. “Well, if you’re busy right now, I’ll let you go.”
“Eh, I think I’m just staying home,” he replied. “Nothing much to do ‘round here anyway.” He smiled. “See you then.” Both knew too well what he spoke of. Southern Illinois was well-known for a few major things: abandoned buildings where industry once was, being twenty miles from the nearest civilized anything. If he was going to a movie, it would be fifteen miles to Edwardsville, or eight miles to East Alton. There was one book store the Illinois side of the Mississippi river.
He watched some shows on the internet. After that, closed his laptop. Normally, later in the week, he found himself not wanting to be bothered. Now, though, the thought of being around friends made him feel lonely. Still, the nearest mall worth going to would be almost thirty miles away in the Chesterfield, Missouri area. Popping his knuckles, he made up his mind. He didn’t want to be home alone. At least the mall, far away as it was, presented the possibility of running into friends.
His gas gauge reading full, he started it up and headed towards the Missouri line. Miles of forested areas passed by as he left his house, which was just short of Jerseyville, and passed through Alton. The riverside showed block after block of abandoned buildings where jobs used to be, some fifty years prior. The riverboat casinos with their flashing lights stood in stark contrast to the rows upon rows of taverns and bars that segmented sections of former places of business. The economy had been rough and he was lucky to have gotten a job that paid well.
After crossing the Clark Bridge, the economy seemed to get much better, with the businesses of the Florissant area passing by. After more than twenty minutes of driving, he made it to Chesterfield and one of the few remaining malls performing well in the downtrodden economy. The mall looked uncrowded as Thursday evenings weren’t major business. The first store he hit was the bookstore, checking out their manga collection. There seemed to be only twelve people walking around the store, and none of them he knew. He read a few volumes before he left the store.
Walking around the mall, looking around, he felt a bit dumb. There weren’t that many things he wanted to buy, and none of his friends seemed to have thought to come out here. He popped into a dollar store and bought a generic cola. The man behind the counter looked at his shirt and smiled. “Hey, nice shirt,” he said. “Haven’t read a comic since I was a kid, but those movies are great.”
The man looked to be nearly fifty. Manny regarded the man’s gray hair and lined face. “What’d you read growing up?”
“Well, I read a bit of everything,” the man admitted. “I can’t say I remember much of it. Nice to see Hollywood finally giving a thought to it, though.”
Manny let out a humph. “You can say that again,” he responded. “I think when I was a kid, there was the 1989 movie and other than that, a bunch of crap. Now it seems like everyone likes ‘em.” He shrugged. “It’s annoying. Where were these movies when I was in high school about two-thousand-one?”
They shared a laugh and he left the dollar store. It raised his spirit to feel reassured he wasn’t alone. Entering the video and game store, he looked through the Blu-ray section. He came across a copy of the nineteen eighty-one Capacitor movie. They’d made a crappy sequel in two-thousand-five, and hinted at a Furious Thunder reboot, but he always enjoyed the original. He hadn’t seen it in years or had this updated disc, so he bought it to give himself a reason to have come.
He started the car and set his bag in the passenger seat. Flipping the radio on, a news story talking about lights in the sky over various parts of the world, and what the experts had to say about such things. Even though it might have been interesting, he set his radio to Bluetooth and played music from his smartphone. Pressing the emergency brake off, he shifted into drive and left the parking lot. The highway back to southern Illinois signaled his experiment had failed and he had to return home. Miles of highway passed once again. Nothing much out of the ordinary appeared until he got about halfway home.
Pulling the car over to the shoulder, he stared at the sky, both awed and weirded out. Streaks of color, vaguely reminiscent of aurora borealis made streaks across the evening blue. However, these were off-colored. Various pinks, oranges, and silvers streaked in with the green and red. It undulated in the sky like some cosmic worm wriggling. Eager, he checked his mirrors and got out. He clicked his phone’s camera app and pointed it at the sky. The image quality wasn’t fantastic, but he wanted to keep a record of this. Some ten minutes later, it faded, and he got back in his car. Since others were stopping and staring, he took his opportunity and left.
Returning home, he uploaded the photo to his laptop and watched videos on the internet. He opened his bought movies and made sure they worked. After ten minutes, he checked the clock. Work the next morning would be a pain in the ass, so he decided to check in for the night. He set his phone’s alarm clock and changed into his pajamas. The usual evening routine came next: brush teeth, change into pajamas, swallow some pain medication since his feet hurt. Once the ibuprofen kicked in, his mind slipped away into dreams.
The alarm interrupted his dream of driving through a vague pseudo-city consisting of several places he had been to, while fleeing some nondescript sense of dread. Waking up was an exercise in lifting himself to a sitting position and waiting for his sense of balance to kick in. Shaking his head to clear it, he stood up and stumbled a few steps before righting himself and walking to the bathroom. The routine became second nature: brush teeth, do business, shower. He had a half hour or so before he had to be there, so he made himself a few sandwiches for breakfast along with some coffee. He took a hit of his inhaler and dressed himself before heading out the door.
The drive to the warehouse reminded him how much he hated it. His work was a decent paying job; it didn’t, however, mean he enjoyed it. The man at the door scanned his ID badge and he walked over to the counter to be assigned. The woman, a middle-aged smoking victim, regarded him with the same deadpan expression everyone got. The number he got was thirty-three with a ‘C,’ and that meant he would be on shampoo duty. If there existed a better demonstration of how to reduce a man to a robot than the next five hours, he would have loved to see it. His task consisted of taking finished shampoo two-packs, placing them in a cardboard box in their slot, sealing the box in plastic when full, and placing it on a palate for a forklift to retrieve when the palate filled. Other than a single fifteen-minute break, he did nothing else. When the lunch break came, he got in his car and drove to the truck stop across the road and bought a sandwich from the refrigerator along with a generic diet soda. After that, he went back to work and another five hours passed by.
His knees and back ached, and his hands hurt, so when finished he popped two naproxen sodium and finished the last of his green diet soda. It was painful, but at least he was lucky. Some of the other warehouse companies that hired paid only minimum wage. Then again, he rationalized, most of them were staffed by stoners and ex-convicts. On the way home, he stopped by the video rental kiosk and chose some arthouse film one of his friends had recommended. It wasn’t normally the kind of film he watched, but it would be a welcome waste of time. The sun was still up and yet, he wanted nothing more than to plop into his chair and leave the day behind. It bothered him some of his friends worked as much as possible. Other than keeping the house clean—which was the responsibility of everyone with a home—these people exercised for three, sometimes four hours a day, and this is after an eight to ten-hour work shift, and then chores. Maybe by the time they were done, they’d have two, maybe two and a half hours to just relax and do nothing before going to bed at eight-thirty, nine at the absolute latest. His shift started at five-thirty, and he finished at three-thirty. He worked forty hours a week, his default four-day schedule. His arms and back often ached, but damn it, every weekend was three days, he made enough money to pay the bills on a house his parents left him, and that mattered most. Furthermore, if he skipped a few meals here and there, he could save enough money to buy something big. Five years ago, he’d skipped enough meals to buy a two-thousand, five-hundred-dollar gaming laptop. It kicked as much ass as he could hope for. Maybe next year, he would start saving for a new one.
The movie was ok, not exceptional, but he was glad anyway, because it being Thursday, he wouldn’t have to be back at the warehouse until Monday. He pulled out his PC controller and plugged it into his laptop. He decided to play Inindo: Way of the Ninja, a role-playing game from nineteen ninety-three. A relatively obscure game, he’d rented it once as a kid from Blockbuster Video and enjoyed it so much he played it completely at least once a year. It wasn’t particularly breathtaking, but it was a fun way to pass the time. Noticing the clock on the wall was nine P.M., he saved, put his laptop into hibernation, and stretched his limbs. The night was calling and he didn’t want to stay up too late. Just not having to awake at four the next morning felt great. When he turned in the direction of his bookshelf, he saw the book occupying the top slot—volume one of the 2004 run of Capacitor in Furious Thunder Comics. Opening the graphic novel, he remembered the familiar opening. The heroine, Michelle Delanter, with her trademark red hair, reminiscent of the setting sun, flapping in the wind, stood poised to save lives. Her figure, not quite as anorexic as the new run, had the super-skinny frame of a waif model, which, absolutely did not mesh with her powerful expression. He’d been entering college during the original run of these issues, and they were always a fun time. Hard to believe, it had been more than ten long years since then.
