Podcasts about 'prince

Diplomatic Hell Hole.Book 3 in 18 parts, By FinalStand. Listen to the ► Podcast at Explicit Novels."Are we in the right place?" the stranger worried."I'm afraid so. Anais, you need to leave.""Not until you tell me what is going on here," she sizzled."She's not here to have sex, if that's what you worried about," I retorted. "Wait, are you here to have sex with me?""I barely know you.""That rarely stops me," I muttered."He's a master of bedroom antics," Pamela praised me. "He's pretty much at a loss at doing anything else.""Thanks Grandma," I griped."Your welcome, Grandson.""We, are here to meet someone," the stranger hedged."You came to the right place," Pamela preempted me. "He's definitely someone.""Fine, redo. I'm Cáel Nyilas," (deep breathe), "NOHIO, HCIESI-NDI, U HAUL, Magyarorszag es Erdely Hercege plus a bunch of other honorifics that have yet to be confirmed. I am single-handedly bringing back medievalism to the center of Europe and the Near East. The woman to my left is Pamela Pale, and she really is my bodyguard. The woman to my right is Sgt. Anais Saint-Amour, RCMP, my ex-lover and the person that needs to leave   right now.""I'm not sure I should leave at this moment," Anais shifted possessively. I had to recall earlier this morning, the part where we'd broken up by mutual consent. Yep. That had really happened. I had thought I was whittling down my current list of paramours. Why do the Goddesses hate me so?"Told you, she can't give up that cock," Pamela whispered."As you can see, I have limited control of my life," I told the strange woman. "I know you are here to meet somebody who isn't me. Now you know who I am. Who are you and your companions?""I'm Ms. Quincy.""Sorry; I'm on a first name basis with everyone I meet," I interrupted."What's your rank, Honey?" Pamela added."What makes you think,?""She doesn't think. That's what makes her so dangerous." I explained."Hey now," Pamela faux-complained."Okay. She's a fledgling telepath, or medium," I shrugged."Captain, Zelda Quincy.""In case you are mesmerized by her tits," Pamela tapped me, "she's packing some serious hardware.""One of those personal defense gizmos?" I leaned Pamela's way."Close, but no cigar. She's my kind of girl, big 'bang-bang', back-up at the small of her back and knife in her boot.""What!" Zelda gulped."She's his knife-fighting instructor," Anais answered drolly."Are you Special Forces?" Zelda regarded my mentor."Nah, I got kicked out for a consistent failure to observe even the loosest Rules Of Engagement. I'm a free-spirit.""Oh, you're a sniper," Zelda nodded."I like this one," Pamela smiled."Ah, thank you." Then, over her shoulder, "I think we are in the right place." Zelda entered the room, followed by a Hispanic panther of a man (kind of like a tanned, slightly shorter Chaz without the cool accent) wearing a long coat, and a Subcontinent-cast woman who looked at everyone as if she expected us to sprout fangs, or start quoting the Koran any second now. She obviously was a brain seconded to this mission very much against her will.The fourth person had that cagey 'when my lips move, I'm lying' look while seemingly unhappy with her current assignment. The heavy implication was that the lady was a career diplomat. Considering our current company and who we were talking to, she was State Department. She was in her late 30's or early 40's and giving off the sensation she had devoted so much to her career that she was starting to wonder if that was all that life had to offer.The fifth member was a military man clearly uncomfortable about what he was doing here, thus not a spook. His off-the-rack suit wasn't terrible, so he expected to socialize somewhat while performing his duties. He also looked like a man who expected other people to speak half-truths and obfuscated lies as easily as they breathed. Numbers three, four and five were dressed for the weather and unarmed.All of this meant they were good at what they did, though they probably didn't know the particulars of what was expected of them. They had their marching orders. Those orders were about to be made irrelevant in the company they would be keeping. The latter weren't the 'doing it by rote' kind of people they would normally be dealing with."I bet you she's a doctor," I murmured to Pamela, "she's with State and he's some sort of Foreign Service type.""I bet the first guy is Air Force," she countered."Like one of those Para-rescue guys?""No. More like one of those Battlefield Air Operations guys, I'm guessing," she corrected me."That guy?" I nodded to the final guy. "Pentagon wonk?""More likely he's one of those embassy guys. I'm going to take an educated leap here, Office of Military Cooperation, Mongolia?""That is pretty clever of you. Kazakhstan. Major Justin Colbert.""I bet some people in the White House, Pentagon and Langley are disappointed with you right now," I reasoned. His jaw grew tight."Don't worry, Major," Pamela grinned. "We consider that a good thing. We don't like the people in charge and have a low opinion of their opinion on just about everything, including their habit of blaming the blameless for their government's fuck ups.""Who are these people?" the first man whispered to Quincy."She's a telepath." That was Zelda"She's a psychic-medium." That was Anais."She can see through time." That was me. "Nice to meet you. Who are you?""Chris Diaz. Lieutenant Colonel, USAF.""Dr. Saira Yamin," the second woman introduced herself. "Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies. Are you the man from Johnston Island?""Why yes, yes I am," I beamed."The APCSS is in Waikiki, Hawaii," Pamela educated me. "Your arrival probably cost her some prime surfing time.""I was more interested in the fact that he survived a plane crash in a Category Four Cyclone," she admitted."Mother Nature hates me. No matter how hard I try, she refuses to kill me," I confessed. "My suffering is an endless source of amusement to that bitch.""That, that wasn't the helpful answer I was looking for," she stammered."So, Lt. Colonel Chris Diaz, you must be with JSOC, I have a deep and abiding respect for you guys. If you need something, just ask," I greeted him. "Captain Zelda, you are not with JSOC.""She's with the DCS ~ that is the Defense Clandestine Service," Pamela kept going. "Zelda, you love being in your uniform, you're proud, yet happy with the concept of dying in an unmarked grave for Constitution and Country. You are too old to have been in the first female class at Ranger School, so that means no 'in the field' JSOC for you. You've gotten around that stone wall by joining the US Defense Department's own little pack of killers.""Also, you felt it was necessary to bring a Benelli M4-11707. That's a close-in action shotgun, but a bit over-kill considering the paper-thin walls in this building. That tells me you are used to being in the kinds of places where such a tool is a necessity. Or in other words, since you think you are meeting a band of terrorists, you brought along your favorite toy.""Your personal weapon is a SIG Sauer P229R DAK in .357 which is a new weapon still under trial by the US Army and Air Force. Your boot dagger is ceramic so it will pass a cursory exam, or scan. You hate the idea of being trapped on a public aircraft weaponless. You have also given up killing power for a proper balance for throwing. I like a forward-thinking gal.""Air Force ~ you've recently come back from Asia, most likely Tibet. It shows in your breathing brought about by a close call with Altitude Sickness. The only reason for an Air Force guy to be here is because he's familiar with the Khanate military and you are not US Army, or Marine Corp Special Forces. I know the type.""You went with the MP5K in the standard 9mm, so you are more interested in sending bullets down range than looking into someone's face as you kill them. You may be a 'light' Colonel, which means you are almost somebody. What your higher-ups haven't appreciated is that our guests will respect you because they are like that ~ remembering past friends and comrades in arms. Of greater importance, you have Cáel's gratitude which will count for more than you currently believe."I pledged then and there to be as good as Pamela at determining that kind of stuff before I died. She had assured me it was as much a matter of psychology as eagle-eyed perception. People were often a type that gravitated to various forms of destruction, be they old school, or going for the latest gadget."I told you all that firepower was excessive," State softly chastised her associates (what they really were, not the underlings she saw them as)."So, you appeared to have forgotten to tell us your name," I regarded the State lass."Nisha Desai Biswal. I'm with the government.""Oh, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, I've examined your website," I told her. It clearly pissed her off somewhat that I so swiftly disregarded her crude attempt at subtle manipulation."Hey. I've got some real enemies at State, so it pays to know who might be the next suit trying to cock me over," I explained. I had to prioritize. It would take some serious effort to convince Zelda to have a MFF three-way straight out the gate and she was definitely the hotter number."Major, you came here unarmed," Pamela noted. "That won't do. They expect you to be armed because you are a warrior, damn it. Cáel get him one of your Glock 22's.""Gotcha," I nodded. I went to my room, tipped away the false back to my closet (that Havenstone had installed recently so Odette wouldn't accidently fire off one of my weapons) and retrieved one of my spare Glocks, but not the one with the laser sight. Such over-the-top fancy gear would be inappropriate. I only gave him one mag. If he couldn't get the job done with 15 rounds, he wouldn't have a chance to reload.Mind you, I took two in a twin-rig shoulder holster and four 22 round magazines, because I tend to shoot two-handed which doesn't exactly give you a bullseye every time. I returned to our crowded living room, handed the Major his weaponry, and then directed the US group to the far side of the room (towards Timothy's bedroom. Saira and Nisha took the couch.Because this tiny space wasn't crowded enough, there was a knock at the door. I checked. It was Juanita, oh yeah, my real bodyguard."Listen up everybody," I announced to the room. "This is my other bodyguard, my official one. Her names is Juanita Leya Antonio Garza, she's from the Dominican Republic via Buenos Aires and she is armed, so don't freak out." I opened the door."What is going on?" Juanita hissed."I'm having a private meeting with a few heavily armed friends. The other side to this party hasn't arrived yet. Why don't you come in?" She came in."Why didn't you warn me?" she whispered her complaint."Long night, worse wake-up, needed to do some soul-searching. Pamela was looking after me, then this came up and I forgot. I apologize," I lowered my head in shame. Juanita was only trying to do the job she'd been entrusted with and by not thinking of her, I was making that so much harder.I made the introductions, first names only."Juanita, Anais, Pamela; please slip into the kitchenette," I suggested.Anais "Why?"Juanita "Where are you going to be?"Pamela "Sure. I'm starving. I'm going to raid the fridge.""Anais, because I need my faction in one place. Juanita, I will be refereeing this meeting, so I will have to remain in the living room, roughly six feet from you." It was really a small apartment. "Pamela, if it is edible, it isn't mine and you'll have to replace it."Great Caesar's Ghost! No wonder Big Wigs had their personal assistants handle this pre-meeting crap. I was on my last two fucking nerves and one of those was already stressed and tender. And the real reason for being here hadn't even arrived yet."Why am I in your faction?" Anais mulled over threateningly."Because you haven't walked out that door. There are going to be three sides to this meeting, not three plus Anais. That is the way it is going to be. Now, are you going to behave, or are Juanita and Pamela going to toss you out?""You are threatening me!""Finally catching on to that, aren't you, Sweetie?" Pamela chimed in."I'm only staying because I believe you are in trouble," Anais grumped."Why is she (Anais) here?" Nisha inquired heatedly. "This is supposed to be a very, very private encounter.""I know Anais. I don't know you. I trust Anais with my well-being despite the fact she has numerous reasons to distrust me. She's staying because she is a straight arrow. That's good enough for me.""But is she going to keep her mouth shut about what happens here today?" Nisha pressed."Anais, this is a clandestine meeting that isn't going to be recorded by anybody so, barring a crime being committed, you can never discuss this with anyone who isn't already in the room. Agreed?"Pause."I agree," she nodded. I really was going to have to fuck her again. Not today. Well, maybe not today; I had to keep my options open. Her investigator mind was going into overdrive. Give it a week and she'd be knocking on my door late one night. Inquisitive, truth-hungry dames are like that, trust me. Then it would be 'bask in my genius' sex. It had been a while since I'd experienced that, with Lady Yum-Yum.There was another knock at the door. I checked before Juanita could do the checking for me, in case someone was going to shoot me through the door. Fuck it. I was going to talk to Timothy about moving. Him, me and Odette. I couldn't give those two up. It was Kazak bookends. I opened up and invited them in. It turned out they had names besides Bookends #1 and #2, Nuro and Roman.Nuro (I think) checked out the rooms while Roman (I was pretty sure) kept an eye on my guests. I made introductions, first names only and specifying who was with who. Technically, they could trust my side because I was the Great Khan's brother and thus my servants were his servants. Technically.Iskender came next followed by OT. A woman I didn't know (sadly, not OT's daughter) came in behind him while the other two quintuplets stayed in the hallway. Iskender and I hugged."Ulı Khaan s yikti ağası," he smiled. That was 'Prince-something'. My Kazak was a bit rusty. He then whispered into my ear. "OT bows to you first. His title is Hongtaiji." What?"Ulı Khaan s yikti ağası," OT bowed."Hongtaiji Oyuun T m rbaatar," I bowed back. I remembered I had to rise first. It was an etiquette thing. In retrospect, Iskender had stretched the bounds of tradition by hugging me, his titular superior. "Welcome to my humble abode.""I thank you for your hospitality," he 'grinned'. His face wasn't made for that gesture so that faint gesture came across as rather unnatural.My mind finally finished translating what Iskender and OT had called me. It wasn't 'prince'. It was 'beloved brother of the Great Khan'. Mother fucker!"Wait," Justin, the military attach  guy muttered, "we are here to meet this guy?" indicating me."What do you mean?" Saira questioned."The title Mr. Nyilas was identified with means 'beloved brother of the Great Khaan'," he explained. "The Kazakhs don't go tossing honorifics like that around. This guy," again pointing at me, "is a really important somebody.""Thanks for dropping this grenade in my lap, OT," I joked. "I'll get you for this, and your little yak too.""Odette is going to be so miffed that she missed this," Pamela chuckled."Mr. Nyilas," Zelda began."Please, call me Cáel. It is how I roll.""Cáel, can I ask you a stupid question?""Go right ahead," Pamela snorted. "Cáel does stupid real well. It is a critical part of his skill set. It makes him adorable instead of annoying. Trust me, you'll learn that soon enough."Too much 'trust me' was flying around in a room where nobody trusted anybody."Thanks for that encouragement, Teach," I grumbled. "Ask away, Captain Zelda.""Why are you playing this game with us?""I wasn't. Until thirty seconds ago I was sure I was here totally as a spectator," I gripped. "My buddy," the word dripped with sarcasm, "Temujin likes dumping these kinds of surprises on me.""Did you mean what Ms. Pale said about you feeling you owed me?" Chris asked."Absolutely.""We need help defusing this Thailand crisis before a shooting war begins.""What do you suggest?""We want the Khanate to back down," Chris stated firmly."I thought we had agreed that I would spearhead this delegation," Nisha reminded Chris."I think the situation had evolved and we need a different approach," Chris insisted."You should listen to the Lieutenant Colonel," I advised. "He knows a whole lot more about what is going on than you do.""Why don't you explain it to us?" she began her weevil-ling."You are engaging in linguistic niceties with men who have bled together, Ms. Biswal," I instructed. "Not that Chris and I have bled on the same battlefield, we have shed blood in the same cause; and that cause has been bringing our two nations, the Khanate and the US, together. The Khanate owes Chris for his efforts on our behalf and we pay our debts.""How so?" Nisha asked."National Security stuff," I evaded. "If you don't know, you shouldn't know and you probably don't want to know. Suffice it to say, the Khanate is willing to listen to Lt. Colonel Diaz's request as a friend.""But he doesn't speak for the United States Government," she corrected."Why not?" I riposted. "He's dealt with the Khanate longer than you have. He has a clue about the mindset of their rank and file.""But does he know their leadership?" she persisted."I don't know. Chris, do you think you have a handle on me?""Are you really capable of talking for the Khanate government?" Nisha preempted Chris. What she left unsaid was 'are you culpable in their atrocities?'"Let's find out," I then looked over my shoulder. "Hongtaiji Oyuun T m rbaatar, will my words and wishes reach my brother's ear?""That is why I am here," he replied."Don't you have the authority to speak for your leader?" she grilled OT. Nisha was relentless trying to stay in the limelight. "Aren't you a diplomat?""There is no need to insult the man," Pamela snidely commented."I am one of many voices that provide information to the Great Khan. I am not his brother. Cáel Nyilas is and has already proved his familial affection by proposing Operation Funhouse and brought whole nations as gifts," OT schooled her. "He is gifted with both tactical and strategic insight as well as sharing the Great Khan's love for his people and his hopes for their eventual freedom.""I didn't think you were a soldier," Zelda looked me over."Oh no," I wove off that insinuation. "I've never been a real soldier and am unworthy of that distinction. I know quite a few who have earned that title and they scare the crap out of me. I mean, they go looking for trouble. In my case, trouble comes looking for me. I'm damn lucky to still be alive and that's the damn truth.""Bullshit," Pamela coughed."What was that, Artemisia?" I winked at her."Bitch," she laughed "My men have become women, and my women men. At least you didn't call me Cassandra.""Well, she's Greek (a deadly insult to all Amazons), but you could be her Evil Twin because everyone believes whatever you say.""Can we get down to business?" Chris inquired."Damn," Pamela shook her head. "They haven't been paying attention.""What does that mean?" Zelda griped."Iskender, you know what I'm talking about, don't you?" I asked."Not a clue, Exalted One," he stood there like a stone statue. Note, the Khanate contingent really were standing there like the Altai Mountains, doing nothing. You had to carefully examine them to see that they did indeed breathe and blink."Use small words," Pamela advised."You really are a rude misanthrope," Anais told Pamela."Do you know what's going on?" Pamela volleyed."No.""Then sit back and watch how the madness works," she snickered. "It is all you, Cáel.""Okay. One; how did Artemisia escape the battle of Salamis?" I began. Nothing."Oh," Justin nodded. "She rammed an allied ship to make the pursuing Athenians think she was an ally. What does that have to do with our current predicament?""Achieve your ends by using violence as a distraction," I sighed. "The Khanate will invade Thailand in," I looked to OT, "tomorrow?" He nodded."How does that help us?" Nisha complained."Second example, Cassandra. She saw the truth through all illusions and falsehoods and no one believed her. Now, reverse that."Pause."We are waiting," Saira finally joined the conversation. I could hear those little microprocessors inside her noggin firing electrons at light speed."We fight a phony war. The Khanate and their buddies invade in a lightning campaign that appears to be successful. Shit like attacking the opposition where they ain't. Things that look epic on CNN where some retired colonel, no offense...""None taken," Chris responded."Where some colonel talks about seizing resources, severed supply lines and encirclement. We, the Khanate, bomb shit like bridges and supply dumps, things with no civilians to get killed. On the downside, to make this work the Khanate needs to put some level of force into Bangkok.""That will get civilians killed," Nisha reminded me, unnecessarily."Civilians are getting killed right now by their own government. This time they will get a chance to strike back," I stated firmly. "The Thai protestors aren't cowards. They are just grossly outgunned. We can change that.""How does that help the United States?" Nisha queried."The US gets to come in and save the day," I sighed. "The US can t get there until the day after, so you don't look bad about letting the first 24 hours of brutality happen.""Oh," Zelda blinked."The US gets to end the fighting that the Khanate has no desire to continue. The US brings peace, while whomever takes over owes the Khanate. Both sides look good. Both sides claim victory. The President gets a second Nobel Peace Prize (psychic, aren't I?). The US gathers some regional allies like Malaysia, the ROC and the Philippines along with our Marines to ensure free and fair elections. The Khanate isn't seen to be backing down against the Titan of Western Civilization. They are working with them to bring about a better world.""Win-win," Saira nodded in agreement."The Khanate is still an autocratic tyranny," Nisha commented."As opposed to the People's Republic's oligarchical tyranny?" Chris countered."Agreed," Saira said. "I now think we should work with the Khanate to bring stability to Central Asia which which was impossible while those member nations were being squeezed between Russia, Europe, China and India.""What are you a doctor of?" I asked."I specialize in 'failed states', among other things," Saira grinned."This could still turn into one bloody cluster-fuck," Zelda mused."My peopled don't have the resources to devastate Thailand," OT finally spoke. "If you, the US, agrees to intervene on our timetable, you will have our thanks, off the record, of course.""How do we know this isn't some ruse to allow the Khanate to overthrow Thailand's existing government?" Justin questioned."You have my word," I replied. No one said anything for several heartbeats."Really?" Nisha balked."Mr. Nyilas, Cáel, do you give me the Great Khan's word?" Chris studied me intently."Without reservation," I answered. "For what you have done for us and more, the Great Khan will honor this deal. We and the Thai's will do the bleeding. You will get your accolades. We avoid a pointless clashing of forces, which is why we are all here today.""I will give you my written recommendation in a few hours," Saira told Nisha.Chris stepped forward to shake my hand. He was an alpha-type alright. I gave as good as I got. His eyes bore into mine, looking for a faltering of will."What did you do in Romania?""I got a lot of good men killed.""Okay.""Okay?" Nisha squawked. "A handshake, a pat on the back and the deals done? Since when did our democratic republic do business this way? He admitted he got men killed in Romania. What is to say this won't be Romania writ large?""Ms. Biswal, he told the truth. He got good men killed and he isn't happy about it. I would be worried if he claimed one bit of glory from that episode. He didn't.""Nisha," I took a deep breathe, "When you unleash men with weapons, nothing is assured. Maybe the Thai government will see the hate coming their way and back down. Maybe the people will resist the intrusion. Maybe the Khanate's forces