Replacing the book, he felt a mild static shock. It annoyed him, and he started towards the bathroom when he felt a mild burning sensation wash over him. He pulled his shirt off, having stripped down to his underwear. Furiously he slapped his hands on his torso, trying to locate if something was injured or in some way damaged. A few seconds passed with the feeling increasing before fading entirely. His head felt slightly dizzy and then became normal again. “What…” he uttered. Before he had a chance to finish the thought, he felt a yanking, a pulling. It came from his abdomen. In a scene of utter impossibility, he looked down to the source of the feeling, and saw—as he continued to feel—his large bulbous fat gut drawing in. His entire torso shrank before his very eyes. “No, oonooo!” Trapped in a panicked thought, that he was shriveling up into a corpse somehow, he grabbed and pinched at skin, pulling and yanking, trying desperately to fight it. After a few moments, there wasn’t enough fat left to grab handfuls of. He gasped and panted, wide-eyed at how small his torso had become. Now the pulling came over his limbs. From his waist to feet, and shoulder to fingertip, his flesh tightened and retreated. Coarse hair disappeared, scant, fair body hair appeared in its place. His mallet-like hand with stubby sausage fingers turned into a dainty palm with slender pianist digits extending from them. Legs became thin, smooth, with only faint hair that wasn’t too noticeable. Giant fat feet shrank several shoe sizes. Finally, a twinge travelled up his chest and to the top of his head. His saggy man-breasts became recognizable ‘B-cup’ women’s breasts. Hair grazed his shoulders. “Yeep!” he shouted, tugging at the intrusion, only to see the reddish hair attached to his own head. The voice registered clearly in an adult woman’s range. He stumbled to the bathroom mirror and stared.
Twenty-year-old, redheaded, superhero, fictional character, Michelle Delanter, or, an incredible facsimile, stared back at him. He shook his head, slamming his eyes shut. No. This is impossible. He had spent years of his life thinking skeptically. It was the reason he’d left religion behind. No, what happened was, he’d gone insane. This was a hell of a hallucination; he hadn’t even had a history of mental illness. Sure, when he was ten, he had a phase where he wanted everyone to call him Batman, but even then, he knew he wasn’t turned into an imaginary character. He ran his hands over his face. The red-headed woman—who, now that he thought about it, had no reason to be a fictional character—rubbed her face the same way. He felt up and down the body, and sure enough, the hands in the mirror moved as well. He took a deep breath and let it go; this was an amazing degree of insanity. He’d really flipped. Not only had he somehow developed a separate personality, but the hallucination was so good, he couldn’t think his way out of it.
A thought occurred to him. Had he been this red-haired woman all along? He fumbled through his wallet. His driver’s license was the same as it was that morning. Manfred Voren, Illinois Driver’s License, five foot nine, two hundred eighty pounds. He took a selfie, making sure to only photograph from the neck up, and sent it to a friend of his. “What do you see here?” he included with the text.
Ten seconds later, his friend Jake responded. “Cute girl,” he said. “Nice hair. She your new girlfriend?”
“She’s a friend,” he replied. He set the phone aside. He sat down on the toilet lid. Either he hallucinated the text, he figured, or else Jake had really seen the girl. That wasn’t evidence enough, he knew, but it was a good start. He honestly expected, had he simply gone crazy, for Jake to say something about why Manny would send a photo of himself. Still, he couldn’t trust his own mind. This wasn’t possible. He had a mountain of evidence to suggest he had spent thirty-one years as Manfred Voren. Thinking about it, he’d never so much as seen a single redhead, anywhere in his life that looked like her.
He sent the photo to his perverted friend John. “Would you do her?”
“Sure, I would,” he replied moments later. “Who’s she?”
“Someone I had a pleasant conversation with earlier,” Manny texted. “Has anyone like her ever been around us before?”
“No, dude, I wish,” John replied. “Don’t miss the opportunity on this one.”
He set the phone down. Now he had more evidence. Still not enough to positively rule out his insanity, but two separate friends acknowledged that the photo he remembered taking a minute before was both not him, and not someone they’d seen before. Either he was insane enough to have hallucinated: transforming, taking a photo of the result, as well as his friends reactions, or something absolutely not possible was actually happening. He still didn’t want to accept what had never happened before in human history. He slapped himself to see if he was dreaming; he wasn’t.
He stood in front of the mirror. In his mind, he could see an image of himself as this woman. He focused hard on the image. He imagined it turning back into him. Nothing happened. After a few minutes, he closed his eyes and saw the image even clearer. He did it again, and still nothing. He imagined both images side by side—himself, as he was before, and her. Nothing happened, except this time, he felt a presence in the back of his head. Not like a person or spirit, but as if a switch or lever had magically appeared in his brain. Obviously, it didn’t have a literal appearance of such a device, or any appearance at all, but he noticed it only when he summoned both images side by side. With thoughts, he manipulated it, imagined it changing. Once more, nothing happened. Almost a half hour passed with nothing changing.
Opening his eyes, he stared once more at the red-haired woman he’d become. If this didn’t change, if he couldn’t change back, he’d have a lot of hell to deal with. Sooner or later, he figured he’d wake up in a nuthouse or a courthouse, having done something like beating a guy to death because he hallucinated the devil in him or some crap like that. Or, if the absurd turned out to be true, he would have no identifying papers as this woman, and no history whatsoever. He’d have no solutions. If he somehow overcame these problems, he’d be spending the rest of his life as this woman. Could he really commit to that? Could he really pull the trigger?
Oh my god, he thought.
It was a trigger!
He coughed to calm himself. Okay, he rationalized. Let’s assume what, again, I know to be impossible, is really happening. Let’s say I’m somehow turning into a woman and back again, his mind fired. Wouldn’t it be damn inconvenient should, say, a random thought morph you in the middle of a crowded room? He was the kind of guy to imagine spiders crawling on the walls at random. He’d hate to have the kind of power to do that. So, he guessed, should there be a fail-safe, to guarantee that no random imagining of himself would cause the change to occur? He focused on the twinge in his head, the feeling the…whatever the hell it was. He imagined her morphing straight back into him. This time, he didn’t imagine himself manipulating the…well, hell, he just decided to call it the Trigger. He committed. He decided, firmly and completely, yes, he wanted to be fat, almost thirty, underpaid and overworked, Illinois native Manfred Voren. He felt the Trigger change to a different state.
Like a bad CGI film, his body morphed back into Manfred Voren. The entire process took eleven seconds. His fingers were fat again, his gut stuck out again, and his penis and testicles had returned, along with his ungainly body hair. He could have cheered when he became normal again. He had never been so glad to be overweight.
And then, his curiosity got the better of him. Oh hell, he realized. He couldn’t let it go. He stepped on the scale, and it read two seventy-nine. Hey, he realized, he’d lost two pounds from the month before. In his mind, he imagined the woman again. He pulled the Trigger by committing to the transformation. Hey, as far as insane ideas went, it was convenient, the equivalent of an “are you sure” before deleting the file from the hard drive. It snapped into its previous state, and the change happened again. This time, the burning was replaced by a tingling, almost like the cold mixed with electric prickling around fur rugs. He stared in bewilderment as the scale plummeted to one hundred and thirty-seven pounds. Wow, not just impossible, he thought, but ultra super-duper impossible, violating the Law of Conservation of Mass impossible. He reversed the transformation and the scale climbed again.
He decided to go to bed. This insanity could wait until the morning. With thoughts raging on his mind, it took quite a while, but he managed to slip off to dream.
The sun’s light peering in through the window and shining in his face woke him up. He rubbed his belly and face. He was still Manny and still fat. How much of what happened the night before had been real? He yawned and stretched. Stumbling to the bathroom, he splashed water on his face. Mental images of himself turning into the woman from the night before returned, and with it, a familiar presence. He pulled the Trigger once again. Eleven seconds later, the red-haired woman stared back at him in the mirror, blinking when he blinked. The possibility that this was a hallucination hadn’t diminished much. Much of what he saw continued to be impossible per all the scientific evidence he knew. He had two pieces of evidence he couldn’t necessarily trust because he could have hallucinated them as well. A decision entered his mind. Since what was going on didn’t appear to be harmful or destructive yet, one of the easiest ways to prove it real would be to do things that it would be utterly impossible for a hallucination to deliver. To get there, he had to know if he had been turned into Capacitor, or just a red-haired woman.
Based on his current supermodel-thin build, it would be utterly impossible for an ordinary woman with red hair to lift a refrigerator. He knelt in front of it, and wrapped his arms around the large metal rectangular prism. He bent his womanly legs and expected his back to scream at him. Instead, he felt weight resistance on par with lifting a beach ball. At fully standing height, he yelped and immediately had to avoid three problems at once: hitting it on the ceiling, dropping it, or banging it into the wall. It felt like carrying a bag of groceries. So, not just an ordinary red-haired woman, he thought, but actually The Capacitor. Gingerly, he set down the fridge. Got it.
He walked around the house a bit, curious as to how many of her powers he had in this form. If this were really happening, he took mental note, he’d already demonstrated strength. She had several more. He stared all around, trying to activate her see-through vision. What the writers had made sure to do, he remembered from the comics, was not to give her x-ray vision. Her vision was a form of psychic remote viewing, since they didn’t want to imply her eyes gave off harmful ionizing radiation. After long minutes of trying, he found wanting to see further caused layers to become transparent, allowing him to see behind and beyond them. With effort, he gained another small, possibly unreliable, piece of evidence that this wasn’t a hallucination. One layer at a time, he saw past the wall of his house, past the walls of the neighbor across the street’s house, and into the books on a shelf perpendicular to his vision in one of their rooms. One book, he had never once read, The Old Man and The Sea by Hemingway, he saw the cover, then the first page. The next page was backwards, obviously, when the first page became invisible as he saw past it. Exercising his will, his vision returned to himself, having remembered the text of the page as best he could.
He downloaded a digital version of the book and read the first page. The text matched what he saw. Alright, I couldn’t have made that up, he realized. Unless somehow, he had read the book somehow and forgot that he read it while still remembering the text, which struck him as unlikely. He still couldn’t rule it out, but now, more evidence mounted. The best evidence, he figured, would be to act as though it were real and see how far it went. Certainly, real life broke down all barriers and the truth eventually came out. If he ventured out into the world, and this was a hallucination, it would come crashing down, wouldn’t it? Sure, it could be disastrous, but if he had the insanity to hallucinate to this degree, what could he trust? It also meant, the farthest and most unlikely scenario could be true. Something impossible could truly be happening, and the implications, he scarcely wanted to contemplate, for the whole universe was involved.
Turning back into himself, he decided to push it. He transformed parts of his body into hers. Individual feet at first, then hands. He could even transfer much of his body fat to her form. This seemed practical, as it meant his clothes would fit her, but at the same time, it bothered him. He thought about it. Ultimately, he shook it off in favor of more pressing matters. Her being fat allowed him to put his clothes on and head outside to do some work. Grabbing the car keys, he headed for the park near Wood River, Illinois. There, he could find a quiet corner of the large open park and practice.
The wooded areas had quite a few places off the beaten path where people hardly went. In a cluster of trees, he stood, focusing on what he knew. Alright, he thought, one of the most basic abilities she had was flight. She could, in the comics, fly incredibly fast. He focused on his presence and imagined himself moving. At first, just as he expected, nothing happened. Practice made perfect. It was just like riding a bike.
After twenty boring minutes of trying different mental techniques, he focused on deciding to levitate upwards. Leaves blew away from him in a circle, as if he had a propeller blowing. His feet left the ground by an inch. I’m getting it! He thought. Then he fell backwards onto his butt. He stood, brushed himself off. Fly, already, he mentally commanded. Upwards! Fly!
As though fired from a cannon he shot up. Uncontrolled at first, he slammed into a tree face first, having surprisingly tested his durability and upon issuing a mental yell of “stop!” he came crashing down with a thump. The thought occurred to him that direction and speed may not be the same mental process. He indicated the direction of up, and decided. Simultaneously, he indicated a speed of slightly above gravity and committed. Like a balloon, he levitated to the height of the tree. At the top, he changed his speed to exactly the speed of gravity. He came to a dead stop and floated alongside the treetop. Left, he focused and thought. Slow. He hovered in the direction of the next tree. What surprised him was that he continued facing the original direction as he moved sideways. He had to turn his body midair to face the direction he moved; it wasn’t automatic. Touching the tree, he stopped and lowered himself. Finesse and fine control would have to wait. He had other powers to practice. What surprised him was that flight worked much like the “trigger” that activated his power: he had to mentally force it so a random thought couldn’t interrupt it.
Sensory powers were her next major task. Sure, he knew, he’d tested her sight, but now, he had hearing to test. This was easy to activate. Unfortunately, it was hard to focus. A thunderstorm erupted in his head. He heard everything from nearby cars starting all the way down to the footfall of a squirrel. Drowning out everything except people’s conversations proved hard. It wasn’t like the comics at all. Sure, with effort, he could hear what they were saying separately by paying attention to it, but just like regular hearing, everything else mixed in.
Ironically, the easiest powers to learn were what he expected to be the hardest. Energy projection, which in the comics, manifested as her being able to emit laser-like beams from her hands and directly in front of her eyes, wasn’t hard at all. He thought of the type of energy to be fired. In this case, a powerful beam of laser light. He pointed at a log. Making the decision, the tip of his finger glowed red and a dot appeared on the log, slowly burning. He decided to increase power. The light turned from red to blue, and it ate through the log in seconds. Once stopped focusing, it vanished. The other, super speed, almost felt like turning a knob. He found the world frozen around him as he focused on it. The only disorienting part was movement. He found he could see and process all the information around him, even though he felt the tremendous speed at which he ran. The logical problem was that his clothes didn’t rip off. The only answer he could come up with was that the invulnerability extended somewhat during running.
He shifted back into his normal male form. Within twenty minutes of testing individual body parts, he found he needed to transform his brain into hers to have any abilities at all. Furthermore, he found he needed at least half his internal organs to be changed to have strength or flight, but sensory powers only required his eyes and ears to change. After a few minutes of testing his sensory powers in his normal form, he realized, it bothered him somehow. It didn’t feel right to him to use powers in his male form. He pondered it a few moments, but shook his head. He had other work to do. Namely, the thing he wanted to do was, in fiction, usually the first thing the hero learned not to do. He’d read enough comics and manga to learn that one of the very first lessons a protagonist learned was not to use their powers for self-interest. It was wrong. To an extent, he knew why it was wrong. But as someone who worked ten-hour days, for less than fifteen dollars an hour, he didn’t care.

Multiple Instances of a Cousin being an EB (and other things)

SHOT 2017/My tales of adventure in Las Vegas

So, you wanna go to SHOT show? You think it's all fun and games? Get to play with guns? See Jesse James and R. Lee Ermey? SHOT show is the annual pilgrimage of the unwashed masses to Las Vegas to rub elbows with youtube celebrities, bloggers and overseas businessmen copying US made equipment and share infectious disease.
If you love guns, gambling and gonorrhea - SHOT show is for you! It is not my typical idea of a good time. I am not a big fan of Las Vegas.
However: I do attend for a few reasons. First, I do enjoy travel and I'm platinum on AA so I can usually score an upgrade. Second, industry people are in there that I do hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars with business with so it's nice to put a face with the name and see what deals are out there. SHOT for me has been a bust for the past few years. Being a value guy, I want to buy at $1000 and sell at $3000 and as of recently the gun business is more like buy for $1 and sell for $1.10 if you get what I mean.
We used to do business at SHOT and now it's just checking in on foursquare, instagram and rubbing elbows with bloggers and the like. I want to make money, not spend money so this is very annoying to me.
Anyways, onto the play by play.
Monday, January 16th. One day before SHOT show.
http://imgur.com/a/HoFUm
Every time I've been rejected by a woman, I move $1 from checking into savings and I take the bankroll down to the Wynn for some play. Lets do this.
The TSA line is a shitshow thanks to, well TSA.
I slog my way to the lounge, as shitty as it is to wait for my winged chariot to DFW. I have gone from being in an abusive relationship with Delta to being in an abusive relationship with AA. Although if you really want to experience the battered spouse feeling, UA is a few gates over. This trip's light reading is trying to finish "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell. Such a good book as well as "Outliers" if you want a good read.
I walk up to the podium to find out that my upgrades do not clear, even as an AA Plat thanks to the addition of a FOURTH elite tier. Goddamn fucking W. Doug Parker. Asshole. I gate check my bags to make life easier for me and the rest of the folks. The gate agent calls concierge key and executive platinum passengers. I look down and realize I'm wearing a suit and board with the executive platinum folks because I do not care and I look the part. If you walk with a purpose and are dressed reasonably well, you fit the profile. I settle into my window seat and try to finish outliers. I pass out before takeoff and I'm awoken by the dulcet tones of the flight attendants preparing for landing. We land at Dallas a few minutes early and I hightail it to the Centurion for a quick bite to eat. I grab a plate and help myself to some of the excellent brisket, pecan encrusted chicken and some roasted jumbo asparagus. Yes, my pee is going to smell funny. No, I do not care. The lounge is packed. The bar is full and I grab a quick single malt as I have my meal since American's not going to feed me. They begin boarding to Mccarran as I walk out of the lounge. No time for a stop in the spa on this trip. I make it to the gate just as the call group 2 boarding.
I bypass the main line and walk up through the priority line giving no heed to the people that have been waiting there before me as I hold up my paper boarding pass with PLATINUM to the gate agent. I board and take my usual seat - the exit row without the seat in front of it. I'm aghast to see this sight.
http://imgur.com/a/dygil
The savages. Literally. The savages.
I put my loathing away for a moment and look down at the exit row. I have the window. The aisle is a large middle aged man and in the middle is what I believe to be a formecurrent linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys wearing a 52 regular sports jacket. He's not a fat guy in a little coat, he's a big fucking hulk of a man stuffed in an exit row seat that is already an inch narrower due to the tray table. I grimace as I take my seat and give him the manly nod. He does not look happy about the fact that his knees are in the seat in front and I'm stretched out like a Cheshire cat in front of a fireplace on a cold January afternoon.
The boarding door closes for an on time departure and Stephanie the FA takes her seat. He leans over and asks if he can take the empty row across the aisle and she takes one look at the three of us and gives him the nod. I bail out to give him a path of egress and suddenly the trip to Las Vegas has just become way more comfortable. I finish The Tipping Point somewhere over west texas, so I pop a xanax and dr pepper and zone out for the rest of the ride. I awake to feel one of the FA's jostling me awake telling me to put my seat up. I do so and we have a ride so smooth that not even the Delta guy behind me can complain about light chop. We catch the TYSSN4 arrival and the next thing I know it the Messier Dowty landing gear of the A321 touch the paint at Mccarran for a smooth rollout down 25L.