will get slaughtered at the starting line. It isn't like they have enough time to deploy enough forces to win a protracted war.""What happens if the Khanate decides it won't go?" she continued."Then they get destroyed on the ground in a war of attrition," Chris answered for me. "He's right. They can't bring enough in the time allotted to completely overwhelm the roughly 120,000 members of the Royal Thai Army that have remained loyal to the regime.""In three days they will be out of fuel, shells, rockets and bullets. It is logistics, Ms. Biswal," Zelda piled it on. "The Khanate war-fighting systems are not NATO compatible. That means they can't simply capture more material as they penetrate the frontiers. If they overstay their welcome, we can launch missile strikes against their fuel depots. The combat devolves back to World War I and that's a style of war they can't afford to fight.""What about stopping the Khanate from invading in the first place?" Nisha wouldn't give up."Had the US acknowledged the Khanate, none of this would have happened, Ms. Biswal," I became snappish. "Neither superpower talked to the other until other commitments had been made.""If you think you can come in and start dictating Khanate policy, you are dreadfully mistaken. The US doesn't have the power, or the resolve," I glared at her. "Don't try convincing the Khanate that isn't the case. We know better.""You don't know what the US is capable of," she snapped back."Abandoning Iraq with a fractured pseudo-democratic process? Abandoning Afghanistan without destroying the Taliban? The Syrian Civil War? The Donbass Crisis? The collapse of Libya? Boko Haram? Somalia? Yemen? Exactly how has the US's power and resolve solved any of those issues?" I countered."Ms. Biswal," OT spoke again. "We are willing to create a desert and call it 'Peace'. Our enemies know that. Your unwillingness to do so is neither a strength nor a weakness. It is a hallmark of your society in the same way that 'Total War' is a hallmark of ours. We are more than willing to leave you to manage the Peace. Let us manage the War against the forces opposed to civilized discourse.""As ugly and disagreeable as it is, we are willing to keep creating pyramids of skulls on every street corner until either they learn their lesson, or we kill them all. Let us do that and you will have your global stability and reap the economic benefits and accolades of Pax Americana. We are not your enemy. We are precisely the ally you need to keep the peace and we will do that, if you let us.""To allow barbarism is to become barbarians," Saira mused."That is complete fiction," I scoffed. "The United States didn't become communist because it allied with the Soviet Union in World War II. Truman didn't become Stalin. The enemy of my enemy is my friend is older than recorded history.""It is the Carrot and the Stick on a Global basis," Justin agreed. "Listen to the gentle words of the West, or you will end up feeling the wrath of the East.""As long as the Khanate accepts the limitations of is role," Saira added, "this might work. Please understand there will be factions in the Western Democracies who will not accept that status quo. It is not in the nature of our societies to stifle dissent.""Is it possible to get any political concessions from the Khanate's leadership?" Justin requested. "A pledge to hold some level of democratic elections? A Constitution with some strong provisions to protect individual rights and liberties would be nice.""Justin, in case your bosses missed it, the Khanate is still at a state of war with the PRC," I shook my head. "With their limited experience with democratic government throughout most of the Khanate's territories, that would be madness.""With limited concessions to the Imperial State, we have not interfered with the politics of Albania, Armenia, Georgia and Turkey. We are never going to become a Western-style democracy. We have had limited rule by consensus long before White Men arrived in the Western Hemisphere," OT informed them."Discounting the Irish Monks, Vikings and Knights Templar," Pamela interjected."If you say so," OT gave a minuscule bow to Pamela. "Long before your nation was anything more than the scribbled history of a long-faded Greek city-state, we had meritocracies, oligarchies of senior statesmen & warriors, thinkers and religious leaders, and we had codified judicial moral equality into the political arena. We have a far superior record of religious and minority freedom, of genuine multi-culturalism plus a deeper understanding of the arts and crafts as a means of uniting disparate peoples. We find your claims of cultural superiority to be childish.""Oh, snap," I snickered. "You get'em, OT.""I bet the boys in Foggy Bottom felt that pimp-slap," Pamela agreed."I bet the bronzed skull of some Harvard dean just fell off its pedestal.""They are called 'busts'," Anais groaned. "With a name like that, how could you forget it?""So true," I concurred. "All this responsibility must have clouded my normally hedonistic vocabulary.""That doesn't change the fact that you have employed biological warfare and genocide in this current day and age," Justin pointed out."Tell that to our Native Americans," I snorted. "They are easy to find. They live in trailer parks in whatever blasted Hell Hole we stuck them in, or in their casinos where they are buying back their country, one rube at a time. Ask them if they've gotten over it.""We don't claim to be perfect," Justin insisted."No, we merely claim to have the only correct form of government, economic policy and schools of philosophical, political, scientific and educational thought," I pointed out."We definitely should revive ethical utilitarianism," Pamela slapped a fist into her palm. "Oh, and the guillotine. Work houses for orphans and grist mills for the disabled, and A Modest Proposal for those chronically unemployed and terminally homeless, yes, and,""Pamela, what is it with you today?" I snickered."It is nearly sunset,""Ah, and you haven't killed anyone yet.""You know how cranky I get when I don't get my daily dose of homicide.""Are you two done?" Anais frowned. She did that a lot around me."And you don't hand out Mini-Uzi's to your preschoolers," Pamela glowered. "What is wrong with you people?"Pause, waiting for that punch line that was never coming. See, it was more difficult to sense Pamela was an immediate threat to your health if you thought she was completely off her rocker."Hmm, well, on that note, ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have a deal. Chris and Justin, I will leave you with my loyal Iskender to work out the gory details. Who wants to grab dinner?" I inquired."Are you serious?" Nashi gasped."Oh yeah. I had the Russian invasion of Manchuria figured out in this amount of time and Manchuria is way bigger than Thailand." Was it? I didn't know. Geography was not one of those subjects which gets you laid."What do you have in mind?" Zelda inquired."Whatever you want."{1 am, Sunday, August 31st ~ 8 Days to go}"How did I end up in bed with you?" Zelda sighed happily, her body splayed halfway over mine and her head resting on my chest, listening to my heartbeat."You aren't the first girl to ask me that question."On the other side, Anais moaned in her sleep. Yeah, she was over me. Abso-fucking-lutely. If you recall, she'd try anything once. I convinced her the military babes were totally different than that Goth chick we'd blown the mind of back in Montreal.Zelda was with me because I had caught her in a lie. She claimed to be a lesbian when I first hit on her. She was adamant. I destroyed her with incontrovertible evidence.A) She hadn't scoped out Anais when she came in. A glance didn't count and Anais oozed sexy when she was angry, which was most of the time.B) She hadn't scoped out Juanita's figure when said worthy went to the kitchenette. I look for such things and Juanita has thighs to die for.C) When I told her she had a wicked sense of humor, she blushed. Honestly, lesbians rarely care about strange men complimenting their personalities.D) Then I double-downed by asking her if she preferred a shower, or bath. She said shower (because that's the butch thing to say). When I asked her 'when was the last time she'd had a bubble bath', she blushed again. Lesbians don't like it when a man imagines them naked. Straight chicks, unless you are a creepy, stalker guy, like it when men fantasize about them swathed in bubbles, thus semi-clothed, thus not creepy.E) In a final and fatal act of evasion, she asked a grumpy Anais what she liked about me. Anais was blunt."He can fucking hammer you all night, sneak in a romantic quickie in the shower, cook you a delicious breakfast then give you another round of mind-numbing intercourse up against the wall before you have to go to work. And still find the time and energy to fuck your neighbor."Woot!"So, this happens to you often?" she mused, it was a trap. She really wanted to know if I was an egotistical scumbag who took advantage of every woman I came across. At the same time, she wanted to know if I considered her a 'whoe' ~ a woman who gives up the goodies for free."Do you mean 'am I taking advantage of you'?" I replied."That is not what I asked," she persisted. That meant 'yes'."Let me see," I laid back and looked up at the ceiling. "I have a fiancée, six women I am close enough to to spend quality time with, a fuck-buddy who is a sweet girl and trusts me too much and a passel of ex-girlfriends who have found my infidelity to be reprehensible.""Six women?" she frowned."Four co-workers (Rhada, Oneida, Yasmin and Buffy), the girlfriend of a co-worker who dumped her in a very public fashion (Brooke) and that woman's friend (Libra). She was the wing-chick who was stuck with me on a quadruple-date and was underwhelmed with me when we first met."I didn't count my 'hook-ups' and I wasn't sure how to qualify Nicole."Ex's?""'No' is not a word in common usage in my vocabulary. I've dated a best friend's girl, a mother, sister and aunt of the same girlfriend, basically, I'm either highly immoral, incredibly loose, or a letch.""Don't you take responsibility for any of those, relationships?""Hell yeah," I tilted her chin up so that we could make eye-contact. "I've never blamed a woman for taking out her frustrations on my flesh, ran away from a screaming fit (Big Lie!), or blamed them for any failing in our relationship. It is always my fault because I can't stay loyal.""That's depressing," Zelda moped."Don't get me wrong. I don't find fault in any of the women I have spent time with. That is my problem, I find women fascinating; never boring, or bland. Quite frankly, it is a gift that I don't regret having. I may be a fuck-up, but I'm a fuck-up who will give you the very best attention.""Full of yourself, much?" her attitude shifted. I had short-circuited her fears; I was a cheater, I confessed to it without shame because I was inexorably drawn to her beauty, personality and charm. With Anais around, I couldn't claim to be solely enchanted with Zelda, so I had to think quickly on my feet. After all, Zelda was energetic and had great stamina."I promised you pleasure," I countered. "Did I deliver?""Yes, you are full of yourself," she slapped my stomach. I wasn't full of myself. I was a confident sex machine."Thank you.""Huh?""Wonderful sex, taking a chance with me, agreeing to a three-way, being awake after," I looked at the bed-table clock, "six hours.""I run five miles a day," she bragged."I try to have ten hours of sex a day," I teased. Zelda slapped my stomach again. Anais stirred."Do any women like you, for any reason beyond your cock?""I'm considered loyal where sex is not concerned, reliable and brave," I offered."What happened in Romania?""Have you ever been in combat?""I've been in violent confrontations, but not a true firefight," she admitted."Hmm,""Is it something that you can't relate?" she asked."No. You are a soldier so you probably know more about combat than I do. It was, not chaotic at all. I never lost perspective of what was going on despite the bullets flying around. The Romanian Captain in charge knew his stuff, directed his company well and all I had to do was figure out where the terrorist leader was.""What happened?" she perked up."I am here talking with you and he's in a morgue in Bucharest.""Oh," She wanted more."I have to live with the knowledge that I set all of that in motion, Zelda. I convinced the Romanians that they had to confront that terror group before they moved on to their next target, me.""I knew they would come after me and my friends, no matter where we were. Which would have ended up as a blood bath in some urban center. So I felt compelled to strike first. Based on information I provided, the Romanian Army sent two battalions, the 22nd and 24th, of the 6th Mountain Troops Brigade into battle.""It was a massacre," I remembered sadly."But you won," she tried to comfort me."Of the four companies involved in the battle, the Romanians suffered nearly two hundred dead and wounded. I hardly consider it anything other than a massacre. Yes, we won. Only three of the terrorists escaped. Their leader died. I don't think I've ever felt so hollow in my life," I finished."Forty percent losses, that is horrific," she crawled on top of me."The kicker is the Romanians sent some men of the 24th to hunt me down when I was kidnapped. A squad was in the group that rescued me and my companion from Johnston Island. I thought they would never want to deal with me ever again.""Don't be so hard on yourself. If they thought well enough of you to send their men out to rescue you, then you must have done right by them.""Chaz said something like that too," I felt sheepish and sleepy."Chaz? Who is she?"Honest to God, one day I want to find a girl who thinks I'm talking about another girl and asks if we can have a three-way, instead of trying to compare herself to this unknown person. Wait... I already had someone like that. Her name was Odette."Chaz is Color Sergeant Charles 'Chaz' Tomorrow of Her Majesty's SSR," I corrected her assumption."SSR? Those are some tough people. How do you know him?""Black Bag directives from the National Security Council, sworn to secrecy upon penalty of death, pinky-promise kind of stuff," I grinned. Maybe I wasn't all that sleepy after all."You really are a Man of Mystery," Zelda purred. She had truly exceptional stamina. "Maybe I can convince you to talk.""Maybe I can find another use for my tongue," I countered and off we went. Somewhere along the process, Anais woke up and joined in.It wasn't all fun and games. Anais' parting words were "You are a pig," then she sauntered out of my room and out of my life. Had she remembered to take her Serge with her, I would have bought the act. As it was,"Is she always so volatile?" Zelda remarked."Volatile? That's not her being volatile. That's Anais being affectionate. Volatile usually is accompanied by thrown objects and bodily harm," I sighed happily. Meeting her one more time couldn't be all that bad, could it? Zelda looked hungry so I shoved that thought to the back of my mind and got to work.That was the highlight of my Sunday. Zelda had to fly back to Washington D.C. and I had to go to work with JIKIT. It seemed that the Khanate and the US military were heading for a showdown. I unloaded all my Saturday's activities to the team and we got to work, no recriminations. I was the Khan's spiritual brother and sometimes that meant I had to do him favors.I asked Addison when she thought he would return the favor. She laughed, then smiled and told me that wasn't how it worked. He was a world leader now and I was merely his kooky kinsman that he would keep throwing problems at until one day I broke. Then it would be some other poor saps turn.Then she told me she was kidding and clearly the Great Khan thought the world of me. I chose to believe the second lie because it made me feel better, and it was promising to be a long weekend/start of the week.Note: Geopolitical DevelopmentsWhat follows are snippets of the Battle for Thailand that takes place late in the night of September 1stand continued into the early morning of September 3rd. If this does not interest you, you can rejoin Cáel's exploits in four pages)On the eve of battle, the Royal Thai High Command had decided to strip all but one armored unit from the 2nd Army in order to give the First Army's offensive against the rebels more of a punch. It's decision to strip the tank battalions from both their infantry divisions as well as the armored and one of the two mechanized regiments would prove to be disastrous. It was as if the leadership of the Royal Thai military were idiots.The least economically valuable part of the country was the northeast which the 2nd Army warded. They had severely underestimated the airlift capacity of the Khanate as well as the willingness of Laos and Cambodia to both use their armed forces in an invasion as well as their willingness to let Vietnamese troops cross their countries.That thinking had led the Thai military to adopt a 'forward defense' strategy, the desire to fight the enemy at the borders, as opposed to having stronger formations deeper within the country. Considering the relative weakness of the Cambodian and Laotian militaries, that policy had made sense:- The baseline Laotian and Cambodian tank was the T-54/55, a 1950's Soviet relic. The normal anti-tank capabilities in all Thai infantry formations was more than equal to such a threat.-Neither country had an air force worth worrying about.In contrast, the Khanate's primary tanks, the T-90SM and T-95 were resistant to most of what the Thai Army could throw at them, at least from the front. The seven hundred combat aircraft the Khanate and the Vietnamese were able to field was an equal catastrophe for the Thais. It greatly compensated for the relative small numbers of invaders.Finally, there was a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Alliance's goals were. Military logic dictated the destruction of Thailand's mobile force followed by the capture of Bangkok. As long as the Thai regime held the capital, it would remain the legitimate power in the country.Due to the altering political landscape, the Alliance's only option was to make the government 'look bad'. The loss of peripheral provinces, while of negligible immediate strategic value, looked great on the maps the world-wide media would be showing to their audiences. It would appear that the Thai army had failed to defend their country. That would (hopefully) make the Thai Third Army look like the legitimate authority in Thailand.That was the plan anyway, and you know what they say about battle plans and the enemy, right? H-hour was 4 am, September 1st.The commander of the Zuun stood up and waited to be recognized. The staff officer from the Yunnan Command pointed at him."Sir, why are we doing this? I am not afraid to fight for the Great Khan, but this action seems to be suicidal. We will be far behind enemy's lines while our offensive force will be grossly under-equipped.""You will have to rely on our ability to supply you by air.""We only have supplies for two days of operations. What happens then?""We rely on the Americans to come and save us," the senior officer responded bitterly."Allah save us from allies," the young commander muttered. What else could he do?He was part of the 2nd Mountain Sultan Mehmet Tumen which had just arrived in Yunnan to replace the exhausted 1st Mountain Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur Tumen. His men were from Turkey, inexperienced in combat and using new equipment they were not familiar with. They would be working with a unit he had never worked with before, the 1st Airmobile Tauekel Khan Tumen, Kazaks, who would be seizing the small airport his men needed to land in.From there, they were to 'run amok'. That was the technical term for racing south down a highway in Central Thailand, attacking the headquarters of the 3rd Cavalry Division, an armored unit. Once that was accomplished, they were to attack the local police precinct. Provided they were still alive after that, they were to return to the air strip to resupply then they were to 'spread chaos' until they were finally hunted down by the vastly larger Thai division his 100 men would be fighting.Of course, there was the plan for the rebel Royal Thai Third Army to force their way through the larger frontline forces of the loyalist Royal Thai First Army and come to his rescue. How would the Thai troops respond when ordered to fight their fellow Thais? No one was sure. If there was any hope in this mission, it was the knowledge that several other Zuuns had the exact same mission in other areas of Thailand.  It was H-hour minus twenty-two.It was 11 o'clock in the evening when the general in charge of the Royal Thai 9th Infantry Division was woken up. The Marines were leaving. That was correct; the three Royal Thai regiments were heading west to Sattahip Naval Base, because they had been ordered to by the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Thai Navy. It didn't take a rocket scientist to realize why this was going on.Seven hours earlier, the Royal Thai Army had seized all the Air Force bases in the 1st and 2nd Army districts as well as ordering the 4th Army to do the same thing (The Royal Thai Air Force had been trying to remain neutral in the upcoming civil war).Undoubtedly the navy had decided to make their assets less 'hijack-able'. A few phone calls later confirmed that most of the Navy had set sail for parts unknown and the naval air units at Ban Sattahip Air Base (U-Tapao International Airport) had also departed either out to sea, or to ports and bases in the South.He made a personal appeal to the commander of Marine Forces to no avail. They wanted no part of the upcoming struggle and advised the general to do the same. The general had other problems. The Royal Thai Marines were the frontline forces facing the southern border with Cambodia. He quickly reorganized his regiments, sending them to take the old Marine strongpoints to await further orders. Stopping the Marines never entered his mind.That was a bloodletting he wanted no part of. The last thing he did was inform his superiors, thus avoiding any stupid orders to the contrary. Suddenly the nebulous movements along the Cambodian border developed a haunting significance. He wondered how much longer he had before something happened.  It was H-hour minus five.At midnight a loyalist commander of a company of mechanized infantry in the 2nd Cavalry's 11th Battle Group (named after their axis of advance, Highway 11) decided to send a motorized section of his command forward to the advance position his battalion was to occupy come sunrise. Either later in the day, or tomorrow morning, the forces loyal to the regime would launch a coordinated assault against the rebels main supply center at Phitsanulok.He had a cot set up in his communications hut and had just nodded off when the radio squawked to life. His lieutenant in charge of the advance made a hurried report. They had encountered serious opposition in a confusing night action, then he went silent. The captain immediately swung into action. He put the rest of his men on alert, then contacted the neighboring Tank Battalion. He needed some armored support. He made a similar call to the attached artillery component.The Tank Battalions night officer quickly put a platoon of light tanks at his disposal. The artillery were ready for any fire mission he sent their way. Before the armor could arrive, the company commander found himself being called to the carpet by the Duty Officer at the 3rd Cavalry (two regiments of the 2nd Cav. had been attached to the 3rd's command) over his 'offensive' action and the relief mission was called off. What had happened to the patrol of 20 Royal Thai soldiers? He was ordered to wait until sunrise to find out.Little did anyone know, these were the first combat casualties of the upcoming rebel offensive. His patrol had stumbled across a battalion of mechanized troops arriving at their jump off point for the attack that was less than six hours from beginning. Neither the commander of the 11th Battle Group, the 3rd Cavalry Division, or First Army was informed that the enemy had already advanced twenty kilometers south of where they were supposed to be.  

durée : 00:27:15 - Les Midis de Culture - par : Marie Labory - Au menu du débat critique, de la musique indépendante américaine : "The Purple Bird" de Bonnie 'Prince' Billy et "Sinister Grift" de Panda Bear. - réalisation : Laurence Malonda - invités : Charles Arden Musicologue, Directeur des contenus d'Ôlyrix; Christophe Conte Journaliste

The UnconqueredBy FinalStand. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels.Politically, this was manna from Heaven. Putin couldn't strong arm both the Ukraine and the PRC. His priorities had switched, so now NATO could jump into the Ukraine which would appease their democratic constituencies.There were also larger economic/political issues to look at. Europe had constantly been threatened by Russia's interference with the oil and natural gas pipelines that first pass through Russia before crossing the Ukraine and Belarus and heading off to Central and Western Europe. A great deal of that fuel originated in what was now the Khanate.If the Khanate survived, and viewed the US and UK favorably, the 'oil and natural gas' boot would be on the other foot. If Russia threatened the European Democracies' petrochemical supplies, the Khanate could threaten to cut off Russia as well. The old Republic of Kazakhstan never had the will to confront Russia. The Khanate was turning out to be a very different beast.Because the world didn't need any more ominous rumblings, catastrophe and madness collided in Pyongyang, North Korea. North Korea was an energy exporter, with most of its power coming from coal-fired plants and hydro-electric facilities. The problem was you can't run armored vehicles and combat aircraft on electric power. You needed oil.North Korea's oil came from China, Liaoning province to be precise, and Liaoning was getting hammered around the clock by the Khanate. The oil pipeline had ruptured and it would be months before it was fixed. In that situation, a sane nation would have shopped around for other avenue of imported oil. But we were talking about North Korea here.Kim Jung-un was looking down the barrels of another famine (trucks and tractors need petrol too) as well as the far more important reduction in the Korean People's Army's readiness. He saw himself possessing the World's 4th largest military and it was in danger of running out of fuel, and Liaoning province was sitting right across the Yalu River, all helpless-like.End World News Behind the Scenes ReportIn the annals of martial history, the bloodiest, costliest battles are when elites face elites. As corny and melodramatic as it sounds, the truth is that neither has 'surrender' in their creed. They attack, defend, ambush, shoot, stab and kill one another until one side loses the capacity to carry on the struggle. It is a grapple to the death.All of Ajax's men were hardened killers, ten year veterans of the Trojan Wars every; one of them. The ranks of the 22nd Mountain Troops Battalion were filled with numerous combat-tested soldiers of the Afghan War. These Romanians were some of the finest combatants produced by the Romanian Army. The two companies earmarked for sealing off the road as a retreat route were about to find out what the price of being elite really was.They were fighting for their homeland, avenging their slain (technically, the slaughtered Amazons were Romanians) and had generations of their own warriors, dating back to the First World War, whose legacy of ferocity they had to maintain. Ajax had the advantage in technology and surprise. The Romanians had numbers, experience with the terrain and the advantage of multi-dimensional warfare.The lead vehicles of the 22nd had rounded the hilly terrain to the East of the Castle of Seven Skulls when they collided with Ajax's team rolling away from those ruins. The Mountain Troops were fast, Ajax's team was faster. One soldier stepped out of his still-braking Eagle transport.He snap-shot a Panzerfaust 3, a light anti-tank weapon, blowing up the first Romanian Piranha IIIc. Two Eagles further down the column, a second team member put another Panzerfaust into the follow-up 22nd MLVN (armored personal carrier). That was as good as it got. The third vehicle, another MLVN swung partially around its burning brethren and poured automatic fire into Ajax's lead Eagle, turning huge chunks of that 'Hummer on Steroids' transport into shrapnel.Trading vehicle for vehicle wasn't something Ajax could afford. For the Romanians, they couldn't race past the blocked road without incurring horrendous losses themselves. Besides, by holding their ground and keeping the enemy focused on them, they were fulfilling their part of the plan. The Mountain Troops disgorged from their MLVN's, spreading out into the meadow on either side of the path and were quickly bounding forward by fire.Ajax reacted quickly. His heavy weapons would allow him to attrition the enemy in front of him, yet he'd be a fool to think they were alone. He knew he was facing army troops, not police. That spelled serious trouble. He ordered his column to reverse course back into the wood cover. He lost his second Eagle to intensive fire.The warriors in the main column bailed out once they reached the shelter of the trees. Machineguns came forward and established a withering cover fire. The two survivors at the first Eagle were badly wounded. With fatalistic resolve, they lashed the advancing Romanians with grenades and their assault rifles until they were both silenced. The second Eagle's demise was much harder.Three of the four crew were alive and unharmed. Their fate was decided by 25 meters of open ground between them and their compatriots. Ajax's gunners kept firing, but the Romanians refused to be suppressed. Worse, that second MLVN was proving impossible to kill. Its driver had parked it so that barely the front of his vehicle body and turret were exposed.Two more of Ajax's precious anti-tank rockets failed to connect, though one did knock the first destroyed IFV into that troublesome vehicle. These were Ajax's brothers-in-arms, yet he knew their situation was hopeless. He cursed that his opposition wasn't made up of raw conscripts. Despite their losses, they were not wavering. Their morale remained solid.The Romanians had spread out to the north and south. They were leap-frogging their machineguns forward and it was clear he was facing over 200 men. The 22nds advance was relentless. Soon they'd be right on top of his trapped men. As a final ploy he dropped two smoke grenades around the endangered trio and every other grenade launcher dropped their payloads onto the aggressive Romanians.The three men ran for it. Their enemy were nobody's fool and sprayed their retreat path with bullets. Only one made it to safety.For the Romanian battalion's commander in his command IFV, this was its own kind of Hell. His boys were getting murdered out there. He hadn't really believed the sketchy intelligence analysis that described his expected foes as the finest trained mercenaries the world has ever seen. Now he was a believer. His opponents reacted like an organic unit. Their weapons were incredibly lethal and their discipline was chilling. Ajax's snipers picked off anyone who seemed to be in charge. One Captain fell, as did two lieutenants. One section lost all its non-commissioned officers.Despite that, individual initiative kept the 'leaderless' men of the 22nd advancing. Their snipers came into play by targeting the opposing machineguns. One gunner went down, then the other. To get one man back, Ajax had lost five dead, or seriously wounded. Ajax ordered the remaining Eagles back to the castle. The rest of the Warband would have to make a fighting retreat.He'd killed or wounded a third of the Romanians out there, yet they were still coming. Even as he pulled out, he got two more pieces of bad:First, his scouts had reported hearing helicopters as they returned toward the castle; this latest enemy was somewhere behind him, to the east.Second, two Mig-21's dropped out of the sky and raked his area with rockets and auto-cannon fire; eight more men gone.Ajax may not have been the greatest military mind of all time, but wasn't a fool. He was being boxed in. Since it was highly unlikely the Hylonome Amazons had sacrificed themselves, this was an ad hoc plan to take him out. Instead of hunting down that male Amazon as he wanted, Ajax had let the Condottieri side-track him on this mission. Now, it was proving far too costly.A whistle, a few traded hand signals and the Mycenaeans started sprinting back upslope toward the castle ruins. It wasn't a rout. His men maintained their élan and cohesion. Ajax was trading space for time and the Romanians wouldn't chase his men as fast as the Mycenaeans were moving because there was always the threat of ambush. Or, they wouldn't have if an An-30 Reconnaissance Aircraft hadn't been tracking his progress from high above.Just coming on-line, it identified the heat signatures of the Greeks and let the soldiers of the 22nd know that their enemies were trying to put some distance between them. The battalion commander knew his men had been mangled, yet believed they were still more than willing carry the fight to the enemy. Right as the 'pursuit' order went out, the promised company from the 24th Mountain troops rolled up, with the 61st Brigade's 385th artillery battalion. 'Now things were really going to get hot for those bastards', he thought.(The Seven Skulls, Cáel)I was true to my nature. I sent off my plan, Operation Funhouse, to the Russians via their attaché (a hot looking, curvaceous blonde Major) and to the Khanate through the offices of the US and UK. Only after that was done, did I ask for my favor. I wasn't going to bargain with the fate of Temujin's people. I couldn't.My only chip to play was that people in strange places thought well of me. I wasn't so naïve to believe that I got what I wanted because I'd forged emotional bonds that superseded personal ambitions or national loyalties. No, I was now on my own self-inflicted 'Ride of the Valkyries' because people in authority felt I could still be useful and they were willing to risk the lives a few hundred Romanian soldiers to pander to my eccentricities.Our intelligence came from Google Maps, a woman's recollections from twenty-five years ago and the frighteningly precise memories of a battle-scarred 11 year old girl. For the 24th Mountain Troops battalion intelligence officer, it was a stunning introduction to Amazons. The girl was one year away from her Rite of Passage and she'd been raised to take in the terrain and the sounds of battle.Several times, he tried to trick her, altering information she had provided minutes earlier, but the girl corrected him every time. Seventeen minutes and the man relayed to his battalion commander his belief that the girl's story was solid. The men and women of the 24th may not have known the specific of the valley we were going to, yet this was their backyard.They knew the rocks, trees and bushes. They knew the ground was crinkled and what marsh soil looked like, without stepping into it. They could do this, attack a rogue mercenary band threatening their native land. They were going to do this and do it quick. Me and mine coming along was problematic. But Me being one of the first ones in, I had to play my trump card."I am Magyarorszag es Erdely Hercege," I proclaimed. "I have returned to my people in their hour of need. Besides, I'm the only one who can kill their leader.""You can kill Ajax?" Riki snorted in disbelief. "Ajax from the Trojan Wars? That Ajax?""Don't sweat it," I put my arm around her shoulder. "I got this covered. Get me close and I can make him dead.""You've lost your mind," Rachel muttered."I love you to," I grinned. To the Captain of the first company to rappel next to the ruins, "I'm your Prince. Let's do this.""Do you have any combat experience?" he shook his head."There are a whole bunch of dead Chinese who think so," I assured him."Let him go," Sakuniyas stated regally. "He is the Scion of Alal. He is invincible in battle." Hey, I liked that. Someone believed in me."Do you believe that?" Pamela asked Saku."Of course not, but if he's about to die, he should be allowed to feel good about himself," she told Pamela. Shit, I wish I hadn't heard that part."Oh, in that case, I agree. Let him go," Pamela added her preference to the final decision. The real weight in that Captain's final call was the small, well-armed group of supporters who seemed rather insistent that I get a chance at Valhalla.He took it well. The officer even announced to the entire battalion that their feudal overlord was leading them into the fight. My codename was 'Prince'. I hope I didn't turn out like the singer, I had no aspirations for being Machiavelli's 'hero', but being remember as someone like Prince Harry wouldn't be so bad.What I did know was this was my choice of actions and I couldn't send others into the madness I had inspired. I didn't blame myself for the deaths. Those were inevitable if Ajax was going to die. I didn't blame myself for Ajax, that was the Weave of Fate being a bastardly bitch. No, I had to kill Ajax because I was an idiot, and I loved my companions, and if it wasn't me making the attempt and possibly dying, it would be one of them. Not on my watch.Our IAR 330 Puma Helicopter lifted off into the sky. Our two companion birds, another troop carrier and an assault variant of the Puma, followed suit and soon we linked up with the rest of the company that was going to rappel into the clearing next to the ruins. Could I rappel? Sure, I lied. Hey, I'd made it to the top of the rope in gym class at the end of my senior year. That had to count for something.I was even lucky to have the lynchpin of my master plan sitting next to me. One in sixteen, what were the odds? "You, what's your name?" I asked the soldier barely older than me. "Master Corporal Menner," he grinned. Maybe he sensed my insanity. "Székely?" I asked. He nodded.   "Do you believe I am your Prince?""Either that, or you are crazy," he kept grinning. I leaned over and after some helmet shuffling, I whispered my request in his ear. I didn't demand that he agree, only that if he didn't, he wouldn't turn me in. Our eyes met."Why?" he was now filled with disbelief. I had passed beyond the realm of comedian to the land where all crazy ideas go off to die."It is the only way. Trust me, I don't love this plan either, but it is the only way I can think of to keep as many of you alive as possible," I explained. "He's a monster.""How will this help?" he was still confused, even if he was being swept away with my intensity."I don't have time to explain. All I can tell you is that I'm not crazy and I don't want to die, but this is the only thing I can think of to keep my people alive," I remained firm and confident in my beliefs."I will have to think about it," he conceded. At least he wasn't insisting I be forcibly committed to a mental institution. I did annoy one of the two crewmen in the back with the rest of us combatants when I stood up and looked out the side window. I glimpsed it, her, flowing through the forest beneath us. After I sat back down, the Captain flagged me.I had forgotten to cut on my communications rig on. "First Force (the two companies of the 22nd) has encountered the enemy before they could exit into the flatlands," he paused, somewhat shocked. "They are taking heavy casualties. It is just like you warned us. These foes are exceedingly lethal." "Don't worry about it," I overflowed with charisma. "Just follow me and we'll be fine." "But, I thought you said you didn't know anything about the compound?" the Captain looked at me funny."I don't. I'm relying on luck," I pumped my eyebrows. The Captain knew enough English to groan."I have a sudden desire to club a baby seal," Rachel stared at me intently. Who, me? "Let me and my men take the point," the Captain insisted. "Captain, either I'm diving headfirst out of our ride, or you are letting me rappel down in the first wave, either way, my boots are the first on the ground," I demanded. "No," the Captain shook his head. "You are a civilian." "Captain," I leaned forward. "Everyone else is fighting and dying because I made a judgment call. You can't ask me to hold back now."That shone through. Over his battalion frequency, he could hear the confusion and chaos chiseling away at his brethren in the 22nd. He could tell by my countenance that I both knew the enemy he was going to fight and that I wasn't ruled by guilt, or a death wish. I wanted to go first because I thought I could make the difference between someone else's life and death. "Who are the other three with you?" he stated. Four could rappel down at a time. "Rachel, Chaz and Master Corporal Menner here," I indicated. Rachel didn't freak, the Colour Sergeant looked my way and gave his acknowledgement, as did Menner. "I'll go down with you, Captain," Pamela spoke up.Of my group, Delilah, Wiesława and Virginia had stayed behind to guard Odette, Riki, the Lovasz sisters and the Loma family. Two troopers of the 24th joined them to provide extra security if needed. Vincent had pulled seniority to be the sole American going. With Chaz and Delilah, there hadn't been a real discussion about it. Chaz was the professional ground-pounder.Selena had volunteered to go even though this wasn't really her fight. She claimed the right of revenge for Ajax's attempt to kill the Vizsla, but I thought it was something else, some desire to step forward and make the point that the Black Hand were invested in this global struggle. There had been no doubt that Rachel  and  her team plus Sakuniyas and Pamela would be joining me.In my estimation, we were over the target area way too fast. I hadn't thought of a good reason to talk myself out of this harebrained scheme of mine. The side doors of the Puma opened. Rachel would be going down on my side."Look and see what Rachel does and do the same thing," Pamela yelled to me over the roar of the engines."And don't lock your knees or you'll sprain your ankles," she added. It was just another day of 'on the job' training at Havenstone Commercial Investments, I rationalized. I was scared, which was also a good indicator that I was still marginally sane. Rachel made her movements slow and steady.I went down a second later, barely remembering to avoid rope burn through my gloves and not bust my feet when I hit bottom. Rachel crouched. She was waiting for follow up troops before advancing. Me, I ran straight toward the ruins. Why? It was Alal once more. From the relayed chatter from the 22nd and whatever spy plane the Romanians had above, I 'knew' that Ajax hadn't made it back to the fortifications yet.If we hurried, we could beat him there. Then we would be ambushing his ass for a change. It almost worked. Whatever Chaz and Menner thought of my actions, they kept it to themselves. I didn't have to be a psychic to realize Rachel wasn't a fan. I leapt over the first Amazon corpse. The second one I passed was sitting with her back to the tree, hands tied around the trunk and had been tortured before she died.I believed that was when the momentum shifted. This was barbarism and the three following me knew it. Menner relayed our findings to his Captain even as the first helicopter was pulling away. My mind was picking up the details and processing somewhere in the back of my mind so as not to distracting me from the task of staying alive.A pile of bodies lumped too close together, they had been executed. A small girl, three, or four, with a close-contact wound to the temple. The smell of burnt flesh, more torture. Whatever Code of Military Conduct the Mycenaeans had, it wasn't the rules we, their opponents, fought by today. We were outraged and help was coming.We were running in from the northeast. Three meter from what had once been a doorway, I broke free of the underbrush and saw the closest Greek and the row of vehicles behind him. He was to my east, maybe ten meters away. I wasn't stopping. The terrain had funneled us down so that we weren't coming directly from the helicopter's noise.That must have been the reason he wasn't staring at us when we appeared. I didn't stop. Chaz and Menner were right behind me. Rachel only slowed enough to fire her P-90 at full-auto at the man as she ran. She killed him. The three of us ran across the open-aired, ruined room until we found the doorway to the other side of the building. From there, we had a good view of Ajax's remaining Eagles and the eight remaining men with them."I'm going for higher ground," Chaz growled before he took off."Rachel, go back and secure the corner we came in by," I shouted. She grimaced but obeyed. Menner had his own ideas. He fired off his first rocket-propelled grenade from his AG-7 at the farthest Eagle he could clearly see, blowing it to smithereens. I added the