My phone battery is approaching grim death since this seat has no power plugs and I find bartman383 has sent me a message. He has been enjoying LV with his wife and their due to bad weather they are in the city of sin for a few extra nights. He invites me to dinner. I'm still pretty full from DFW and I tell him I'll be over there once I get my bags and the car and I'll see him when I see him. He gives me the info for the hotel as we pull up to the gate.
First stop: Centurion lounge. AA's app tells me bags being unloaded. I grab a quick bite of fried chicken and brussels sprouts since they are good for you and a chocolate pudding. The brisket and pecan encrusted chicken from DFW still has me full but I'm well aware of the speed of a union baggage handlers nowadays and who doesn't like chocolate pudding? Terrorists. That's who. Want to know how to screen for terrorists TSA? Set up a table of free chocolate pudding at the airport. The people who don't take any are members of ISIS. It's just that simple.
I grab my bag and hoof it to Hertz. I'm an idiot and I am an hour late for my pickup. Oops. Will an Audi A3 suffice? I sigh and I accept my Teutonic quattro chariot. I do a burnout in the parking garage and hightail it to the exit. I flash my #1 card and my ID and the gatekeeper gives me the go ahead. I get onto the the strip and traffic is awful. I'm going to be late for dinner. I make a left onto Russell Road and hightail it up the 15. I manage to get the car up to 100 as I pass the Luxor. My phone is dead so I can't message Bart about being late. Fuck. The exit approaches quickly as I put the 4 wheel disk brakes to work and sling the car around and head south on Las Vegas Bl. I accidentally turn into the Bellagio and I'm now running even more late. Fuck. Eventually, I get the car into the garage at the Cosmopolitan and head upstairs. I cannot remember the name of the restaurant but I head up to the third floor where all the restaurants are and I see this sign that's reminiscent of my days in retail.
It says RESTAURANT - LOUNGE - PAWN SHOP.
I laugh. I walk in. It's literally a pawnshop. I look around puzzled.
FC: Is this a restaurant?
Bald Headed Guy: Yes, through that door.
He points towards a door. I walk in to find a bustling restaurant, lounge via the entrance of pawnshop. This is insane. I pass a mirror and check myself out. I adjust my tie, after all it is YSL and the ladies LOVE YSL. Remember that. I find the hostess and inform her I will be joining some friends for dinner. They probably do not have me on the reservation though but I turn on the charm and she smiles and says no problem at all. She asks if my tie is from Hermes. I say no, I'm a YSL guy. She looks impressed as I tell her I'll make a quick lap of the room to see if they're there and surprise them. She gives me a nod and tells me to go right ahead. Still got it.
I spot bart and his wife who I can only remember vaguely from gunnitlive after party video and I pull up a chair. Bart is surprised to see I made it and they are in the middle of dinner. They offer to ply me with food and beverage but I decline as I'm driving so no booze for me and no food since I am stuffed from Dallas. We chat about life and liberty over libations. Bart's wife thinks I am hysterical. She's had a few drinks and they are already into their main courses. The brussels sprouts are way too salty and we have to send it back. No bueno.
Bart invites me up to his suite on the top floor of the hotel where we are to meet Brogelicious later in the evening. I say, when in rome......we head to the top floor of the hotel tower where Bart shows me his view from the balcony and cracks open the mini bar for some more libations. He asks if I want a drink and I say I better not. I'm driving.
Not 30 seconds after arriving, brogel shows up. Bart's wife hugs brogel. She's infatuated with him. We start shooting the shit and bart opens up the minibar and tells us to take anything we want, it's on the hotel. I laugh and I look outside as bart opens his yeti 110 for some silver bullets. Apparently he is so baller the hotel will send up a yeti 110 filled with beer to make him happy. His wife is apparently such a baller. I ball on a budget. They just ball. Hahaha.
We shoot the shit some more about guns, gun stuff and people on the reddit for a while. I get a little thirsty and I crack open bart's cooler. I ask him how long the stuff in the cooler is supposed to last and he says until Wednesday.
I look down and I am agape at what I see.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.
I mentally prepared my butthole and I decided to help myself to a coors light against my wishes but Bart, Bart's wife and Brogel are all drinking so I let peer pressure take hold as I cracked open a beer with them. We head out to the balcony to smoke some cuban cigars together as bart's wife takes a photo of all of us. We all look like hell. Haha.
As bart downs his second beer, he asks me a question.
Bart: ever go hunting?
Me: Ducks a little bit but not much
Bart: ever want to hunt some deadly game?
Me: Like on african safari?
Bart: No, I mean like.........man.
Me: Hahahahhahaaha you're just fucking with me. Hahahahahhaa. That's really funny.
Bart: No really, the concierge here at this hotel will set it up for us. It's amazing. I remember my first hunt......
Brogel starts laughing and I realize they've been doing a bit. I've been had.
We bullshit about SHOT and Barrett's shotguns and other things and next thing I know, it's late but bart hands me a mixed drink. I sip it a bit and I was in the middle of a tirade complaining about my customers. Suddenly, there was a terrible roar all around us, and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the city, and a voice was screaming: Holy Jesus. What are these goddamn animals? Nobody seems to understand what I'm talking about. It's cold on the balcony. Our cigars are done. We head indoors. No point in mentioning these bats, I thought. Poor bastards will see them soon enough.
Back indoors I realize Brussels sprouts and coors light is a bad choice. Seriously no bueno. I excuse myself to the bathroom and drain the vein. The asparagus funny smelling pee and the side effects of beer and brussels sprouts is a noxious combination that a defense contractor should weaponize it. It's pretty bad and not even cuban tobbaco can mask the smell.
I sit back down and continue to talk about guns and stuff with bart and the gang and bart asks who ruined the bathroom. I apologize as he sprays a bunch of febreze around and opens the balcony. I apolgize to brogel. He is not accepting my apology. (sorry :( )
Nearly 11, it's about time to pull chocks and mosey on down the dusty trail. I don't want to prompt an evacuation of the hotel due to noxious odors so I decide to leave and bart seems to be kinda mad that I've ripped ass and polluted the sanctuary of his hotel. Half a coors light and brussels sprouts are no bueno in my book now. Bart decides to party hard with his wife and I offer brogel a ride home. He seems skeptical to share a confined space with me after I have just destroyed bart's hotel room. The car has 4 windows and the Uber will cost him a few bucks he can put towards ammo. He relents as we head down to the garage to find my car. Thankfully we find it quickly and I manage to contain the weapons of ass destruction for the 16 minute ride off strip to casa de brogel.
He says I'm not that bad a dude and I agree as I hightail it to my hotel. I cannot find my hotel reservations so I call my travel agent to see.
Apparently the Wynn was not in my travel budget this year. I have come to find out I have been booked at Circus Circus, much to my chagrin. How bad could it be? I've stayed at the Wynn. I've stayed at Encore. I've stayed at the hotel that Elisabeth Shue's character got raped in in Leaving Las Vegas - but Circus Circus? Did I mention that I HATE CLOWNS? I HATE CLOWNS. Fuck.
I pull into the parking garage and the check in line resembles something straight out of the TSA line at Mccarran. 45 minutes to check in. The clerk is friendly and says he's also from Louisiana which is neat. He asks if I've stayed there before and I, being a connoisseur of old vegas history I decide to make a joke and I tell him the last time I was there, Jay Sarno owned the place. He got a laugh. I head up to my room and unpack. The lobby is clean as an old vegas casino can be, the room is clean and there's no way to plug anything in since the hotel predates personal electronic devices. I plug my phone into my external battery and collapse on the bed. I message Bart and chugbleach instead of falling asleep about show tomorrow and I offer to pick bart up early since there is no shuttle from the cosmo.
Tuesday, November 16th SHOT Show Day One
I awoke several hours later in a daze......the clock said 10AM. The show opened at 8:30. Fuck me to tears. I hurry up and get dressed and down to the sands convention center. The parking lot is FULL. The entire complex is a mess. When my man Steve Wynn built his joint he didn't build enough parking. So people would park at the Venetian and now FUCKING NOBODY CAN GET A PARKING SPACE. Holy shit. I eventually say fuck it and park over at the Wynn and walk over to the Sands. I meet up with a few of my regular suppliers and I see nothing interesting at all. Bart went to bed at 6AM after spending all night partying with his wife over at the palazzo. I joke and say that he just should have stayed there. Bart is amazed at the size of the show and we have lunch at the most disgusting place in las vegas - the convention center bistro snack bar. Bart is a wise man as he grabs a powerade and a fruit cup. I decide to try an "italian beef" and a fruit cup instead of fries to stay semi health conscious. The "italian beef" is the most disgusting thing I have ever eaten. It is flat out depressing. They give me fries with it and I demand a fruit cup. The sassy black woman working the stand asks me "DID YOU ASK FOR FRUIT? CAUSE RIGHT HERE SAYS FRIES" and I channel my inner Louis CK from the "this is how I talk" bit from SNL as I shoot back "WHY YOU FRONTIN ON ME I ASKED FOR FRUIT AND YOUR ASS BETTER BACK UP AND GET ME SOME FRUIT" so she goes back and gets me some fruit.