Not the welcome we expectedWhen your tour guide is an assassin, what can go wrong?By FinalStand. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels.You can do wrong while trying to do right.FlashbackAlal's 'milk of human kindness' had finally run dry as the Visigoths sacked his Roman villa. While looters ran off with his latest trappings of wealth, and deserted by his servants and his slaves, Grandpa decided that he was tired of fucking around with the Human Race. He felt they were simply too stupid, venal and weak to make any positive, lasting changes in the world.Alal decided that he was going to make the key choices for them. Fuck free will. Fuck letting the vermin that floated to the top of the cesspool destroy everything good in the world, as he had witnessed them doing time and time again. He had lost count of the monuments destroyed, histories of peoples forgotten and benefits to mankind burned away by barbarism and ignorance.By the fading light of August the 26th, 410 CE, Alal found himself sitting back in the pergola (a sort of mini-gazebo) in his rear gardens, drinking through several amphora of wine all the while having a deep philosophical debate with the several dozen very dead Goths decorating his environs.As three or four looters would enter the garden, he would kill them. And then three or four more would show up looking for the earlier group,, on and on. This reinforced Alal's belief that something drastic had to be done. He seriously considered going to the coast, getting a ship and five solid stone anchors. He'd sail out two days, maybe three, wrap himself in the anchors and jump overboard.The problem, as he saw it, was that given a few decades, the ropes would rot and he'd bob to the surface to see again that none of the fundamentals had changed. Further complicating his current thinking was that every time he came close to throwing in the cosmic towel, some more GOD DAMN GOTHS would come around, calling for their buddies, the dead ones. Somewhere around noon on August the 27th, Alal vowed that he was tired of this shit.Right on cue, around twenty Goths came strolling through the rear of his villa and soaked up the carnage out back. Fifty-two of their brethren were in various states of dismemberment and defilement (Alal had been, as usual, angry). They saw this dark-skinned Roman and rightly asked 'where's the army that killed these fellows?' He walked up to them in his wine-splashed toga."Are you the one in charge?" he asked the meanest looking Visigoth in passible Goth."I am," the leader responded. With lightning speed, he killed the man with his own sword. The Germans weren't sure what to make of that, it had happened so fast."You can join me," Alal indicated himself, "or you can join him," he indicated the corpse of their former leader. He had his new band of followers and the rest was Illuminati history.End FlashbackFor me, this meant more to me than living with the memories of a very bitter, driven and pitiless man. Alal was essentially the anti-me. It gave me chills to realize that all of Alal's gifts were bestowed on me with a purpose. I knew it was part of his greater plan. Normally, to end-run an evil genius, you just find him and kill him. Not only would Alal not stay dead, I now knew how well he could fight.I knew only four people who might be in his league, and I wasn't one of them. Of the four, Sakuniyas wasn't likely to help Pamela, Saint Marie and Elsa get the job done. That meant I had to rev up the deception engine to comfort my Aunts with hope, while dispelling the knowledge of how little they mattered to their sire. Almost as bad, I had to ignore what horribly people they were while extending that portion of my soul.It was with some relief that I hugged, kissed, and forcefully separated myself from the Aunts in Dublin. We were going on to Budapest's Ferenc Liszt International Airport. My next action was to make my request to Selena for a contract with the Ghost Tigers to defend Hana when she arrived in Russia. (Of the three 9 Clan Assassin-Babes, Selena was the least impressed with me.) She informed me that the Ghost Tigers didn't do bodyguard work. I still wanted her to relay my request, so she relented. After that, I passed out.We left Dublin around 9:30 am Friday morning and landed in Budapest at 1:45 pm., still Friday. As Rachel rousted me so I could grab a quick shower before touchdown, I was gifted with the misconceptions of my fellow travelers:To put it nicely, Riki thought I was somewhat revolting, Virginia was disturbed and Chaz had lowered his opinion of my moral character. It was the incest thing. Vincent being polite was a pleasant surprise, Delilah's camaraderie less so and Odette was peaches with my most recent sexcapades. She was far too good to me. The Amazons uniformly didn't give a crap."So, is there going to be any other bizarre behavior we should be prepared for?" Riki sat down next to me as I was drying my hair. I was back to my 'jeans, t-shirt and wind-breaker' style."Fine, " I said loudly. "It is really none of your business what I did with and to my mother's clones. Yes, they are all clones of my mother, who died when I was seven." A lie."They are also the genetic creations of my grandfather, also known by many as Cáel O'Shea. They are sterile, they are wickedly evil, and two weeks ago I didn't know they existed. I do have a real aunt in Maryland. She's my Father's sister and is not part of the menagerie. Oh yeah, my grandpa is currently a disembodied spirit, back from the Netherworld and looking for a body to take over, if he hasn't found one already," I added."He was born roughly five thousand years ago, was cursed by an ancient Sumerian Goddess such that he can never just die and stay dead. I have his memories running around my head, which, along with denying me a good night's sleep, allows me to speak an assortment of languages, use virtually every weapon built before 1970 and know that he is a vicious criminal mastermind the likes of which you've never imagined outside of fiction.How does that sound, Riki? Shall I get more bizarre? Trust me, I can," I regarded her evenly. She was speechless, but not out of awe. No, she was certain that I was completely unhinged."Everyone who believes Cáel, raise their hand," Odette demanded. Her hand went up. Odette and the Amazons agreeing was expected by the outsiders. Delilah and Virginia joining in was not."Captain Fairchild?" Colour Sgt. Chaz Tomorrow requested clarification."You've all seen those five O'Shea's that left the plane in Ireland. Barring some cosmetic changes, they were the exact same woman. You can either go with Sean Connery's Tak-ne creating a female clone army, or you can believe there is an otherworldly plastic surgeon altering a cadre of super-rich bitches to all look alike," Delilah, who was a captain of something, put out there."Who in the Hell is Tak-ne?" Riki mumbled."Duh," I poked the State Department lassie. "Connor MacLeod's Egyptian mentor in Highlander, the original movie and in the less than stellar sequel, Highlander: The Quickening"."You are mistaken. Connery was that Spanish guy," Riki poked me back."Actually, the relevant quote is: 'I am Juan Sánchez Villalobos Ramírez, Chief metallurgist to King Charles V of Spain. And I'm at your service'," Vincent regaled us with his movie trivia. "He later reveals that he was born Tak-ne in Egypt in the 9th century BCE. Also, his Spanish name makes no sense, he has one too many surnames.""Agent Loire, I am beginning to find intelligent men to be attractive," Charlotte said."Umm, thank you," Vincent responded warily."This might be a good point to get something clear," Chaz inquired. "Mr. Nyilas, whose side are you on? It appears to be rather complicated.""Okay, Chaz, call me Cáel. Calling me Mr. Nyilas makes me miss my dad. I can also be addressed as Cáel 'Wakko' Ishara, Head of House Ishara of the First Twenty Houses of the Amazon Host. Or, you can call me what the Great Khan does, Magyarorszag es Erdely Hercege. Finally, those who love me, or find me amusing, may call me Fehér mén."Selena's snort indicated she'd failed to hide her amusement at my presumptiveness, both titular and physically."Do you want to explain what's so amusing?" Riki looked over to the Black Hand assassin."Your job should be exceptionally easy now," Selena mocked me, "Prince of Hungry and Transylvania, or do you prefer 'White Stud'?""Laugh while you can, Monkey-Girl," I sneered. "The guy currently making a run at erasing seven hundred years of Asian history gave me that title. As for Fehér mén, that means 'White Stallion' and is symbolic of my ties to House Epona, not a phallic reference." Riki's look had gone from disgust, to anger (because she thought she was being played) and lastly, to shock."No," I interpreted her fear. "I am not here as some vanguard to unite the Magyar people to their cultural kinfolk in Central Asia. If you know your Central European history, you might recall that the Mongols devastated my homeland. For the next 450 years, the Turks were unwelcome visitors, conquerors and overlords. My princely status is a pat on the head for a job well done and nothing more.""What job did you do?" Riki prodded."I saved a man's life," I looked pained to admit. She didn't get it."It must have been a major VIPs life," Chaz suggested."You can say that," Pamela nodded. "End of discussion time too."At Ferenc Liszt International, we were diverted to a private hangar once more, courtesy of the Republic of Ireland's diplomatic umbrella. Three grey Ford Focuses and a white panel truck advertising a furniture repair store awaited us. Security issues were immediately obvious. They wanted to separate us (in the Fords) from most of our luggage (in the truck).The five guy welcoming party hid under the cloak of 'don't speak any language you claim to speak' and Selena was of zip help. So, I spoke to them in Hungarian. They glanced my way, but didn't respond. Serbian? Nope. Romanian? Nope."Bows and doves," I commanded.That translated rather logically as 'guns/bows' and 'phones/doves'. Out came our pistols. The only Black Hand to react fast enough was Selena and Pamela had her covered. The Amazons were aiming at the locals while Delilah and Chaz had their weapons out and scanning. Vincent and Virginia hadn't been fast enough, this time. They also didn't have guns pointed at them.The lead BH flunky began talking calmly in German, heavily Slavic accented German."What do you think you are doing?" he inquired of me, in German."Disarming you, ya Moron," I grumbled. Then added in Hittite; "Go", and in my Amazons went to very roughly search, disarm and de-phone our not so friendly friends."Alright, gather up your luggage," I called out to my group. "We are walking to town." That wasn't truly accurate. There was a metro associated with the airport, a kilometer away max. Our guides didn't speak English so they were rather surprised when the bags came out of the truck and were distributed to their owners. Riki Martin and Odette were in some trouble.Girls and 'only packing the necessities', Well, we had some diplomatic lumber to toss at the security services, Vincent had web-searched our location and the route we needed to take to the metro, and Delilah had purchased week-long public transport passes for the group. Only when we started marching out of the hangar did the BH comprehend the totality of their error.The five guys in the hangar were chattering away, in Hungarian, and Selena was peeved."You are upsetting my superiors by blatantly disrespecting their courtesy," she reminded me. "They have guaranteed your safety.""Less than a day has passed since the shootout in London, Selena," I countered."This is the Black Hand's backyard," Selena persisted, "not London.""So, you are only going to help us if we do stupid shit we wouldn't do, even on our own home ground, is that it?" I chuckled. "Sweet," then, to my people, "I guess we are on our own."The airport security guards didn't know what to make of our group of over-worked Sherpa, but the US State department and the RoI (Republic of Ireland) vouched for us, so they let us pass.We hadn't taken the cars and the truck because that would have been theft. The confiscated guns and phones had been disassembled and tossed into a large iron drum of used aviation lubricant. Odette began shopping around for hotel reservations (I was carrying most of her gear). She was the logical choice because she sounded the most human of the bunch.Selena called her people back, explained the fuck up and engaged in a mutual ass-chewing that spilled over a half-dozen languages and ended up with Dick-head, the local BH chieftain providing us with quarters that would turn a blind eye to our arsenal. With that address in mind, we made for the bowels of modern Budapest.Dutifully, Riki contacted the US Embassy to Hungary's CIA mission head and Chargé D' Affaires, a.i., updating them on our arrival and movements. At the last moment, I had Riki relay the wrong address, on a paranoid hunch. I was right to be paranoid except I was looking in the wrong direction.We had just disembarked at the Kőbánya-Kispest M3 station when we walked into the rolling ambush. A 'rolling ambush' is like a meeting engagement, the difference being that one side (ours) is on the move, not knowing it is being hunted while the other side (our attackers) was rushing to catch up with us, not knowing where along the path they would find us.As we preparing to transition from the station to the attached terminal, looking for the bus line that would connect us to the BH safe house in the Kőbánya (X) District, our attackers were dismounting their vehicles from across the street as well as to our left and right. They were dressed like cops. Had they been armed like cops,"Oh look," I snickered to Pamela, "I see a whole bunch of heavily armed people coming our way.""Good for you," Pamela muttered. "Your eyes are still working.""Do you think they are here to raise me up on their shields and proclaim me 'Prince'?" I joked."I think they are here to kill us," Pamela grinned."I prefer to think positively," I grinned back."I am positive they are here to kill us," Pamela laughed. It had to be our relaxed demeanor that confused them.Had we been the droids they were looking for, we wouldn't have been chatting in the open with our bags in our hands. That would have made us crazy, and they would have been right. We were crazy alright and there was a method to our madness. It was mid-afternoon, yet there were plenty of average Hungarians wandering about.Sure, they saw the 'special cops' closing in. They didn't see the upcoming shoot-out because that was plain nuts. A gun battle in a modern metropolis in broad daylight? London yesterday was an aberration, not the new normal. Our impromptu plan was to let the killers get as close as possible to limit the collateral damage.This wasn't classic Amazon training. It was a concession to allies who did care about civilians killed in the cross-fire. The oncoming hit squad was finally putting faces to targets when Odette broke the calm before the storm. All she did was squeak when Vincent pushed her behind a kiosk. Riki took Virginia shifting her to cover in silence.Delilah took off at a dead-run to the south-east. They were raising their shotguns and assault rifles. We were drawing our pistols. Normally this would have been an unequal match, except that in the time period where, in their eyes, we had gone from bystanders to targets, they'd also covered a good deal of ground, to the point that they were out in the open while my fighting band was in close proximity to all kinds of cover.It started out as eighteen to twelve. Pamela, Chaz and Selena quickly cut down those odd by five. Me? I didn't try to shoot and run at the same time, so I made it to cover and was stuck there by our opponents use of fully-automatic fire.My lack of martial prowess could be forgiven by the reality I was the one they were trying to off. My greatest contribution to this skirmish was tossing my SPAS-12 to Chaz so he could use something more than his standard military issue Glock-17. I had barely gotten Chaz's appreciative nod when two grenades went off in close proximity to me.At first, I heard and felt nothing. My eyes were having trouble focusing. When my limbs began to orient themselves, I had to fight down the instinct to move. I was lying down, which was far safer than staggering around in the middle of this hail of lead. The twin grenades turned out to be their second and very fatal mistake on this mission.The first had been their delay in identifying my group. The second, using the stun grenades, did put me, Pamela and Selena out of commission temporarily. But their mistake was having misplaced my six Amazons in this mess they had created. They did have thirteen shooters versus Chaz, Virginia and Vincent. They rushed our position using the classic advance while firing rote.Two meters from me, the six Amazons revealed themselves with five P-90's and one big-ass bow. Four escaped the kill zone only to find themselves flanked by Delilah. Her .480, combined with their confusion, finished off the survivors. That wasn't the end of it. We still had to effect our get-away.I was still getting my head on straight as the ladies decided to hotwire some of the deceased men's rides and get us the heck out of Dodge. Recovery brought with it the knowledge that Virginia and Chaz had been shot. Pamela, Selena and me, we had some scrapes and bruises. Everyone else checked out. Mona let us know that she could handle the wounded. They wouldn't be doing jumping jacks for a week or two, but a hospital was not required. On the downside, no one believed that eighteen killers dressed as cops randomly rolled up on our transit point by accident. The only people who knew about our change in travel plans had been the Black Hand. We'd lied to the US.We broke into an abandoned factory to stash the vehicles and make our next plan. Selena was coldly furious. Not only did she come to the same conclusion we had, the Black Hand had set us up to be murdered, we weren't letting her call in. Wiesława and Charlotte kept their guns pointed at her, so low was our level of trust.Chaz was pretty much of the opinion that Selena should be coerced to provide us with the names and locations of the Black Hand involved so that we could do our own 'fact finding tour'. Oddly, none of the Americans asked to be pulled out. Vincent and Riki wanted to let the US Embassy know what had happened, yet were willing to wait until we were secure somewhere first.Rachel was on board with Chaz's idea, with the addendum that they kill every Black Hand they could get their hands on before fleeing the city. They had tried to kill ME after all. I was touched. It was Pamela who put things in perspective.1) The attackers were not Black Hand, they were mercenaries and that pointed a bloody finger at the Condottieri.2) Selena wasn't a fanatic and her life had been in as much danger as anyone else's. She wasn't part of our ambush. Her buddies had tossed her under the bus.3) It would have been far easier to catch us in that convoy they'd tried to stick us with. Caught in pre-planned crossfires and without our heavier weapons, we would have all died.4) Having failed to deliver us to the pre-planned ambush site, the Condottieri had to rush to our metro stop because, the safe house they had prepared for us wouldn't have worked. We had the numbers to allow us take total charge of our security once we were in place. No, gauging our numbers, this traitor had sent the mercs into a straight-up fight they'd just lost.

Today, Daybreak introduces you to the 149th Managing Board of The Daily Princetonian. Listen in to meet the minds behind all the articles you'll read this year! 

Getting to our classes.Based on a post by FinalStand, in 13 parts. Listen to the ► Podcast at Explicit Novels. Getting to our classes was eased by us being late. My teacher declared me 'tardy' despite my protestations that my brother had just been taken to the hospital. A few of my Black classmates snickered over that. 'Alexander' was given a 'pass' by his far more understanding teacher. That teacher was one of the 'haters', but Mikhail figured that hospitalizing one of us had gone way overboard in that man's eyes.That wasn't the only sign that things had changed. Darius and his crowd were prepping for the next attack. The rest of the school; they sensed something terrible was on the horizon. Our lack of response was a warning sign all its own. We weren't cringing, blustering, or glowering. Vicky said we were the 'eye of the storm' and wanted in on whatever vengeance we had planned.We told her we didn't have one. At lunch, Taliyah was torn up at first because she thought that Darius and Rashaan had Alexander beaten up over her. They'd even taunted her about it between classes, warning that worse was in store for her and Brandy at lunch. Those two women had gotten a measure of revenge by changing the location of the Cheer Squads 'lunch meeting'/gangbang, then forgotten to inform the football team of the change of venue.Darius came looking shortly after the fact. The other eight members of the Cheer Squad looked perplexed. Had Brandy not humiliated him (by dissing his BBC), he might have not decided to assume the whole group was in on this policy of denial.‘Brandy, get your ass over here,' Darius seethed.‘Taliyah, you had best correct yourself,' Rashaan added. A few other players who pretended they were BF/GF with a cheerleader added to the commotion.‘No,' I stood up and confronted him. He was looking for something more. 'Alexander' took up a position on the far side of the cheerleaders. People were clearing out the space between the football team and us.‘Brandy,' Darius stressed his authority. She was wavering. Fortunately for us, Taliyah was not.‘Back off you Mother-fucker,' she screamed.‘Taliyah?' Rashaan mumbled.‘You really want to be on their side?' Darius' eyes narrowed.‘I want to kick you and your fellow cowards' asses,' she seethed. Darius shot Rashaan a mocking glance, shaming him. His 'woman' was getting mouthy.‘Taliyah,' Rashaan asserted himself. ‘You are asking for a world of trouble.'‘What?' she spat back. ‘How many bruthas are you going to bring when you try to shut me up; cause I know you aren't man enough to do it yourself.'‘Bitch,' he stepped forward. I tried to move to her, Darius interposed himself. Mikhail had three guys on his flank so any move he made would put him in a nest of trouble.Rashaan grabbed her arm. My past twenty-four hours around that girl taught me that was a mistake. I didn't know if Rashaan was slower than Mikhail, or just caught off guard. Her slap resonated across the cafeteria. Before he could respond, she put a knee into his crotch, doubling him over. Multiply guys winced at the power of that nutting. Rashaan hissed like a punctured balloon and slowly slumped to the ground.Darius decided that was the indicator for the final showdown and settling of accounts. Kaelyne kicking a chair into his path was unexpected by both of us. Darius was far quicker on his feet than Rashaan. He was able to jump back before he could get clipped. The mob was so dependent on Darius for leadership that they froze up when his charge was truncated. Kaelyne had saved a whole lot of people a whole lot of pain.‘I'm done with you,' Taliyah sneered. ‘If you had wanted to be a real man, you would have fought Mikhail one on one, not like a pack of chicken shit jocks.' There was another hush and a 'no she didn't'.‘Brandy, get the fuck over here,' Darius glowered.‘I'm; I'm with Taliyah,' her voice wavered. ‘What you did was wrong. I thought you would be more of a man about this.'‘You'll pay for that,' he promised.‘Shut up. You are done. Brandy is with me now,' I challenged him. ‘I once offered you the opportunity to settle this like a man. You declined and now the whole school sees you for what you really are, a big, Black narcissist who doesn't care about anyone, but yourself.'There was a third pause in the murmuring.‘I don't think the football team knows what a narcissist is?' Kaelyne said in a low voice. Brandy let out a hysterical giggle.‘Samsonov!' the coach bellowed from across the room.‘Which one of us?' 'Alexander' shot back.‘Both of you,' he growled.‘No,' we said in unison.‘What?' he blustered. We were screwed no matter what we did.‘I need them to move some things in my class,' Ms. Blanchard spoke up from behind him. Alexander, the real Alexander, would have been so proud.‘Get some other boys,' Coach spun on her. She began to wilt.‘Coach Thomas,' a voice behind Ms. Blanchard emoted softly, ‘you are getting on my last damn nerve.'‘This ain't your school, Fonteneau,' he turned on Mom.‘My boy says you were one of the people that beat him up. I'm here to let the Principal know. On a personal level, I'm suing you and the school for what happened.'‘I didn't do nothing,' he groused.‘Funny, the only one who claims to have witnessed my son's beating is my son,' she purred like a Mamma Tiger stalking her prey. ‘I may be a Samsonov now, but I still have all that Fonteneau fortune to fight that court battle with. One more mishap for my other two boys, I'm going to have the best law firm in Little Rock crawl so far up your rectum that they know what you are going to eat before you bite into it.'‘I'm not afraid of you,' he puffed himself up.‘Really? None of these cases will take place in Davis County, Tobias (the coach). The previous school principal assaulted me, I have three sworn complaints against the Kingston PD filed with the Arkansas State Police, and a lawsuit pending against this school and the school board. A change of jurisdiction is a given. I'll be dragging you down to Little Rock to settle this mess.'‘You are lying,' he gulped.‘Test me,' Mom sizzled. I still couldn't see her over the crowd, but I knew those steely eyes were boring thru his soul. He might not have been guilty of beating up Alexander yet he was guilty of so much more that he was already rotten to the core. Everyone knew he had given his tacit approval for the beating of a student theoretically under his care.As an educator, he was sworn to better the lives of his charges, not use them for his own aggrandizement. No matter how entitled he felt he was, he knew the outside world wouldn't see it that way. Worse, he knew, deep down, he could have done so much better for his students. Sportsmanship, grades and fraternity were all his to dispense. Instead;‘Darius,' Coach Thomas called out. ‘You and I need to have a chat.'Darius turned his back on me and walked over to the Coach. Undoubtedly they were going to have a planning session. Alexander's fall had turned out to be a mixed blessing. Now the Sheriff's department had their eye on the place. Big Bob himself was chatting with the Principal and was inviting the man over for dinner. Big Bob was getting involved. It would take a few weeks before it became 'race-based harassment.‘Vlad,' Brandy hugged my left arm tightly. ‘Prince, how bad is this going to be?'That was unlooked for by multiple people. Two linemen retrieved Rashaan before the team made their departure.‘Brandy, take care of the Cheer Squad. If the team gets their hands on them, there is going to be some serious suffering. I'll be okay,' I smiled down at her.Taliyah gave me a thumbs-up before joining with Brandy. Mikhail told me later that she gave him a wink. After all, she knew that it was Alexander in the hospital, not her 'man' yet she had played her outrage so well. I'd almost been convinced. I was sure she'd made an impression on Rashaan; and Darius. They rounded up the Cheer Squad and the arguments and accusations began. The majority of their squad-mates didn't mind being BBC cum-sluts. That Taliyah and Brandy had broken the spell was seemingly impossible for them to grasp.As it turned out, with Taliyah giving Brandy some spine, Brandy was able to work her charismatic magic on the others to make them agree to a new program. Lunch 'workouts' were a thing of the past, as were after-scrimmage play times. From this point forward, the girls would be driving themselves to and from away-games, no more communal bus rides. To stress their point, Taliyah only had to point at Mikhail/Alexander's beating to show them how out of hand things had gotten.Darius' opening offensive had backfired in more than one way. I was sure he only saw this rebellion as a temporary thing he could soon correct. After all, he had blackmail material, his dominant mystique and his super-impressive BBC that would bring any woman to heel. His only concern was how much hell to put Brandy through before he disposed of her in one colossal gang-bang then dumping her mind-broken slut body on Big Bob's stoop. It was the 'asshole' thing to do.The rest of the day was still torturous. I developed several bruises and scrapes. Darius was still going with his full-court press to wear us down to the point we lashed out; suddenly there would be dozens of witnesses to our infraction. To add to our problems, Kaelyne also became a target of their aggression. I was as surprised as anyone when I learned she had been sent to the Vice Principal's office.Some muttonhead had grabbed her tit in the hallway between classes. She stabbed him in the face with a metal mechanical pencil while screaming 'rape' at the top of her lungs. This was not the 'Bad Ole Days'. Big Bob was keeping his eyes on the place and Principal Jean-Georges wasn't that 'Fat Old Bastard'. The 'assailant' had six inches and a hundred pounds on Kaelyne so the idea that she randomly attacked him was ludicrous.From what I heard, Big Bob was in a downright arctic mood too. Only later did Mom tell me she'd shown him the video of that first night at the lake; bukkake Brandy, Clarence getting some, and the general degradation handed out. Big Bob turned out to be Nothing like my Dad. Mom had to hold him back from going all 'redneck' on Darius and his crew. What did she offer?Revenge; at the hands of the Samsonov's. Dad could never find out. Big Bob was okay with that, bending the law to the point of breaking, covering up a crime and inventing evidence as needed to make sure that the crime would go unsolved, all those evils were absolved by the wickedness visited upon his daughter. Even then Mom had to promise an epic ass-whooping to keep him in line. 'How soon?' he had asked. Mom asked him if 'Alexander', Taliyah, Brandy and I could spend the night at his place Friday night after the game.‘No problem,' he grinned savagely.That afternoon we had to set some of Ms. Blanchard's students straight about how the wrong Samsonov had been beaten up and how Ms. Blanchard had a permanent escort to and from school for the foreseeable future. I had to admit, beating the crap out of the five of them felt good. Mikhail was positively euphoric. Big Bob had a reliable deputy hanging around the football team after school so that the Cheer Squad could go and come unmolested.Friday was more of the same, running the gauntlet between classes, dealing with collateral damage, Kaelyne was beaten up by some Black girls in the restroom, Vicky got more of the same when she tried to rescue her, and general crap at lunch. After lunch we were expecting a last, major push, some effort to remove us from the picture before the football game, leaving Brandy and Taliyah vulnerable far from home.It didn't work out that way. As lunch ended, the Brothers Samsonov, Kaelyne, (Vicky simply cut class) and the cheerleaders were all requested in the Principal's office. From there we were handed off to my Mom's tender loving care. See, she'd rented two luxurious vans for the team to be taken to the game, but we had to leave early to pick them up. Darius had fucked with the wrong Samsonov alright. Mom was a freaking psychic, or a satanic prophet.The game was the standard beat down. We won 30-14. Dad, currently off-duty, helped Mom shepherd the now horny cheerleaders off the field after the final play. I caught Darius glaring hate my way. He was counting on our inevitable defeat. What happened instead was indeed inevitable. Rattlesnakes that bit Mom, died. Killer whales turned away out of common courtesy shown to apex predators. Ten minutes alone in a room with my Mom had hardcore 'Lifers' calling their Mommas begging forgiveness; and I was assured that Theo was even scarier.After the game, we drove all the cheerleaders home, deposited the vans at our house, then Brandy, Taliyah, Mikhail and us went over to Big Bob's house. The girls grew sleepy, so Taliyah called her mother and told her she was spending the night at Brandy's. She didn't mention us being there. It was okay. The girls and Big Bob nodded off soon enough. Ground up sleeping pills in their drinks will do that.At nine o'clock, I woke up Big Bob from his recliner and suggested he go to bed. After he left, I erased the pre-recorded TiVo he'd unwittingly been watching, changed the clocks back to the real time, midnight, and then joined Mikhail on floor of Brandy's bedroom.‘Did you cut Big Bob's phone back on?' he asked. With the scope of the disaster we had enacted, he was bound to be called in.‘Yeah. Alibi established,' I yawned.My post-combat adrenaline rush was still keeping me awake. Twenty-three minutes later, Big Bob knocked on the door before coming in.‘Daddy?' Brandy rose up on her elbow and rubbed her eyes.‘Just checking up on you,' he scanned the room. ‘Taliyah, boys; ‘‘Is there a problem?' Brandy pouted.‘It seems there was a big fight at school and some boys got really hurt,' he shot Mikhail and me a curious look.‘Sorry we missed it,' Mikhail snorted.‘Vladimir, step outside and talk to me a second,' Big Bob motioned. I complied. It seemed prudent at the time. Once in the hall, he shut the door.‘This didn't have anything to do with you, or your brother, did it?'‘What happened when?' I tilted my head. Big Bob chuckled.‘Roughly nine o'clock tonight,' he grinned.‘As I recall, I went downstairs for a soda around nine, saw you asleep in your chair and suggested you go to bed,' I kept a straight face.‘I would have helped,' he whispered.‘With what, Sir?' I wondered. He looked at me steadily. Dad would have known something was up, seeking the truth was in his genetics. Big Bob; was as a diligent public servant who wove the delicate balance between law and order versus what was best for the public welfare. He just nodded, gave another chuckle then left.Over breakfast the next morning, Big Bob gave us the 411 on what had happened. Between nine o'clock and nine-ten last night, Darius and six other football players had been drinking in the parking lot after the bus ride back to school when two (maybe three) armed and armored assailants ambushed them. The attackers had been wielding big sticks/staves and proceeded to beat the seven students into unconsciousness.Darius had gotten the worst of it. Both of his knees were shattered. He was already being transferred from Davis Memorial Hospital to the one attached to the University of Arkansas Sports Medicine program. Even with that, the doctor at the hospital worried that the young athlete would ever walk again, much less run. Any hope of a career in football was gone. Even if he made a full recovery, it would take years. By that time; a college scholarship followed by some time in the NFL was a distant, impossible dream.My brother and I were immediate suspects except we had three witnesses to say we were otherwise occupied. The key one was Sheriff Big Bob Carson's himself. He recalled the time as well as what was on TV when I woke him up.Who else could it have been? Darius and the rest of Davis High's football team had spent all last season and the start of this season building up a huge roster of teams who hated their guts. Enough to hurt them? Darius' buddies had sidelined a fair number of student-athletes in their time. It could be drug related too. Darius' big brother was a known local drug figure.A peculiar aspect of the crime was that the security cameras around the crime scene had been knocked out with an air rifle while we were all at the game out of town, I had no idea that Kaelyne was that good a shot. There was no video evidence of the crime and, unless you believed in a massive conspiracy, it pretty much cleared the Samsonov's (Dad had been with us at the game and 'Mikhail' had been in the hospital; where people unknown/Darius had put him).Mom's alibi didn't start until she was seen by my Dad around 9:45 that night. She'd gone to visit 'Mikhail' at the hospital (he would be coming home this morning) then gone for a walk on the property. The Kingston PD had launched a raid on the house despite the crime not happening in their jurisdiction. They did illegally cross into county land, yet didn't find any incriminating evidence. Phineas Cobb the third had taken care of that for her.A five person (me, Mikhail, Mom, Kaelyne and Mr. Cobb) conspiracy had given Darius far more retribution than he could have possibly considered. Mom had insisted that we destroy his legs, thus ending his most potent weapon in the BBC arsenal, his status as a sports star. His dominant shadow would no longer cast itself on the halls of our school.Had he not put Alexander in the hospital;But he did. Threatening my brother's life had cost him his future. The most insidious part of Mom's plan was that whatever the Black community of Kingston thought, they would never be sure it was the Samsonov's behind it. We had never verbally threatened anybody over what happened to 'Mikhail/Alexander'.To believe we did it was to accept we had some sort of serious grievance. We did. Everyone knew we did yet they had denied the crime when it happened and were now trapped in that denial. In the investigation of the beating, the name 'Darius' had never come up. In fact, 'Mikhail/Alexander' hadn't named anyone, not even the coach. Mom had bluffed about that.Publically, if we had any issues to work out, it would have been with the coach and he was just fine, not a scratch on him.None of that stopped the Kingston PD from stepping up the pressure on the Samsonovs. It didn't stop the Mayor from calling in the State Police to take over the investigation. We weren't sure on what grounds it was being requested. After all, her talk with me about Darius had happened under circumstances she definitely didn't want to make public. Dad wasn't part of either investigation. Big Bob being our alibi didn't automatically exclude him.The outside investigators came by Bob's on Sunday to talk with him about it and he'd agreed on a concurrent investigation. The biggest question for the men (women actually) from Little Rock was why did anyone think it was 'Alexander' and I. What was our motive? Brandy had dumped Darius to be with me, so why would I want to punish him over that fact? Brandy hadn't been publically, or privately, threatened by him.'Alexander' and I? We Samsonov boys were good kids, making good grades with no recorded history of violence of any kind, neither in Arkansas, or Alaska. I hadn't liked Darius, but that hardly made me, or 'Alexander', unique. Most of the White student body hated his guts, after the fact. The showdown last Thursday? The only one who committed violence was the mayor's daughter on her former boyfriend; who wasn't among those hospitalized.Rashaan had been saved punishment because his teammates so shamed on the bus ride back to Davis High. he'd left early. Had he been wise, he would have thanked Taliyah for that accident of fate. On the plus side for that cocksucker, he was now the head of the football team as well as its star player.The two showdowns in Ms. Blanchard's class? Those students would have to explain why it had happened, thus what they had been up to over the past few years. That was sexual assault, rape and blackmail and taking that wrap to avenge Darius wasn't in them. The beating up of the kids around Shaquille? Precisely what had those seven been up to jumping our basketball teammate anyway?The carnage on the basketball court? That would imply one of the player confessing to stomping on Kaja. Both the team and the Assistant Coach were opposed to that exposure. No, it was the very erosion of trust that infected the BBC culture. Darius had gone from the Crown Prince to a 'what might have been' overnight. His former cronies felt zero loyalty to him anymore. Darius Pope had lost his luster. He was yesterday's news in the high school halls.At this point in the inquiry had the Kingston elders admitted to the outsiders Darius was a scumbag, abusing women and men for his own selfish ends, a blackmailer and bully, the investigation might have gained traction. But they didn't. He was their flawless native son, utterly without fault. That led the investigation away from us. It turned out that other teams Did have a motive for hurting the football team in general, not just Darius. The coach had to admit to that, there was video evidence of his team's barbaric behavior.The whole team were bastards on the field, half a dozen opposing coaches claimed as much and were vocally happy that such misfortune had befallen the evildoers of Davis High, karmic payback for their unsportsmanlike behavior. Did they know who the two (or three) 'agents of karma' had been? No idea. By that time, we had other worries. When the weekend was over it would be time to return to school, for all five of us.{Not like any other Monday}Monday, school life was adrift in the chaos left by Darius' abrupt departure. There was no clear successor, yet there were several contenders eager for the spot. None of them were White, but considering the school's racial makeup, it wasn't too surprising. There was also a sullen resentment against us, tempered by fear. It didn't take a first place winner at a school science fair for the students to figure out what had really happened.Darius had put Alexander/Mikhail in the hospital and now he and six of his closest confederates were in various states of serious disrepair. Everyone knew that Darius wasn't going to be carrying any footballs this season, or maybe ever again. He had crossed the unspoken line between harassment and serious damage. Sure, the Black student body had participated in those punches, pokes and slurs.Punishing 'Mikhail' had initially appeared to be justified; I had purloined Brandy and had gotten what I deserved for daring to dare. It had never occurred to anyone the meaner dogs in the fight weren't Darius Pope and his boys. Clearly, Darius had raised the level of 'acceptable' violence and they had blindly accepted his choice.Monday morning, Darius was no longer among them and the whole school society was experiencing 'continental drift'. Even teachers were uncertain what to make of us. Only Ms. Blanchard looked openly relieved that today was no longer more of the same. We found that out right before we had another school communion under the tutelage of Principal Dr. Pierre O'Rourke Jean-Georges.It was another exposition of what was wrong with this world and how he could fix it. The African-American Male Stereotype (aka the Football Team) had begotten violence from the entrenched White Establishment (even though there were no suspects, white or black, charged in the incident) in a never-ending cycle of brutality and suffering. The world would soon see the advent of the Brown Man ending the tyranny of White European cultural imperialism; not thru conflict, but thru the colored people's inherent spiritual superiority. Huh?‘I think we po' White folk done been insulted,' Vicky whispered to our small group. She had spunk. She was also Kaelyne's best friend, which would be of more importance later today.‘Why doesn't he rail against patriarchal tyranny?' Kaelyne added.‘Because he's a man?' I offered.‘Exactly,' she hissed.‘If there is so much White tyranny going on,' Alexander coughed, ‘why am I in so much pain?'‘Because you don't know how to dodge, you knucklehead,' Mikhail smirked. Dr. Pierre let his imperious gaze fall upon us, so we quieted. The rest was more of the same. We were idiots for solving problems with our fists and cocks; blah, blah, blah. What were we supposed to be? Men with pussies? The Student Body was left largely in the dark about our fates, though it did take him an hour to lead us there.Shaquille was at our lunch table once more, as was his girlfriend, Monique, and our teammate Kaja. That was comforting in more ways than one. Whatever had happened, they weren't ashamed, or afraid, to be seen with us. They didn't ask, so we didn't have to lie. We talked about upcoming tests, basketball practice and perhaps doing something this weekend. It was almost as if we were living in the 'new' normal.A few cheerleaders slipped away from Brandy and Taliyah that day. It wasn't like the BBC had lost its magic. Addicts remained addicts, that cock was too good to pass up and once a girl had the taste; they couldn't turn it down when offered. Mom's answer was a fuck-fest; which was an idea we three boys balked at. That was when Mom had her first glimpse that Mikhail had a problem of the heart.Only after she had pulled me aside for a chat/interrogation did she realize her own stupid mistake. Yes, Mom confessed to making an error in judgement. She'd realized that Taliyah was wild-spirited while not taking into consideration was exactly the type of woman my brother needed. That is what she said, 'needed'. That was so scary that I contemplated going behind Mom's back to warn Mikhail, almost.I had been a good boy Friday night and criminal goings on had kept us apart Saturday and Sunday, so by Monday, Brandy was about to bust a gut. Taliyah had her own bonfire burning behind her eyes, even while she exhibited more self-control. Kaelyne and Vicky staying after school, trying to weasel in a ride, was a bit unlooked for.‘I thought we could hang out together,' Kaelyne beamed. Vicky was not-so secretly amused. I repeat; she and Kaelyne were best friends.‘No!' snapped Brandy. Everyone was looking at her. ‘I mean, we really need to do some studying. Really bad; ‘‘I can help,' Kaelyne refused to be dissuaded.‘Not with this, you can't,' I muttered to myself. But I couldn't come up with a viable excuse to deny her, considering her rallying to our cause last week. ‘Sure,' I said in a louder voice. Brandy shot me a desperate visual appeal.‘Taliyah, are you and Brandy still planning to spend the night to help us with that project?' Mikhail intervened.‘Well; maybe,' Taliyah smirked. ‘Brandy?'‘Hell yes,' she glared at Kaelyne.‘Then we are all agreed,' Kaelyne grinned. Off we went, packed in like sardines. Alexander had gone home with Ms. Blanchard. That still left us with Brandy, Taliyah, Kaja, Mikhail, Kaelyne, Vicky and me in a four person Shelby Mustang.I dropped Kaja off first, as always. The trip home was more suspenseful than eventful. Victoria was unashamedly upbeat while Kaelyne was terribly high-strung. How she could miss the romantic situation between Brandy and I was a mystery. Only after homework, when we were getting ready for our workout and Mom got home, did any of it make sense. Instead of appearing as the majesty she normally projected to outsiders, she sneaked up on us all. She really was the Wicked Witch of the Ozarks! She must have been standing there for five minutes before she made her presence known by noisily clearing her throat.‘Brandy,' Mom stated with authority.‘Yes Ma'am,' she meekly responded.‘It is good to see you today. You too, Ms. Malik. Kaelyne and Victoria, it is nice to see you coming over as well. I hope my sons are making you feel welcome.'‘Hello,' Victoria and Kaelyne chorused. Taliyah settled for a wave.‘Kaelyne,' Mom nodded, ‘why don't you come with me and get some drink for the company?'‘Me?'‘Unless you know of another girl in the county named Kaelyne?' Mom mused.Brandy was relieved she wasn't the one being led away. She was still jittery.‘She doesn't look all that scary,' Vicky said in a low voice.‘Wait until she threatens you with physical violence,' Taliyah snorted.‘My Mom says she's psychotic. She cracked up years ago, along with her twin brother, Thomas, and they had to leave town,' Victoria informed us.‘It is Theo,' Alexander corrected her. ‘Her brother is called Theo, and from what I've been told, it was Kingston that drove her out.'‘What happened?' she pressed.‘Their Uncle Theo put my Uncle Leon into a coma he hasn't woken up from,' Taliyah grumbled. ‘This whole family is nuts.'‘You will pay for that,' Mikhail leered.‘Hardly,' she leered right back.‘Am I missing something?' Vicky looked to Alexander.‘He's always picks on her and she always slaps him,' Alexander shrugged. ‘Make of that what you will.'‘Don't you have some place you need to be, geek?' Taliyah menaced Victoria.‘No. Homework is done and I don't normally eat dinner until eight,' she answered blithely.‘Alexander, why don't you drive Vicky and Kaelyne home?' Brandy asked.‘Because he's convalescing,' Mikhail chortled.{Meanwhile, in the kitchen}‘So,' Mom said, ‘how long have you known you are a lesbian?'‘Wha, what?' Kaelyne stammered. ‘I'm not; ‘‘Me and my family don't mind, Kaelyne,' Mom smiled. ‘We aren't going to 'out' you, or going to stop liking you. I asked a simple question and expect an honest answer. Homosexuality is fine; lying is a deadly sin.'‘Umm; ah; a while.'‘See, that wasn't so hard. You like Taliyah, don't you?'‘I; uh; what makes; I; ‘‘Kaelyne, I trust you implicitly and would never steer you wrong. If you want to get close to Taliyah, all you need to do is ask Vlad. He likes you and considers you a friend,' Mom explained. ‘He's not going to hold asking him against you.'‘What about Mikhail? Aren't they; ‘‘Since you don't seem to have figured it out yet, let me tell you, Mikhail is difficult and not terribly helpful in matters of the heart,' Gayle chucked. ‘Vlad is the reasonable one, Taliyah likes him and he can use Brandy as a buffer.'‘What about what Taliyah wants?' Kaelyne protested.‘Do you care?'‘Yes; yes, I want her to be happy.'‘Good for you. I'm glad you've befriended my boys. That's a very brave thing to do and I appreciate it.'‘You are welcome.'‘So, ask him,' Mom finished getting out enough bottled water for the group of us.‘I don't want to put Vlad in a bind,' Kaelyne protested.‘Listen Kaelyne, losers moan about what they should have done. Winners risk and, win or lose, don't regret trying,' Mom lectured. ‘Do you want to graduate and leave this burgh wondering what might have been?'‘I; what happens if; it could be a disaster,' Kaelyne mumbled.‘You may not have a better chance than right now. Pull Vlad aside and open up to him. I guarantee things won't be any worse.'‘Okay. I'll think about it,' Kaelyne moped.‘Fair enough,' Mom shrugged. ‘With all this estrogen in the air, I feel like getting naked.'‘What?' Kaelyne gasped. Yep, Dad was in for a busy night. They came back in silence.{Outside once more}The rest of the workout went as planned. We finished with a wrestling bout between Mikhail and me. Taliyah and Brandy cheered me on so Vicky decided to speak up for my younger brother. I won two out of three falls after some serious effort only to have Alexander critique our efforts after the fact. Mom had come and gone. Kaelyne was pensive.‘Shower time,' Mikhail groaned.‘Finally,' Brandy sounded exasperated.‘Vlad, can I talk to you for a moment?' Kaelyne mumbled. Brandy stomped her foot in frustration when I complied.‘Yes?' I said after I'd pulled her aside.‘You and Brandy are; ‘‘What? Having sex?' I suggested.‘In love,' she looked down at her feet.‘Why would you want to know?'‘No reason,' she lied.‘We are into one another, not making wedding plans,' I patted Kaelyne on the shoulder. ‘It is sex. I'd like to think it is good sex. Is there a problem? Is his about us, you and me?' She shook her head. ‘I really like you,' I continued, ‘I don't want to think I've been leading you along.'‘That's not it,' she whispered.‘What is it then?'‘I like Taliyah,' she blurted out. The fear of humiliation in her eyes was palatable to me.‘Like as in you would like to spend time with her, like?' I asked. She remained staring at me, terribly hopeless. ‘Oh; you really like her. Oh, okay. Do you want to me to ask her how she feels about you?'‘I; I don't know,' she wailed. ‘The school isn't exactly 'gay-friendly'.'‘Do you believe that I'm your friend?'‘Yes.'‘Then don't worry. I've got this covered,' I assured her. Kaelyne took a deep breath, slowly let it out then hugged me. I could feel Brandy's lust-fueled anger being sent Kaelyne's way. I gave my buddy a comforting pat on the back.‘Brandy, can I talk to you a moment?' I said as I walked over to her. She was very uncertain and confused, so I kissed her. She burned me up with her full-body press in response.‘What is it?' she worried.‘You make me so happy. I don't think I tell you that enough.'I could feel Brandy's body relaxing against min