The "italian beef", my fruit cup, bart's fruit cup and powerade comes to $81. My platinum amex comes out and I treat bart to "lunch". We bullshit about guns and stuff in the Springfield booth as we wait at the world's worst concession stand. We eat and Bart is so hungover that he thinks he is in need of physical therapy and a wheelchair. There is no way he is going to party tonight before his trip home. Or so I think. Haha.
I meander around the show a bit more and I find this, the most USELESS PRODUCT OF 2017. It's made by a company called radetec.
http://imgur.com/a/GOiCB
It's a shot counter. For your gun.
A digital odometer, for your gun.
The only person that would buy this is the guy like my dad that kept a spiral bound notebook in his car where he documented how many miles he traveled per tank, gallons dispensed, PRICE, service station and whether they had a different price for cash/charge, oil consumption, tire rotations, alignments, all services - scheduled or otherwise, and a running odometer. Does anyone know the gun owner who asks for a round count when they are looking at a used gun? The question I always shoot back is "do you want to be lied at a little or do you want to be lied at a lot?" because that's what you're asking for when you ask for round count.
UNLESS YOU BUY THIS PRODUCT!
I roll my eyes so far back into my head that I nearly lose my balance. This is idiotic. I cannot fathom anyone willing to buy this. What a waste of perfectly good exhibition space.
Bart heads back to his hotel after visiting SHOT show for a few hours, not getting any swag and to get an IV of fluids since he looked like he was rapidly approaching grim death.
I wrap up visiting prime vendors and checking out the new products, or lack thereof because I have something on the schedule. At 4:30 there's a suicide prevention for retailers seminar hosted by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. As many of you know this is an issue that is important to me and perhaps we as retailers should be doing more. The keynote was from their chief medical director talking about the accessibility of firearms and the mindset of the "typical" suicide. Mostly men. If you are a veteran you are at a significantly larger risk. The information was presented very not surprisingly and one of the things discussed was that we only spend around 21M a year on suicide prevention.
A few take away facts from the keynote:
When suicide barriers are put up on a bridge, suicide rates for the entire area drop. The key to preventing suicide is getting people to talk about their problems. Once you can get someone out of that mindset, they are statistically less likely to do it and live productive lives afterwards. There are certain terms that they are trying to get away from - for instance, they are not saying "committed suicide" they are now saying "died by suicide" in order to bring awareness and tell it like it is.
One thing that really was interesting to me was my reading on the flight in from Dallas. In The Tipping Point, Gladwell discusses how things stay the same and suddenly they all change. One of the things that he discusses is in micronesia - where teen suicide was practically unheard of became an outright epidemic. One teenager did it, for reasons passing understanding to me as an outsider and then all the other kids realized that they too could escape their pain by hanging themselves as well and suddenly the suicide rates in micronesia became so high to where it became a public health issue. I wish I could show you all the article I wrote on TTAG about my friend's death but it has been lost in the cloud and I am unable to find the last draft I sent to print, but it echoes some of the problems we have with suicide and mental health in the firearm industry.
After the keynote, the good doctor opened the floor up for questions. Her keynote posed a lot of statistics but not a lot of answers. I am a detail oriented granular data guy and I did not get a solid grasp of the AFSP solutions posed, if any.
Several firearm dealers discussed the lack of a cohesive solution and the takeaway was they're trying to develop awareness for the suicide problem. Their goal is to lower suicide rates but how they get there is yet to be determined. I didn't like hearing that and the comments from the crowd reflected the lack of a "here's what you can do TODAY to help this problem" part of the initiative.
Going around the room, one dealer who used NICS said that if a customer was just flat out acting funny - he'd lie to the customer and say there was a delay with NICS even though there was an approval just to get them to not be able to have a gun for a few days. The crowd applauded this initiative, however I'm not sure lying to customers is the best way to run a business and treat them with respect. Another dealer brought up an interesting point. When someone comes in looking to buy a gun and they don't know what kind of gun they want, what caliber, and are generally clueless - they're either buying a gun to kill themselves with, OR perhaps they are a very uneducated prospective customer - and there is no clear way of finding out which is which.
The problems presented by the AFSP are real. The solutions aren't there though. Yet. Ideally I'd like to see some change to that. However, there's some problems.
I hung around and asked the good doctor and her staff some questions and I am in no way denigrating her life's work and her dedication to preventing suicide since she has dedicated her life's work to the issue, but the conversation went something like this.
Did you do any research on the accessibility of firearms from a retailer from the legal standpoint?
"No, we haven't"
Do you know how the NICS or state POC background systems work in regard to mental health holds, etc?
"No"
One of the problems that I foresee right off the bat is that you talked about how you are fighting time, and if you can get someone out of that suicide mindset - even for a few hours, you can get them into that higher survival bracket. If we apply a one size fits all solution to it like California and put a 10 day wait on everything with the goal of protecting someone from their own life, how do we balance that with the needs of the woman who has been hiding from her abusive spouse and needs a gun right away?
"That's a good question that I don't have an answer for."
Their initiative, I admire - the lack of solutions is a little off putting however. I tell the doc about how my friend's suicide has impacted me and she seems to be sympathetic to the situation as does her colleagues. I am given her cards and told to call the next time I'm in New York so we can get together and discuss things within the industry. I'll give them a buzz in a few weeks when I'm up there on business. On my way out of the hall, I run into Massad Ayoob. Nice guy. I've admired his work over the years. Bart invites myself and chugbleach to dinner, I can't reach Chug and even though I am beat I decide to hang out with Bart and Mrs Bart
Bart: What do you want to eat?
FC: Let's find a nice seafood restaurant and eat some red salmon, I feel a powerful lust for red salmon.
I begin vomiting.
God damn mescaline. Why the fuck can't they make it a little less pure?
We eventually head downstairs and order too much food. We are tired and not very hungry. Bart is still hungover and barely able to process food. His wife is grazing on all sorts of meat products. I am in awe of how they are both still upright after six nonstop nights of partying. I've only been here one day and I feel like I am about to die.
Dinner concludes with an awkward hug with bart's wife - I don't know how other men feel about wife hugs so I have just avoided the prospect entirely. Like flying through Denver on Frontier. Or flying on Frontier. Ever.
I drive over to the Wynn to set up my markers and the poker room is full. I draw a $2500 marker at the craps table and watch the game a bit. I have never played craps before in my life but the three people there seem to be having fun.
I look down at my phone and I realize a plane has landed. fluffy_butternut has landed in Las Vegas on business. I had lost a bet and offered to pick him up from the airport. I cash back in my chips against my casino credit and head back to my car. I cannot find my car. Fuck. I wander the wynn garage which is covered in construction debris. I eventually find it and haul ass to the airport. Now, I didn't know this but fluffy has the WORST SENSE OF DIRECTION AT ALL. Seriously. I have no idea how he even made it to the correct city. He lands and has to get his bag and stuff and I circle the airport. He lets me know he's at door 77 wherever the fuck that was. I drive into the pickup portion and I see no sign. He then says he's coming up a level, and I tell him that I'll be there shortly. I park the car and Metro PD starts yelling.
Metro: You can't park your car here.
FC: Why not? Is this not a reasonable place to park?
Metro: Reasonable? You're on a sidewalk! This is the sidewalk!
I give the man a $20 and tell him to keep it running as I wander Mccarran screaming FLUFFY! HERE FLUFFY! I message fluffy to let him know I am the car parked on the sidewalk. I instantly figure out who he is having never seen a photo of him and I throw his bags into the car as we head for his hotel. I haul ass out of the airport and get the A3 on the highway.
Now this was a superior machine. Thirty nine grand worth of gimmicks and high-priced special effects. The rear windows lit up with a touch like frogs in a dynamite pond. The dashboard was full of esoteric lights and dials and meters that I would never understand.
We check in at the Rio where the desk clerk is friendly and flirty. I express amazement there is no line. Fluffy checks in and we take his bags upstairs and he offers to buy me food for driving him to the airport. I decline. We head to the bar anyways. He orders two beers and we decide to call chug. He's staying out in Summerlin or something because his company is apparently run by cheapskates. He asks if we want to hang out and shoot the shit. I say sure and ask if he wants us to pick up food or anything from CVS or something since I have the car and I'm able to do anything I want. He asks for some toothpaste. No problem. I may be an asshole on the internet but I have a heart of gold. We get some toothpaste get to the hotel.
Arriving at the lobby, we have no idea where he is. It turns out he gave us the address for the hotel across the street. We laugh and go to that lobby and shoot the shit till 3AM much to the chagrin of the hotel clerk. Fluffy has some beers and we plan on dinner the next day. I drive fluffy back and arrive at the hotel at 4. Fuck me to tears.
Wednesday, January 18th. Day 2 of SHOT show.
Alarm goes off at 7:30 AM. I wash up, eat and get breakfast. In the garage by 8:15. Nice. I get some dillo dust and check out the new Sig 220 DA/SA and SAO legions. Daddy likey. I go to a competing firm and I piss of my state sales manager by telling him his newer designed triggers suck ass. He says the company tested them and they're the same in every way. I ask him why the triggers have two different part numbers in the catalog and how come they're not interchangeable and if that's really the case, how come there's X changes in the supposedly identical pistol parts that he's holding side by side. He gets mad at me and says I'm not an expert on their product and perhaps I should take his job since I'm so smart. I agree that I'm smart and I hold firm that if he didn't want me to complain about the shitty trigger, they should stop selling guns with shitty triggers. I am nearly kicked out of the booth.
I meet up with some of my wholesale reps and I'm mid convo when I see Itsgoodsoup and his friend walking around the show. I yell SOUP but he does not hear me. So I grab his friend and find him and I tell him we should get together at dinner with fluffy and chug. He agrees.
The show winds down, I get some business done and nothing much else. We break for a shitty gunnit live lite and I take a few questions from the crowd in fluffy's suite at the Rio. Dinner is at 8 and we arrive at the restaurant late to find soup and his friend sitting at one table and chug and his girlfriend sitting at another. Perhaps we should have gotten here a little earlier. Hahaha. So, fluffy said the place is really good and I order a few of the specialties of the house. Apparently according to yelp they do a kickass peking duck. Soon to be mrs chug is a vegan. But we can eat meat in front of her. I wonder how it's served and Soup's vancouver raised asian friend tells me that they normally carve it tableside. Our vegan says as long as there's no head she's cool. We're not sure if they can fulfill that request. So we order and food starts coming out and we tell tall tales of shot show BS and other stuff. Sure enough, the duck comes out with the head. No bueno. Haha. But I decide to treat us to vegan donuts at the vegan bakery across the street later. Seven courses later we are full. Vegan bakery closed. I am committed to getting her some vegan donuts though. We head to Fremont street to gamble. Fluffy wanders about and we try craps and we're not impressed. We hit some slots and eventually I hit the craps table where chug explains the game to me. We start betting on dice. And somehow we start winning. I find that the house allows you to take 10X behind the line. No idea what this means so I plop $5 on the pass line and the point hits 6. I drop $50 behind it and it hits. We go a few rounds and leave ahead. It's 2:30 AM. Fuck. I drive everyone back to their hotel. I get to sleep around 4.
Thursday, January 19th. Day 3 of SHOT show.
Wake up at 10AM feeling like crap. Debate whether to head straight to show and wander about. Fuck it. Went to halal guys for some halal. Delicious. Got vegan donuts. Dead drop them at the Palazzo lobby for chug and his girl. Show is a bust. Literally nothing exciting. Fluffy offers to buy me dinner. One of my customers who lives in Summerlin offers to take me to dinner. I pass on fluffy and he destroys the seafood buffet at the rio. I head to Sinatra at the Wynn for dinner with my customer. All good in the hood. Chug has been invited to the Glock dinneafter party and I'm not so we all go our separate ways. I call foghorn5950 and due to some weather, he's flying home early and our plans to hangout are fucked up unless I go tonight. I grab fluffy and we head to Whiskey Down. He orders a makers and I give him a funny look. I tell the waitress make it a bulleit. Everyone laughs. I talk shop with Jeremy also from TTAG and we shoot the shit over cigars and talk about useless products. Next thing we know, chug is out of the dinner and wandering the strip. We decide to meet up at the Linq. It takes us nearly 30 minutes to get out of Whiskey Down at MGM because the waitress was awful and messed up everyone's tab. It was a fucking disaster. To boot, MGM is now charging for parking.
FC: What a bunch of fucking jews
Fluff: You should just tailgate that lady in front of you out and screw them out of the $7
FC: I should
We pull behind her and watch as she gets flustered at the awful parking machine. Her nevada license plate says VETERAN. As the gate goes up we haul ass and screw MGM out of $7. I shout "THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE" out the window as we blow right by her up to the Linq. Through fluffy's awful navigation, we wind up at the loading dock for the Linq. Eventually we find chug and gf hanging at the penny slots. They are holding vegan donuts, which she is very appreciative of. Least I could do after showing her the head. Fluffy plays the House of Cards slot machine.
He stuck $100 in, played for 6 minutes and then got really mad and hit the cash out button and $80 was left after 5 minutes.
ITS EXACTLY LIKE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT!
Chug's gf asks to play a special slot machine called kitty glitter. We ask and the linq does not offer it but Harrahs next door does. So we head over there and the slot tech finds the kitty glitter machine. Fluffy sticks a C note in there and tells her to play and have a blast. So she's banging away at the one armed bandit WHEN SUDDENLY I HEAR THE SOUND.
It's PUTTIN ON THE RITZ in shitty .wav file internal speaker format. Hahah. She's just hit the progressive jackpot on the penny KITTY GLITTER machine. THIS PLACE IS AWESOME! We cash out after some play and a good time was had by all. I dump off fluffy at the rio since it was very close and drive everyone else back. It's late, I'm tired and the Palace Station oyster bar is open 24 hours......I head over there and there's a 45 minute wait.
So, I pull out my backup bankroll and using everything chug and fluffy have taught me about craps I belly up to the $3 min table where they let you take 10x behind the line. I'm still learning and the table is slow so one of the boxmen start explaining the game to me.
Box: So if you place the 6 or the 9 or individual numbers you can bet those but you gotta pay a little juice on it like a commission
Me: Like when you buy the hook?
short pause
Box: Yeah! Exactly like that! You got this!
So I played a little and went up a bit and down a bit. As you do. Plunked $5 down on the pass line and took full odds and the point hit. This game is pretty cool! So I hung around and watched for about an hour and finally decided to eat my winnings. I take $5 off my stack and, drop it on the pass line and announce dealer bet - $5 to pass. It hits. The dealers love me.
Maybe Vegas isn't so bad after all.
http://imgur.com/a/LGhDj
I have the pan roast at the oyster bar. No line. It is DELICIOUS. I get back to the hotel at 5AM. I don't care when I wake up.
Friday, January 20th. Day 4 of SHOT show.
Wake up around noon feeling like crap. Go to show. Debate destroying milk cart with wheels with an ax borrowed from fire station. Decide against it. Gas up car and find myself out by palace station again. Played some craps, hit the buffet and went for an early sleep.
It's midnight. The neighbors in my the hotel are having sex. A LOT OF SEX. I can hear everything. I gently knock on the door. No answer. I knock slightly harder. No answer. I head back to my room and close the door just as I hear their door open. I zoom back out to find a puzzled middle aged stocky and perhaps sticky Latino man looking both ways.
I get in his line of sight.
Me: Hey. I'm next door. It sounds like you're having a lot of fun. I get it. I really do. In fact I haven't had sex since the bush administration so I'm gunning for you man I really am. But it's midnight and I have a 6am flight and a rental car to return. So trust me when I say I'm really happy for you but if you don't mind I really need to get some sleep tonight okay?
The awkward silence is deafening. He nods without saying a word and mouths okay. I give him a manly nod and thumbs up.
Me: thanks. I'd shake your hand or fist bump but well you know.....
I give him a peace sign as he goes back into his little pleasure palace and I turn to realize that I have just locked myself out of my room. I am wearing boxers, a tshirt and barefoot. I head downstairs to the lobby. The check in at the front desk resembles the TSA line at Mccarran. Normally I would not be this rude but desperate times call for desperate measures.
The line is 50 people deep. I walk past every person. Fuck your queue. I approach the desk where someone is helping a guest and I raise my right hand as if I were in a deposition to get them to stop. The staff and guest looks puzzled as the angry barefoot man clad in nothing but boxers and a "uzi does it" tshirt approaches the desk.
Me: excuse me. I don't mean to interrupt. I have an emergency. I'm up on 8 and my neighbors are having a lot of sex. I mean a LOT of sex.
(This is the same front desk clerk who actually checked me in Monday night by coincidence looks back at me very awkwardly and puzzled.)
Me: this isn't your regular sex. I'm talking this is your (I begin air humping the front desk and slapping the granite counter with my palm and grunting loudly) sex. You could hear the plan B packaging open.
At this point - the ENTIRE FRONT DESK STAFF HAS STOPPED CHECKING IN GUESTS. The people in line and are watching the show. The clerk is stunned. Speechless. Shock and awed. Crapped out and busted. The women are covering their children's eyes and ears. The men are wondering if this show requires a 2 drink minimum.
Me: now I get this is Vegas. Everyone wants a good time. It's midnight. My flight leaves at 6 which means I have to be up by 4. And this just isn't working. So I asked them to keep it down and I locked myself out of my room. So if you can make me another key or move me I'd appreciate it.
The clerk nods.
Clerk: of course. may I see your ID?
Years of ballet have prepared me for this day. I step back to make sure my genitals are still ensconced in my boxers as I pirouette and gesticulate wildly.
Me: DO I LOOK LIKE I HAVE ID?
The floor manager steps over and asks me to head down to the end of the desk where she will make me a key. I give her the room number and thank her after she offers to have security sent up to shutdown the best little whorehouse in Vegas. I tell her it may not be necessary. As I take my keys and walk away the people in line break out in raucous applause.
I take a bow and miraculously my boxer shorts don't rip. These people are my subjects and I have been crowned the the king of the three ring circus that is the circus circus lobby. Im offered a $1 tip from a kind soul but I decline.