Marcus examines the title 'Prince of Peace' in Isaiah's prophecy about the birth of Christ.

On the evening of Monday 18th of September 1989, 40-year-old Christoph Schliack, an eccentric German who many only knew as 'The Prince' left the White Horse pub with two men. 30 minutes later, he would be brutally stabbed to death. But why? Was it political, personal, was it a robbery, or was it a known homosexual?Murder Mile is researched, written and performed by Michael of Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein and Jon Boux of Cult With No Name and additional music, as used under the Creative Commons License 4.0. A full listing of tracks used and a full transcript for each episode is listed here and a legal disclaimer.For links click hereTo subscribe via Patreon, click here Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/murdermile. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We love Paul Griffin here at The Rocky Road. He's been on twice before - for the 30th anniversary of his epic 1991 European gold medal, and 30 years on from Barcelona 92, alongside medallists Michael Carruth and Wayne McCullough. Now he joins us for a deep dive on his 15-year professional career across a two-part episode. He started out under Frank Warren on a 'Prince' Naseem Hamed card in Scotland, going on to train in Sheffield with the world featherweight champ under fellow Dubliner Brendan Ingle. Paul tells us about sparring Hamed and feeling his frightening power, boxing on Steve Collins undercards at Pairc Ui Chaoimh and Millstreet alongside contemporaries Eamonn Magee and Jim Rock, and building an unbeaten record that would ultimately be popped in a do-or-die title fight with Dean Pithie in England. By that stage, Paul was battling inside and outside of the ropes as his addictions to gambling and alcohol started to take hold. As always, spending time with Paul is fun, cathartic and informative. His recollection is superb so enjoy as he walks you through the 90s boxing scene. Stay tuned for Part 2 as Paul heads Down Under to spearhead the Irish boxing revolution in Australia that ended up with the likes of Dennis Hogan and TJ Doheny reaching the top. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Prince Charming, huh? What a story we have been told and sold all this time. He'll come along and pick us out from the crowd. He'll sweep us off our feet and together we'll fall in love. He'll kneel before us with the biggest diamond you ever did see, and we'll say YES and have babies and all live happily ever after. Right? In MOST cases, hell no! Alisha Burns shares her own (IMHO turbulent) quest for this perfect fairytale ending, in which (like too many of us) she turned a blind eye and kept those rose-coloured glasses firmly in place. However, when that fairytale came crumbling down in a spectacular fashion (seriously, just wait until you hear the story), Alisha came to the realisation that we do not in fact need that 'Prince Charming' at all to create her perfect family and live her happily ever after.  And so today, solo mum Alisha heads up the Solo Mum Society and lives her best life with her precious daughter and stories of their 'donut' daddy (that's a donor daddy, as they'll one day be able to laugh together about).   TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS Website: testartfamilylawyers.com.au ALISHA BURNS Website: solomumsociety.com TIFFANEE COOK Linktree: linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches/ Website: rollwiththepunches.com.au LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tiffaneecook/ Facebook: facebook.com/rollwiththepunchespodcast/ Instagram: instagram.com/rollwiththepunches_podcast/ Instagram: instagram.com/tiffaneeandco  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Heaven requires you to be born again. Hell will take you just the way you are. Hit this link for 100's of other in depth Bible study broadcasts https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCaB3vM5EVoA8GBq0In_QTw?sub_confirmation=1 Obviously God's laws still apply or how would we know if we are sinning or not? Do Not Be Deceived by wolves in sheep's clothing who will tell you otherwise. God's word was not written for peoples convenience. It was written for our correction. God gave us a set of institutional standards to govern ourselves by to get back into harmony with His universe. Take it of leave it, that is your freewill choice. Companion Chapel Worldwide Ministry is A REGISTERED NON-PROFIT MINISTRY THAT NEEDS YOUR HELP. We are to take care of those that deliver GOD's Word. These broadcasts depend on your provisions. Partner with the Companion Chapel to help us reach out to a hurting world with the message of Christ's love. Please give what you can at companionchapel.com PayPal Visa M.C. Please e-transfer your gift to companionchapel@gmail.com Please email companionchapel@gmail.com with your questions about the Bible, your prayer requests or just to say hi to let me know you are out there. Please send as a donation your broken or unused jewelry to 338 Sideroad 28/29 Paisley Ontario Canada N0G 2N0 . GOD expects you to donate something that you cherish to prove you are not coveting. GOD bless you. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/companionchapelpodcast/message