My walk back to the hotel elevator bank is uneventful. So much so that I realize it is going too well. The other shoe, if I were wearing one felt as if it was about to drop. Suddenly a dumbass in a rascal scooter is heading toward me at flank speed as his head is turned to look at everyone BEHIND HIM. There's no way this will end well.
For you gentle readers joining us mid conversation - it's midnight and I need to be at the airport in 4.5 hours. I can just see it now. (Cue the harp noises)
Scene: Emergency room
Nurse: Allergic to anything? Me: NKDA Nurse: cause of injury? Me: what's the IC10 code for "run down by drunken buffoon on motorized wheelchair?"
I saw my life and confirmed upgraded first class seats home being given away by the Mccarran gate agent flash before my eyes and my catlike reflexes kicked in and I jumped to my left into the wall, mid 1960's Las Vegas union construction being the path of least resistance. Think "The Bodyguard" with Kevin Costner.
The buffoon barely realizes what happens. Children are amazed. "HEY MOM! Look! That guy just ran into a wall!"
Me: it was that OR GET RUN DOWN BY SOME JACKASS ON A GODDAMN SCOOTER GOING FULL SPEED DRIVING LIKE A....
I look down and a midwestern nuclear family with two children of formative age are waiting for the elevator. I change my last word.
Me: LUNATIC!
I look over to the parents.
Me: I'm really sorry. This is a family joint and I shouldn't have cursed the drunken scooter driver like that. Sorry kids.
Parent: no big deal. They've heard fucking worse.
I crack a smile at her word choice. Fucking worse. Yeah. That sounds like my evening.
After jumping into a wall, I'm now wide awake and unable to go back to sleep. I make the plane and push on time. The 737 comes to a stop short of the runway and holds. Something is wrong. The pilots come on and say that they loaded more cargo and passengers than planned so they have to redo their numbers. We're waiting on the taxiway with both engines running as they do this and the waiting music comes on. What's the first song?
Whitney Houston - "I Will Always Love You"

The "What should I do in "St. Louis" master list.

Secrets of the Sea - Vol. 2

Vol. 1
The next thing I knew was that the boat was fighting to push forward and climb another wave. My salt-crusted eyes opened just in time to see as Kyle slammed the throttles into the furthest forward position they could be, maxing them out - and the boat lurched slowly forward in response. My whole body could feel the strain of the motors pushing against the weight of the water that now filled the boat to almost knee height. My eyes grew wider and wider as I realized the gravity of the situation - there had to be 100+ gallons of water inside the floor-space with us.
"Holy shit!" I yelped pathetically, hurriedly pulling my feet up underneath me onto the captains chair as we lurched forward and up on top of the oncoming wave; as the bow turned upward near the top of the wave, water began gushing and pouring out of the back of the boat, streaming through the gap between the motors, over the dive platform, and back to the depths from whence it came. I had to lunge and grab onto the dive bag, filled with our fins, masks and snorkels, before it joined the masses of water returning to the ocean.
While the water remaining on the floor of the boat (now only at ankle height) was busy sloshing around, trying to find a path for escape, we were still being relentlessly tossed around by the surrounding waves. It was as if the ocean was laughing at us, challenging us to a duel that she knew we could not win. To me, the sea has never been a thing, but more of a powerful entity - a goddess who was either cruel or fair, completely dependent upon her mood. And today, she was toying with us.
For some reason, this thought made me incredibly angry. Perhaps it was partly the fear wracking my brain, or the knowledge that literally thousands of people die after their boats capsize along this very coast each year, I'm not sure which - but as we continued swaying and rocking, I held on tightly to the frame of the captain's chair, and screamed out to the laughing waves, "Is that all ya got?! We are GOING to Bimini!"
Luckily for me, the din of the storm in combination with the motors struggling to churn the water all but drowned out my taunt. I can't say whether it helped us or not, but in that moment, I should have realized this was a sign. The conditions turning sour were a warning to stay away from the islands, and we, in our excitement for our long-awaited vacation, were not paying attention. Even though everything in my gut was telling me we should turn back in that moment, at that point I was so angry I was determined to reach our destination.
It will be worth it... any kind of obstacle will be worth it once we're there... I had thought, gritting my teeth.
Retrospect would aim to teach me that in reality, the opposite was true. There was nothing - not all the mountains of lost treasure or schools of trophy fish in the sea - that would be worth what we were going to face on the island.
We completed the rest of the 42 miles of our voyage fighting the storm, and only took one more wave over the bow. By the time we had reached the shore line of the island, the ominous weather and less than favorable seas we saw in the Gulf had all but disappeared. In its place was everything we loved about Bimini - clear skies, clear water, and clear minds.
We pulled through the channel at the tip of the island right at noon that first day, completing our journey in just over 3 hours. We pulled into the marina at our hotel, the Seacrest, and literally fell out of the vessel on wobbly legs. We knelt and kissed the wooden planks of the dock repeatedly, much to the amusement of the locals standing at the fuel pump at the end of the marina.
"You crazy fools crossed over on that today?" One of them called, laughing. 26' may seem like a big boat, but it really is not. Big for a lake, sure. Big for the ocean? Not a chance.
"Yep, should've turned around many times! But here we are!" Kyle answered, throwing his arms up in mock praise to the sky.
"So you are. Welcome to paradise, crazy white boy!" Another man called back to us, and the group of men laughed again, nodding in agreement.
We had to check in at customs, then unload all of our gear before we could start adventuring. We were staying on the second floor of the faded yellow hotel (much to our dismay when carrying all of our gear up and down the flights of stairs), which overlooked the marina and faced out to the east, the flats of the island. In the flats, the maximum depth was around twelve feet, and the expanse of pristine water over sparkling white sand stretched as far as the eye could see.
The island has a rich history as a known pirate island and rum running operation, then later on, a major cocaine running operation. The way the island is situated makes it a perfect location for hiding, if one knows how to navigate the water - only one entrance exists.
Because the maximum depth of the flats on the interior east of the island (where the hotel looked out over) was so shallow, and these flats extended a decent ten-twenty miles out away from the island, many a ship had fallen prey to the flats. Any ship that was unaware of the depth would have run aground in the flats, even if they came by way of the open sea. There was only one entrance to access the interior of the island, which was the ship channel at the southern tip of the island we had entered in through. This being the only entrance, it was very easy to keep track of who was coming and going from the island.
Bimini consists of three actual islands: North Bimini (where we stay) South Bimini, and East Bimini (mostly uninhabited). North Bimini itself is only seven miles long, and around 700 feet wide. There are two main roads, the King's Highway and the Queen's Highway, which run parallel to each other down the length of the island. Between the roads, the locals have built their homes and a few scattered businesses. There are only a handful of restaurants, gift shops and grocery stores in operation on the island, and their hours are subject to change. There have been several occasions when we ventured out to get a drink, or pick up a grocery item, to discover that the posted hours outside the business do not really dictate the hours - the owner does. The only way to know what is open and what isn't is to physically get down to the business yourself, or ask the locals where and when to find what you need. The one business in operation on the island that adheres to "normal" business practices is the infamous Hilton Hotel.
I say infamous because most of the locals on the island despise the hotel. The reason may not matter to some who only come to tropical islands to sip cocktails by an infinity pool, they would not understand the hatred. There are plenty of swimming pools at the Hilton. There is also a casino, several restaurants, and acre upon ocean viewing acre of luxury accommodations. The problem is that the construction of the hotel blasted its way right through the mangroves that extend around the northern tip of the islands and all the way into the flats - which make up the breeding grounds and nursery for virtually every species found in the water - effectively bringing the ecosystem to its knees.
The hotel also takes business from other, smaller hotels and restaurants on the opposite end of the island. So not only did the owners rape the island and the surrounding reefs, now they steal any remaining business from the locals.
We hardly ever make it to that end of the island when we visit, choosing instead to support the locals and local businesses - but I'll never forget the time we had bad weather for snorkeling and decided to rent a golf cart and trek to the casino for some lazy, drunken fun. When we returned and told the dock-master at our hotel where we had been, his look immediately turned dark. His happy, cheerful demeanor shifted immediately to cold and aloof.
"That place down there is the biggest money laundering outfit I've ever seen," he said, angrily. "If you're gonna rent my carts, don't take 'em down there," he mumbled, and took off around the corner of the hotel.
We were stunned into silence, but knew from then on to keep those types of expeditions to ourselves in the future.
After we had finished checking in at customs and unloading everything into the hotel room, we decided we would start our current adventure with a little late afternoon snorkeling. First we took a celebratory shot of whiskey in the room, then walked across the dusty road among the golf carts and bicyclists to our favorite bar, simply called "Toons' Place."
There are no signs outside the brightly colored building, no banner with the name or hours posted. This is because Toon's Place is always open, and I do mean always. There is also loud music blasting, huge fans blowing the hot air around, and every space of the interior is covered in dollar bills stapled to the wood. Our favorite part though, is the bartender and owner, Toons. He's that type of bartender that is always drinking and having fun with those at his bartop, and if he likes you, he's notorious for passing out free shots.
"Ayyy, yo, my white cousins!" Toons yelled from behind the bar as we walked across the sandy floor, his dreadlocks swinging wildly to the blaring music. He extended his tanned ebony hand first to Kyle, then to me, and turned immediately to pour us each a shot from a random open bottle of liquor on the bar next to him. He poured three - always one for himself - and with that, we smiled and touched glasses in cheers, then took the shots in unison.
"So you two crazy kids are back, huh? What's on the agenda today?" Toons asked, popping open a beer for another customer and handing it down the bar.
"We're headed out for some snorkeling in the front of the island, maybe shoot a fish or two," Kyle said, grinning.
"Alright, alright. Just be careful. I've heard there are some sketchy folks about this time of year. You want a drink for the road?" Toons asked, glancing in our direction as he polished off glasses and stacked them neatly.
I stopped to think, my head bobbing to the steady boom of the bass in the music. It was strange for him to mention being careful, with all the stories we had told him over the years, he knew that we knew what we were doing. I chalked it up to island superstition, as most of the residents didn't trust anyone they didn't know - especially the Cubans that frequented the casino.
"Yeah, give us two Goom Bay Smashes. And don't worry about us, we'll be on the lookout for pirates," Kyle said, winking at Toons, and handed him a twenty.
After we had our pineapple infused beverages laden with local rum in hand, we made our way to the boat. We left the marina and immediately took the channel out to the front of the island, which faced west, as the sun was beginning to sink. The sky was blue tinged with the loveliest shade of rose on the horizon, and everything was bathed in sunlight. The boat was now cutting though the water like butter, hardly any sound of effort could be heard from the motors - nothing like the conditions we experienced coming across from Florida. I sipped my drink and held on to the boat topper above my head, looking down into the perfectly calm, clear water. We drove about a mile up the shoreline and picked a spot to jump in. I donned my black skinsuit and started to de-fog my mask while Kyle secured the anchor.
We were probably five hundred yards from the beach, and I could just make out structural details on the mansion style beach houses dotted along the shore. It seemed that every one was at least three stories tall, with wraparound porches for each level, spectacular windows facing the beach, and towering leafy trees all around. All the homes were painted in bright shades of green and blue - colors of the waters just out in front of the homes. The sound of the gentle waves lapping the surface and the playful breeze combined with the sight of the ocean mansions was lulling me into a serenely calm state, and I started to hum lazily while I pulled on my fins.
We were both seated on the starboard side of the boat, one leg draped carelessly into the water and one firmly planted inside the boat before launching into our first snorkel. I closed my eyes and worked to calm my breathing, dragging my hanging leg back and forth in time to the counting in my head. Just as my breathing synced to the rhythm in my head, I happened to notice a woman standing on the top balcony of one of the mansions. She appeared to be facing us, and was wildly waving her arms in our direction.
I nudged Kyle, who was adjusting his snorkel, and pointed to the woman. She was still waving her arms in our direction. We both waited and squinted to see if she was pointing at the water - signifying a shark, and for us to stay out of the water - but she was just crazily waving us off. The more we watched, the more it dawned on us that she wanted us to leave.
A chill went up my spine.
Nobody had ever been rude in that way here before, it was too laid back on this end of the island for snooty people who think they own the water in front of their beach rental. The end of the island with the Hilton, sure. It was easy to ignore them, though, as all the ocean view accommodations also had white fences that blocked the occupant from having to see lowly peasants like ourselves actually enjoying the water.
The woman's motions began to get more frantic, as she waved us away over and over again. I could just barely hear her voice, she seemed to be yelling "leave." Now she was jumping around, seemingly desperate for us to notice her.
We looked at each other, and laughed nervously. "Crazy old bitch," Kyle said, shaking his head, "let's just get in the water and we won't be able to see her anymore." He flipped his other leg over the side of the boat and with a splash slid into the water. I watched as his shape moved slowly away from the boat and out over the brown and black splotches of reef.
I watched the woman frantically wave for a moment more, not totally convinced we should really be getting into the water. I couldn't make out any specific details about her person other than she appeared to be white and wearing all black clothing. After a few more minutes of the same thing, I sighed and resolved to join Kyle under the waves, deciding she was probably harmless.
I kicked both legs to hang into the water over the side of the boat, and pulled my mask back down over my eyes. As I slid into the water, though, I caught one more glimpse of the woman - but this last flash was different. Instead of flailing her arms wildly, she seemed to be facing a different direction, and her body language was totally different. I slid into the water - the temperature was like a warm bath - and decided to swim closer to shore to see what was going on with this crazy old bat. If I could, I aimed to tell her the ocean belonged to everyone and to get off her high horse with this "leave" bullshit.
As I swam towards the shore, I scanned the water beneath me. A few large triggerfish were floating aimlessly around the reefs, their oversized dorsal and pectoral fins flopping around stupidly. Parrotfish dotted the reefs as well, their iridescent pink, purple and green scales catching the light as the meandered along. Other smaller fish came and went into crevices in the coral of the reef, and tiny white jellyfish floated in and out in front of my mask. Everything was peaceful here, nothing amiss among the colorful reefs and perfect expanse of white sand.
I estimated I was probably about a hundred yards from the shore now, and since the water level was getting much more shallow, I knew the beach wasn't far off. I surfaced, treading water directly beneath me with my fins, and pulled off my mask.
I found the house just in time to see the woman who was waving us away engaged in conversation with someone else, a new figure. I had to keep up a steady pace with my fins pulsing beneath me to stay above the surface enough to see the pair, but immediately noticed something was off.
The woman in black was facing away from me, looking at this other person, and now her hands were raised in front of her in what I immediately registered was a surrender. My eyes widened as I watched the scene unfold from the silence of the waves, the two seemed to be arguing. I could not hear what they were saying from my watery hiding spot, but I kept up the pace with my fins long enough to see the new figure raise their arm and bring it down quickly towards the other woman's head, striking her - and saw her fall immediately to the floor.
I gasped as she fell, which was my first mistake, - my mouth was right at the surface of the water at this point- and I simultaneously took in a huge gulp of salty water. As I choked and spat out the water, I lost sight of the figures on the balcony. I tried to find Kyle while I gasped for air, spluttering, but could not see him. I knew I had to get back to the boat, so I swam as fast as I could back toward the rope stretching up from the reef - our anchor. I knew now the woman had been motioning for us to go and get help, not to leave. The other thing I knew was that I had not been seen, and it was a stroke of luck we had been in the water when the assailant attacked the woman.
I reached the ladder at the back of the boat and heaved myself up and into the vessel as quickly as I could while still wearing fins. I threw my mask and snorkel into the dive bag and immediately spun around to face the house.
The two figures were gone.
Confused, I rushed to the edge of the boat closest to the shore, grabbing onto the railing to hold myself up as I leaned out as far as I could, squinting at the house. Yes, they were most definitely gone.
The sound of water splashing startled me, and I turned to see Kyle pulling himself up over the dive platform at the back of the boat. He pulled off his fins and mask, shaking his head wildly back and forth to spray salt water in my direction. He smiled up at me, but his smile faded immediately when his gaze found mine.
"Are you ok? What did I miss?" he asked, standing to grab my face between his hands, obviously worried about my horrified expression.
"That woman... she... he was.... something is wrong," I said, frustrated at my own stumbling effort to explain the situation.
"Whoa whoa. Calm down. Something happened to the crazy old bitch?" He asked, gesturing in the general direction of the house, not taking his eyes off of mine.
"Yes," I said, taking a steadying breath, "she was still waving us away when someone else came outside. They got into a scuffle and he hit her. She went down... hard. Then I tried to get back here to be able to see and maybe call for help, but now they're both gone," I said quickly.
We stared at each other for maybe another three seconds before I continued, "I'm going to call for help on the radio." I walked past him for the captain's chair and reached up next to the GPS system to dislodge the radio from the dash.
"Wh... what do you mean?" Kyle rushed up behind me to snatch the radio out of my hand. "They're not gone. Look, there's someone up there right now," he said, pointing up to the railing of the beach house. I slowly turned to face the house, praying it was the woman, hoping she was alright.
There, in the middle of the porch and facing towards us, was the other figure, the one was sure I had seen attack the woman. The figure stood perfectly still, perfectly straight. Time seemed to slow down to a crawl as we stared up toward the unnaturally motionless figure. How long had they been standing there? I hadn't seen them just a moment ago when I was straining over the edge of the boat....
Suddenly, we heard a mournful call come across the water from the direction of the beach house.
"I'm sorrrrrryyyyy....... I'm SOOOORRRRYYYYYYY," it grew louder as it repeated over and over again.
The figure remained motionless, making it impossible to tell if the cry came from them, or somewhere else. The just stood and.... stared in our direction.
I frantically looked to Kyle for answers, but he just continued to stare at the figure.
Who was sorry? What were they apologizing to us for? I was sure we hadn't been seen in the water when the scuffle took place.... or had we? The call droned on and on, each new "sorry" making the situation more and more eerie.
"What are you sorry for?!" Kyle yelled, cupping his hands suddenly around his mouth to answer the call, which was still sounding out, as if it were being played on repeat.
Almost immediately, the call was cut short. The repetitive groaning apology stopped mid-sentence. Simultaneously, the figure turned quickly on their heel and walked into the darkened doorway of the house, leaving us alone with nothing but the sound of the waves lapping gently against the shore for an answer.

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