Subscribe to Mamamia You're cordially invited to the most mysterious royal jam launch in history. Is Meghan Markle just disorganised or a marketing genius? An investigation.  Plus, alphas, f-boys and even rodents are out (that didn't last long). Apparently the most attractive energy a heterosexual man can project is DADDY ENERGY. We have thoughts.  And, is there someone in your life who loves to monologue at you? If so, there's a way to shut them up and Em Vernem knows what it is.  The End Bits:  Listen to our latest episode: Sex With Your Best Friend Listen to Monday's episode: Decoding Kate's Comeback & That Bridgerton Sex Scene Listen to our Group Therapy Episode: Group Therapy: The ‘Sexy Dress' Dilemma Listen: The Snow Globe Theory: Why Your Conversations Feel Off Listen: Rodent Boyfriends & Billionaire Ex-Wives Read: Justin Timberlake was the 'Prince of Pop'. Now he's been arrested. Listen to Em on The Spill  Connect your subscription to Apple Podcasts  Sign up to the Mamamia Out Loud Newsletter for all our recommendations and behind-the-scenes content in one place.  Want to try our new exercise app? Click here to start a seven-day free trial of MOVE by Mamamia  GET IN TOUCH: Feedback? We're listening. Send us an email at outloud@mamamia.com.au Share your story, feedback, or dilemma! Send us a voice message Join our Facebook group Mamamia Outlouders to talk about the show. Follow us on Instagram @mamamiaoutloud CREDITS: Hosts: Holly Wainwright, Mia Freedman & GeEmily Vernem Producer: Emeline Gazilas Assistant Producer: Tahli Blackman  Audio Producer: Leah Porges Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Send us a Text Message.The Minnesota Twins continued to roll during this homestand, winning all four against the Oakland Athletics at Target Field. Dan and Hoges recap the many big moments from Royce Lewis and Carlos Correa, as well as the rest of what is clearly their supporting cast right now. They discuss their thoughts on the City Connect jerseys, a new Prince-themed home run celebration cooked up by none other than Pablo Lopez and Max Kepler's new spot as Target Field's home run king. Hoges wonders what the Twins might do at the trade deadline, and Dan asks whether Austin Martin has played his final game with the St. Paul Saints. Then they look around the league at a division rival and make their picks for the Tampa Bay Rays series. Thanks for listening, and go Twins!Check out our sponsor, OG Zaza! All pizzas are $10 after 5PM  every day in the month of June. David and Dan recommend the Lil' Roni. Tell them that MN for the Win sent you! https://ogzazamn.com/ The Gran Group with Edina Realty TWIN CITIES AREA REALTORS TO MEET ALL OF YOUR HOUSING NEEDS! Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the Show.Music: "Minnesota Twins Theme" (1961) written by Ray Charles and Dick Wilson. Arrangement and performance by Jason Cain.Twitter: @MNfortheWin Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MNfortheWinWebsite: https://mnforthewin.buzzsprout.com/ Puckett's Picks Scoring 1pt per Base (H/BB/HBP) | 1pt per SB | 1pt per RBI -1pt per K | -1pt per Error | -1pt per GIDP +0.5 Point Bonus if Winning Player is Top Team Scorer Tie Breaker 1. Most HRs 2. Least Ks 3. Least LOBListeners always pick first, lowest score between Dan/David/Hoges picks second for next series

Enter the realm of musical brilliance with today's podcast guest., He is a multifaceted artist whose talent knows no bounds. Renowned for his mesmerizing portrayal of David Bowie on stage, Julian captures the essence of the iconic star with uncanny precision and raw energy. Beyond his captivating performances, his prowess as a skilled keyboardist elevates every composition to new heights, infusing each note with passion and soul. As a solo artist, he effortlessly commands the stage, weaving intricate melodies that leave audiences spellbound. With a blend of charisma, innovation, and sheer talent, Julian Shah-Taylor is truly Someone You Should  Know.TABLE OF CONTENTS00:00:00Julian Shah-Taylor: Tribute Act Musician Extraordinaire00:01:01Interview with Julian Shah-Taylor on the Love of Music00:03:06Julian Shah-Taylor's Journey into Portraying David Bowie in Electric Duke00:07:15Julian Shah-Taylor on Channeling David Bowie and Serving His Legacy00:10:19Discussion about David Bowie and the impact he had on musicians00:14:09Interview with Julian Shah-Taylor about Elysium and Grammy nominations00:19:33Julian Shah-Taylor discusses the BOWIE Files project00:23:28Interview with Julian Shah-Taylor about his band and upcoming remix album00:27:19Julian Shah-Taylor discusses covering songs on his album 'Something Borrowed'00:34:00Exploring Sugar Kisses Inc: A Conversation with Julian Shah-Taylor00:37:28Tales from the Road: When Things Don't Go as Planned in Live PerformancesTip Jar:Click here to buy the Rik Anthony a cold one.Show Links:Click here to go to Julian's WebsiteClick here to go to Julian's FacebookClick here to go to Julian's InstagramClick here to go to Julian's YouTubeClick here to go to Julian's BandcampClick here to go to Electric Duke infoClick here to go to Strangelove - The Depeche Mode Experience infoSponsor Link: Click here to check out SummarAI zeTABLE OF CONTENTS00:00:00Julian Shah-Taylor: Tribute Act Musician Extraordinaire00:01:01Interview with Julian Shah-Taylor on the Love of Music00:03:06Julian Shah-Taylor's Journey into Portraying David Bowie in Electric Duke00:07:15Julian Shah-Taylor on Channeling David Bowie and Serving His Legacy00:10:19Discussion about David Bowie and the impact he had on musicians00:14:09Interview with Julian Shah-Taylor about Elysium and Grammy nominations00:19:33Julian Shah-Taylor discusses the BOWIE Files project00:23:28Interview with Julian Shah-Taylor about his band and upcoming remix album00:27:19Julian Shah-Taylor discusses covering songs on his album 'Something Borrowed'00:34:00EHow to Contact Us:Official Website: https://Someoneyoushouldknowpodcast.comGmail: Someoneyoushouldknowpodcast@gmail.comTwitter: @RIKANTHONY1Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rikanthonyInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/someoneyoushouldknowpodcast/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rik-anthony2019/TikTok: @SomeoneYouShouldKnow2023YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@someoneyoushouldknowpodcastThank you for listening!Theme music "Welcome to the Show" by Kevin MacLeod was used per the standard license agreement.

The 40th anniversary of Prince's best-selling album and film “Purple Rain” is next month on June 25 and 27 respectively. And on Tuesday, a new memorabilia- and picture-filled book will be released in honor of the occasion: “Prince and Purple Rain: 40 Years.”Prince's story is told by Minneapolis-based music journalist Andrea Swensson, who is also the host of the Official Prince Podcast, a Minnesota Book Award winner and former host of the Current's Local Show. A long-time reporter on Prince and the Minnesota music beat, she calls her new book a “love letter” to his legacy.It all began in 2014 when Swensson assembled a 30th-anniversary package for MPR News and the Current.“And that really started this whole Prince adventure that I've been on over the last decade,” Swensson told MPR News on Monday.“I started covering his career so closely when he was still with us and have done a lot of work around his legacy since we lost him. And I really wanted to take this opportunity to put together something that captured so many of these amazing stories about him, and really spoke to my own personal connection to his music and to his life and what he meant to me.” April 2017 Remembering Prince at his home and studio October 2017 Andrea Swensson tells the story of the 'Minneapolis Sound' in first book Swensson describes the era of “Purple Rain” as iconic and world-building, calling the watershed film unrivaled in rock history. Prince's influence, she said, is almost impossible to untangle from the fabric of the music industry over the last 40 years. 'Prince and Purple Rain: 40 Years' Swensson says she has interviewed each member of The Revolution — Bobby Z, BrownMark, Dr. Fink, Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin — at least three times.“He wanted us to be a gang … and by the time we got to ‘Purple Rain,' we were,” drummer Bobby Z recalls in the book. Bassist BrownMark affirmed: “We were experts … The way we rehearsed, I mean, ‘Purple Rain,' I could fall asleep and probably play it. That's how well we knew the whole set.”“We've had some really, really memorable conversations,” Swensson said. “This was such a pivotal time in all of their lives. Wendy Melvoin was only 19-years-old when she joined Prince's band. And her very first show is the night that they played at First Avenue and recorded ‘Purple Rain.'”The book was put together and contributed to by a hyperlocal team, including photography from Greg Helgeson, Tommy Smith III and Nancy Bundt; private archivist Rich Benson; designers Sotera Tschetter and Cindy Laun; editor Dennis Pernu and art director Heather Godin. It's filled with evocative photography, images of ticket stubs, posters and vinyl records, reflective quotes and iconic lyrics — transporting the reader back to the summer of 1984.Writing the tribute conjured up some unexpected emotions for Swenson.“There was something therapeutic to me about being able to revisit that meeting that I had with him because we did talk a lot about his feelings about anniversaries ... At the time that we met, he had two new albums in the can he was getting ready to put out,” she said. “So there was something really poignant and a little bittersweet to me to really sit with my notes and my memories of that night and be able to write about it in this way. And it did feel like some kind of full circle moment.”“Prince and Purple Rain: 40 Years,” including a foreword by Maya Rudolph, debuts on May 21. There is a book release party on June 12 at Electric Fetus in Minneapolis; a pre-order is required.

Harvey Brownstone conducts an in-depth Interview with Music Superstar Sheena Easton About Harvey's guest: Today's guest, Sheena Easton, is an iconic and beloved, multi-gold and platinum singer, recording artist and actress who's been dazzling the world for over 4 decades, selling over 20 million records worldwide, winning 2 Grammy awards, a Billboard Music Award, 4 more Grammy Award nominations and an American Music Award nomination.   She was the first – and still the only – artist in Billboard history to have a top 5 hit on all five major Billboard charts: Pop, Adult Contemporary, Country, R&B and Dance.  She's recorded 15 studio albums containing 55 hit singles, and she's also been featured in 14 hit soundtrack albums.   She's brought us a string of mega hits including “Morning Train”, “We've Got Tonight”, “For Your Eyes Only”, “You Could Have Been With Me”, “Modern Girl”, “Telephone”, “Strut”, “Almost Over You”, “The Lover in Me”, and dozens more.   She's recorded hit single duets with Prince, Kenny Rogers, Luis Miguel, Barry Manilow, and she's worked with everyone from David Foster and L.A. Reid to Babyface and Nyle Rodgers.    Our guest is also a highly accomplished actress, having appeared in “Body Bags”, “Highlander”, “Brisco County”, “Outer Limits”, “Young Blades” and many more TV shows and movies.  And yes, she appeared in 5 episodes of “Miami Vice”, and she played “Caitlin Davies“, who ended up marrying “Sonny Crockett”, played by Don Johnson.    And if all of that weren't enough, our guest has starred on Broadway in “Man of La Mancha” and “Grease”, and in London's West End, she starred in “42nd Street”.    Over the years our guest has had numerous hugely successful Las Vegas residencies, and she was recently inducted into the Las Vegas Hall Of Fame.  She is currently on a concert tour, performing for sold out audiences throughout the world. For more interviews and podcasts go to: https://www.harveybrownstoneinterviews.com/ To learn more about Sheena Easton, go to:https://sheenaeaston.com/  #sheenaeaston    #harveybrownstoneinterviews

PP brings on a special guest to talk about her boyfriend Alexander the Great and his constant cucking of Darius from the hit game 'Prince of Persia'.   Our Website The Store Insta Reddit Patreon  

Today, we cover Princeton's termination of its relationship with Labyrinth Books, a Mercer County fire, the Women's NCAA tournament viewership, and an aborted Russian rocket launch.------Correction: An early version of this podcast referred to the University of Iowa's women's basketball team as "Iowa State." The 'Prince' regrets this error ------The End of Princeton's Partnership with Labyrinth Books: https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/section/news

In today's episode, Christian Babcock & Jake Gaylord sit down with Charles Beaty & Roy Thorton to discuss outlaw hunting in the 1970s to 1990s, near-death experiences, hunting jaguars in Mexico, & more! - Use code HNTA15 for 15% off Out On A Limb MFG products! https://outonalimbmfg.com/ Use code HA10 for 10% off Exodus Products: https://exodusoutdoorgear.com/discoun... Check out our Gear Log on Hunt360: https://hunt-360.com/1687/gearlog/1709323669 Buy a HA Hat or T-shirt here: https://huntersadvantagemerch.com/ Follow our socials: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@huntersadvantage Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hunters_adv... Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Thehuntersad... Gmail: thehuntersadvantage@gmail.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thehuntersadvantage/support

Acapella performance is one of Princeton's longstanding traditions. But what is Acaprez, the mysterious-sounding group that organizes some of the beloved archsings? And what is performing in an Acaprez group like? The 'Prince' took a deep dive to find out more. 

Find out why the heir to the British throne has been titled the 'Prince of Wales' since the 13th century and how that links to the enchanting Ludlow Castle. Links mentioned in this live: * Investigating the evidence presented about the Princes in the Tower - https://youtube.com/live/_jobcn76oCA?feature=share* https://www.patreon.com/britishhistory* https://TheStuarts2024.eventbrite.co.uk * https://britishhistorytours.com/history-tours/the-rise-of-the-tudors-september-2024 British History is a reader-supported publication. If you're not already, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Other videos you may like: Nicola Tallis on 'Young Elizabeth' -War and Betrayal at Ludlow Castle with Matthew Lewis -Unlocking the Horrors of History: Tortures & Treatments | Interview with Suzie Edge - Get full access to British History at philippab.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, recorded back in December, I was delighted to be joined by Jeff Morton- host of the fantastic The GenX Show- to discuss the life and career of filmmaker John Carpenter, with particular focus on his 1987 film, 'Prince of Darkness'. This was a great opportunity to continue our ongoing look at Carpenter's movies (we have covered several of his films at this point) and it was great to finally sit down and record an episode with Jeff. I've no idea why we didn't do this sooner but I look forward to bringing him back again for another chat. Up next: Episode 300!

New Year, New Board. Today on Daybreak, we get to know the 148th managing board of the Daily Princetonian. We dive into everything from their goals for this year to their favorite newsroom snacks. Listen in!Featured Stories3 Princeton DEI staff members resign, alleging lack of supportMeet the DJs that ran campus in the '90sNJ bear hunt returns as human interactions rise statewideLesbian and sapphic communities on campus: in need of revival

Nick Foot has dubbed him the 'Prince of Pakenham' and Reece Goodwin joined Big V Racing for a yarn on Wednesday. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

His Name will be Called - Part 4: Prince of Peace Merry Christmas! This weekend, we've got a special Sunday in store! Pastor Joel finishes off our 'His Name will be Called' series, in which we looked at the various names of Jesus listed in Isaiah 9:6. This final message is all about the 'Prince of Peace'.

Astrologer in both Western and Vedic Astrology, Fred Abong looks at how to find musical talent in Astrology by examining the birth charts of Prince, Leonard Cohen and Kristin Hersh.  Fred Abong is also a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Getting his musical start in the 1980s as the bassist for Throwing Muses and Belly, he also earned a PhD in Humanities and serves as a professor.  He has been practicing Vedic Astrology and Western Astrology for more than 20 years.https://www.fredabongastrology.comhttps://www.fredabongmusic.comQUEEN OF WANDS with DJ Nocturna Every Saturday on ModSnap Radio | KMOD: San Antonio3pm (HST), 5pm (PST), 6pm (MST), 7pm (CST), 8pm (EST)Follow me on my other social media sites :Website: https://djnocturna.comRadio: https://modsnapradio.com

William Taylor - Some understand Jesus' claim to be the 'Prince of Peace' to mean that he sought to bring an end to all hostilities here on Earth...and failed. A kind of wannabe United Nations delegate. The reality is that he promised something very different. He said, 'I have not come to bring peace, but a sword'. Maybe we write Jesus off too quickly on the basis of false assumptions.

Welcome to Princeton! Whether you're a new student, returning from some time away, or feeling lost as the new school year begins, Daybreak has some tips on how to make the most of your time under the Orange Bubble. Listen to more from the 'Prince' here.

It's the end of our series on David Gordon Green, screamers. This series didn't turn out quite like we expected. We skip the stoner comedies and jump straight to Green's "return to form" with the films 'Joe' and 'Prince Avalanche.' We also discuss Celine Song's debut 'Past Lives' (which is a perfect film). And Jason works on his Italian accent. Stick around for some recommendations.     Keep in touch and read more at whydoesthewilhelmscream.com on instagram @whydoesthewilhelmpod and twitter @whywilhelm Find out more about upcoming Fort Worth Film Club screenings and events at fortworthfilmclub.com and @fortworthfilm Support the next generation of film lovers at reelhousefoundation.org and on facebook reelhousefoundation Artwork by @_mosla_

A Princeton undergrad was charged with the assault of two Princeton Public Safety — in Princeton Municipal Courts on July 13. Daybreak breaks down the arrest and the history of campus police in Princeton.A previous version of this story mischaracterized the student's plea. The 'Prince regrets this error.More Long-form Content

Welcome to The 80's Montage! (music, mateys and cool shit from the 80s) Your Hosts Jay Jovi & Sammy HardOn, singers from Australian 80's tribute band Rewind 80's. We take you back to living in the 80's: music, artists, TV commercials and video clips. Episode 182: Rewind 80's MIxtape Party - Northcote Theatre..  It's a ripper! Please rate, review and enjoy! Music licensed by APRA/AMCOS Theme music ©2019 M. Skerman. Produced & edited by Matty Ray. See Facebook for links to videos & songs mentioned in this episode! Email: planet80sproductions@gmail.com Rewind 80's Band: www.rewind80sband.com Facebook: the80smontagepodcast twitter: 80_montage instagram: the80smontage Links fromEpisode 182: Rewind 80's MIxtape Party - Melbourne Launch : Part 1Patreon Link With Thanks x https://www.patreon.com/the80smontagepodcast Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/the80smontagepodcastREWIND 80's Mixtape Party - Saturday 21st October 2023 - Northcote Theatre www.northcotetheatre.comTickets - www.rewind80smixtape.comPseudo Echo Tour - www.pseudoecho.netLinks: Rewind 80's Mixtape Tour - Planet 80's Productions Bookings- Samantha@planet80s.com.auhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0KWTqpOkeENu Shooz - I Can't Wait (Official Music Video) #Nushoozhttps://youtu.be/UJ1tBVtYOBcBerlin - Like Flames #Berlinhttps://youtu.be/bwXlj3zI_8cFreeez - IOU HD #Freeezhttps://youtu.be/h1MDlJM_C1kApollonia 6 - Sex Shooter (Official Music Video HD)https://youtu.be/oqyUZcOV6l0 #Apollonia6Vanity 6 - Sex Shooter #Vanity #Vanity6https://youtu.be/AGKtciF-xH4Musical Youth - Pass The Dutchie #Musicalyouthhttps://youtu.be/EsyUa63NM1ELaid Back - White Horse [Official Music Video] #Laidback #Whitehorsehttps://youtu.be/mlYJf6CJXV880s Commercial | Breakin' 2 Electric Boogaloo | 1984 #Electricboogaloo2https://youtu.be/YHYNR0UnF5wRock Steady Crew - Uprock (Extended version 1984) #Rocksteadycrewhttps://youtu.be/lop7B5QuFykTom Tom Club - Genius Of Love (Official Music Video) [4K] #Tomtomclubhttps://youtu.be/aCWCF19nUhAChoirboys - Boys Will Be Boys (Official Music Video) #Choirboyshttps://youtu.be/2ODToAwbxiYJenny Morris - You I Know #JennyMorrishttps://youtu.be/LYKVfEGQmj4Come Said The Boy - Mondo Rock #Mondorockhttps://youtu.be/gujdbZ1csngThanks For Listening!

All hail the king! After 70 years, England has a new monarch. At his coronation over the weekend, 74-year-old King Charles became the oldest newly-crowned English king ever. But at the star-studded Coronation Concert, the King partied like it's 1999…"when he was only 50"...as he was entertained by Katy Perry and Lionel Richie. Even Prince Harry showed up - plus none - to celebrate his father, while wife Meghan Markle stayed home with the kids. Or did she? (Cue one of the weirdest conspiracy theories ever!)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today, we cover the ousting of a Tennessee House legislator, the continuation of protests in France, and an Opinion in the 'Prince' on an Ivy League athletic scholarship lawsuit.Opinion from Robles: https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2023/04/princeton-athletic-scholarships-extra-curricular-stipend-compensation-contribution-improving-americas-schools-act 

Today, we cover Princeton's Winter and Spring Sports seasons, the six University professors who won Sloan Research Fellowships, and an update on US relations with Russia amid the war in Ukraine. Subscribe to the 'Prince's newsletter: subscribe.dailyprincetonian.comPrinceton Sloan Research Fellows: https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2023/03/sloan-research-fellows-princeton-university-award-honor-2023-fellowship-professor

The Daver talks with an old friend that he's happy to have, celebrated financial mind and Minnesotan, Pete Najarian. He regales with his incredible first concert story and few other memorable ones along the way.Sponsored by UCare (https://www.ucare.org/), Aquarius Home Services (https://aquariushomeservices.com/), Star Bank (https://www.starbank.net) & Minnesota Propane Association (https://discoverpropanemn.com/) - and is recorded in the Aquarius Home Services Studio!

The Daver talks with an old friend that he's happy to have, celebrated financial mind and Minnesotan, Pete Najarian. He regales with his incredible first concert story and few other memorable ones along the way.Sponsored by UCare (https://www.ucare.org/), Aquarius Home Services (https://aquariushomeservices.com/), Star Bank (https://www.starbank.net) & Minnesota Propane Association (https://discoverpropanemn.com/) - and is recorded in the Aquarius Home Services Studio!

Today, we cover a protest by postdoctoral researchers on campus, improvements to the Northeastern rail Corridor, and more updates on the aftermath of Tyre Nichols's killing.Editor's note: In today's episode, postdoctoral researchers were inaccurately referred to as "students." The 'Prince' regrets this error.Prospect House renaming suggestions: https://www.princeton.edu/news/2023/01/30/university-committee-seeking-input-naming-renovated-spaces-prospect-houseLaura Wooten Hall renaming: https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2022/11/laura-wooten-hall-dedicated-ahead-midterm-elections-honoring-longest-serving-poll-worker-in-usIkeda Arch renaming: https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2022/11/arch-renaming-japanese-kentaro-ikeda-world-war-ii-princetonRyan Konarska's piece: https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2023/01/princeton-nj-transit-dinky-fastest-train-new-york-philadelphia

It's a new year and before we get back to our regular podcasts, Alan Gray (East Ruston Old Vicarage) and Thordis thought they'd share some of their thoughts as we start a new gardening year, including what excites them about 2023.PLANT LISTArum italicum subsp. neglectum 'Miss Janay Hall'Rosmarinus officinalis 'Severn Seas'RhaphiolepisDicksonia antarcticaFuchsia procumbensEuphorbia melliferaPhlebodium aureum 'Blue Star'Coniogramme emeiensisEragrostis curvula 'Totnes Burgundy'Agave montanaLathyrus odoratus 'Juliet'Lathyrus odoratus 'Romeo'Lathyrus odoratus 'Prince of Orange'Lathyrus odoratus 'Matucana'Phacelia tanacetifoliaEchium pininanaLunaria annua 'Corfu Blue'

Happy new year! At The Daily Princetonian, a new year means new leadership. Today, we introduce you to the upper management of the 147th managing board of the ‘Prince.'Pieces mentioned in the episode (in order of appearance): A 'highly charged' year for Princeton swim: How Lia Thomas's participation sparked tension behind closed doors The power of coming out — and of not having to Podcast: Princeton football endures tough loss against Dartmouth The Graduate School and Title IX Office failed to keep me safe

"For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7  His government and its peace will never end." Isaiah 9:6-7 NLT We gathered to celebrate Jesus Christ, the light of the world and the Prince of Peace. Jesus can bring you spiritual, emotional, and relational peace. All you have to do is ask him. Continue listening to how you can find peace in this crazy world.

http://bible.com/events/49001422 Church of the Nazarene - Harrisonburg The Christmas Gifts: PEACE Stop searching for your peace. Instead welcome HIS.As we enter the Advent season for 2022, we will seek to grow deeper in our understanding of the free gifts available to us through Christ and his coming. Gifts we cannot earn and do not deserve. Today we focus on the gift of Peace.‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭9‬:‭6‬-‭7‬‬For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.-The word for peace in the Old Testament is 'shalom', which literally meant 'completeness or wholeness'.-The speak 'shalom' over someone was to declare 'may God take the broken pieces of your life and put them together as they should be'.-Think about what this meant that Isaiah is prophesying a 'Prince of Peace'.‭‭Luke‬ ‭2‬:‭13‬-‭14‬‬Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” “Glory to God in Heaven” and “peace to those on earth.” There is no need to proclaim peace to Heaven, since it is already there. But it those of us still living in this broken world desperately need the promise of peace.‭‭John‬ ‭14‬:‭27‬‬Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. According to Jesus, there is a difference between the God's peace and our own version of peace. Have you experience the gift of God's peace? The world's version of peace ignores the real problem.The world's version of peace is fleeting. The world's version of peace cannot offer you hope and healing.The bottom line:Stop searching for your peace. Instead welcome HIS. Verses for further study/reflection: John 16:33 2 Thessalonians 3:16 Isaiah 26:3 John 14:27 Colossians 3:15 Philippians 4:7

In this episode, we introduce you to  Marshall Charloff: a talented performer who wears two hats; front man for the  Purple Xperience - The Greatest Tribute To Prince In The World; and a very talented solo artist. Marshall's Website: marshallcharloff.comPurple Xperience Website: purplexperience.comClick the song title to watch the video:Video for HipnauticVideo for  What IfVideo for  Minneapolis SoundAll music used by permission from the artistSomeone You Should Know 2022 // CatGotYourTongueStudios 2022How to Contact Us:Official Website: https://Someoneyoushouldknowpodcast.comGmail: Someoneyoushouldknowpodcast@gmail.comTwitter: @RIKANTHONY1Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rikanthonyInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/someoneyoushouldknowpodcast/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rik-anthony2019/TikTok: @SomeoneYouShouldKnow2023YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@someoneyoushouldknowpodcastThank you for listening!Theme music "Welcome to the Show" by Kevin MacLeod was used per the standard license agreement.

In this episode, we revisit Brian DePalma's 1981 thriller 'Blow Out', which reunited the director with his 'Carrie' supporting actor John Travolta, who, fives years later, was post-'Saturday Night Fever', 'Grease' and 'Urban Cowboy' and was now one of Hollywood's biggest stars. 'Blow Out' was one of DePalma's most personal films, stemming from his obsessions with the Kennedy Assassination, voyeurism, filmmaking, Hitchcock, and Garrett Brown's new filmmaking invention, the Steadicam.  Shot in his hometown of Philadelphia among locations he was intimately familiar with. Topics in the episode:  DePalma's flirtations with directing 'Prince of the City' and 'Flashdance'.  His Hitchcock revelations.  How his small conspiracy film took on larger proportions with the arrival of an unexpected star.  The layers and layers of meta meaning in 'Blow Out'. A revisionist take on 'The Conversation'.  Appreciating 'Blow Up'.  Siskel & Ebert, Pauline Kael, and MORE!

Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, a Catholic philanthropist and German aristocrat, shares with John-Henry what really motivates our globalist elites and how their worldview isn't actually all that coherent. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It's a two-for-one special on this episode, Tim Maurer, local concert security legend, tells of all the concert opportunities he got while working security for some of the biggest acts of the 80's and 90's and Amy Mauzy, long time local radio Promotions Department 'mover & shaker' shares her stories of the 'golden age of radio' and all the characters she got to meet along the way. Together on this because, they happened to be at the same concert and witnessed the same 'Prince in the wild' tale. You won't want to miss it!Sponsored by Minnesota Propane Association (https://discoverpropanemn.com/)

It's a two-for-one special on this episode, Tim Maurer, local concert security legend, tells of all the concert opportunities he got while working security for some of the biggest acts of the 80's and 90's and Amy Mauzy, long time local radio Promotions Department 'mover & shaker' shares her stories of the 'golden age of radio' and all the characters she got to meet along the way. Together on this because, they happened to be at the same concert and witnessed the same 'Prince in the wild' tale. You won't want to miss it!Sponsored by Minnesota Propane Association (https://discoverpropanemn.com/)

The new self-titled album from Prince Daddy & the Hyena dropped April 15, 2022 via Pure Noise Records. What do you think of the latest effort from the band? Let us know on all social media @SpinThoughts! Review written by Jessi McKee Subscribe to the podcast on YouTube and wherever you listen to podcasts! Tune in every Thursday at Midnight ET on idobi Radio for all new premiere episodes: https://idobi.com/ More free music content including playlists, written/video reviews, social media, interviews + more: https://linktr.ee/spinningthoughts --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/spinning-thoughts/support

  Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart   Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee   Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community   Historical Events National Pick Strawberries Day Here are a few fun facts about this beloved sweet fruit: The etymology of the name strawberry (books about this topic) is likely a corruption of the phrase "strewn berry." This would reference the way the plant produced thanks prolifically to runners, resulting in berries strewn about the ground. Fragariaphobia is a little-known word and is the fear of strawberries. In terms of their uniqueness, strawberries are the only fruit that wears its seeds on the outside, and the average strawberry has 200 seeds. Strawberries are perennial and are members of the rose family. The strawberry flower averages five to seven petals. In terms of harvesting, strawberry plants are hand-picked about every three days. A single acre of land can grow almost 50,000 pounds of strawberries. California produces a billion pounds of strawberries every year which means that 75% of the American strawberry crop is grown in California - with Florida and North Carolina in the 2nd and 3rd place. As for strawberry quotes, the author Tsugumi Ohba, Death Note Box Set, wrote, If you keep my secret, this strawberry is yours.   1846 On this day, the Prussian botanist Ludwig Leichhardt (books about this person) wrote a letter to a fellow botanist about his impressive and arduous collecting efforts in Australia. For his part, Ludwig loved Australia. He wrote, I would find it hard to remain in Germany, or even in Europe, now. I [prefer] the clear, sunny skies of Australia. On this day, 1846, Leichhardt wrote a letter to his botanist contact and friend, the Italian Gaetano Durando, living in Paris. Ludwig's message conveys the extreme difficulties and dangers faced by the early plant explorers. He wrote, My dear friend, You have, no doubt, noticed and regretted my long silence... But you must bear this in mind, my good friend, ...  it was not my lot to travel all at my ease...  Gladly would I have made drawings of my plants, and noted fully all particulars of the different species which I saw; and how valuable would such memoranda have been... [as] four of my pack-horses having been drowned.  Botanical and geological specimens thus abandoned — how disappointing! From four to five thousand plants were thus sacrificed... In the spring of 1848, Ludwig Leichhardt and a small group of explorers began what was to be a two- to three-year expedition across Australia. Shortly after starting the trek, the entire party vanished with barely a trace. Still known as the 'Prince of Explorers,' Leichhardt was 35 when he was lost to time.    1858 On this day, in The Flower Garden, Or Breck's Book of Flowers, Tulips at their peak per Joseph Breck A bed of late tulips is generally in its highest perfection about the 20th of May and may be kept in fine condition a fortnight longer, taking the trouble to erect an awning over them.  I take up my Tulips about the 20th of June, and dry them undercover in an airy place, and, when dry, take off the offsets and plant them out, while the flowering roots are each wrapped in a piece of waste paper, and put away, in a box or drawer, in a dry place, until wanted to plant.  One hundred different varieties, with their names and colors, reputed to be the very best, mabe obtained from Holland, at the cost of about $25; but I have found, by experience, that some of the rarer and most expensive sorts are not included. Very good border Tulips, including finedouble sorts, early and late, single, parrots, etc, may be obtained from 50 cents to $1 per dozen, and some of the common sorts at much less price.   So there is some tulip pricing for you courtesy of Joseph Breck back in 1858. And just for comparison, I went out to brecks.com and priced some of their deluxe tulips. They sell eight tulips for $15.   1922 On this day, the sorority of Pi Beta Phi at West Virginia University held a party to celebrate the arrival of spring. In a report of their activities to the 1922 edition of The Arrow, the chapter wrote, The spring party comes on May 20. It will be a Japanese party, with lanterns, spring blossoms, and wooden programs.   Present Day On or around this day in Blackville, South Carolina, that Cuke Season gets underway.  The Encyclopedia of South Carolina (2000) says this about Blackville:  Named for Alexander Black, an early railroad executive who shipped cantaloupes, watermelons, and cucumbers in large quantities by rail.  During the "cuke" season, beginning about May 20, the town council employs an auctioneer to conduct daily sales, generally starting at 10 in the morning and frequently lasting until 6. At the auction, growers may accept or refuse the offered prices. Buyers are usually local produce merchants, though there are often purchasers from markets out of state.    Grow That Garden Library™ Book Recommendation Garden Maker by Christie Purifoy  This book came out in January of 2022, and the subtitle is Growing a Life of Beauty and Wonder with Flowers. This is Christie's third book, and her books have to do with beauty and placemaking, sustainability, and love. Her first book is Roots and Sky: A Journey Home in Four Seasons. This book is about purchasing her beautiful property called Maplehearst in Pennsylvania. Her second book was released in 2019 and is called Placemaker: Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty, and Peace, and this is about creating a garden home for yourself. I view her latest book Garden Maker as part of this garden trilogy. In this very spiritual and inspirational book, Christie walks us through how to grow a beautiful garden and create your own little slice of heaven here on earth. Now, in addition to teaching you how to make a garden. Christie is a cut flower expert, and she's a master at creating beautiful bouquets and other arrangements. In this book, Christie teaches you some of her tried and true techniques and her easiest bouquet recipes. In addition to sharing her list of favorite shrubs - she calls these superhero shrubs. She also shares her favorite flowers - she calls these flowers of importance. And then last but not least, her favorite self-sowers in a section she calls self-sowing salvation.   Now Christie is a lyrical writer. Her tone is super friendly and personable. When I read one of her books, I always feel like I'm reading something that a garden friend wrote for me. But best of all, and I think more important than any of her credentials, is her passion for plants and the garden because that comes through loud and clear in every word she writes in this book. I wanted to end this review today with a little excerpt from what Christie wrote in the introduction to Garden Maker. She writes, I grow flowers because cannot help myself.  I grow flowers as if some magician at the center of the universe has cast his spell on me, and I will never want my old unenchanted life back again. In my flower garden, I am the weaver of stories. In my flower garden, am the composer of seasonal songs. Or maybe I am more conductor than composer.  This garden of mine is certainly singing a song, but the song delights me, moves me, and surprises me. I cannot recommend flower gardening for the sober-minded.  I cannot recommend it for those afraid of mysterious rabbit holes, who prefer to keep their two feet fixed firmly to a clean and solid, and entirely predictable floor.  I cannot, in good conscience, recommend intoxicating moonflowers or romantic roses to anyone who values utility and efficiency and productivity above all.  But for those who read fairy tales or cry at arias, for those who suspect that heaven lies just behind the veil of this everyday world, well, to those I say: Welcome to the garden.  Welcome to this holy work.  I understand if you are afraid.  The thorns are knife-sharp, and the weeds are always waging their quiet wars.  But here is the promise that has been made to each one of us:  "Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy" (Psalm 126:5).  Every garden is singing a song for the One who made us, and we are invited to sing along.   Beautiful verse. And by the way, can you tell that Christie has a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Chicago? Yes, you can. She's a beautiful writer. This book is 208 pages of a love letter to flowers, plants, gardens, and garden making. You can get a copy of Garden Maker by Christie Purifoy and support the show using the Amazon link in today's show notes for around $16.   Botanic Spark 1804 On this day, Lady Holland sent home a parcel of seeds from Spain,  and they were Dahlia seeds. The story was shared in The Complete Dictionary of Practical Gardening (1807): In the spring of 1805 all the parcels of seed were sewn, including four varieties of Dahlia. The Dahlia Rosea was the most handsome and produced plenty of seeds. And all the plants of 1805, except one, were taken up before Christmas and planted in pots or large pans.  They were kept in a very cold greenhouse, and they began to push new shoots in the middle of April [the following year].   The genus Dahlia (books about this flower) got its name in the 18th century. Swedish botanist Andreas Dahl. Surprisingly after Lady Holland introduced Dahlias to Europe, many top gardeners thought the Dahlia was just too flamboyant to use in their gardens. But in modern gardens, Dahlias are beloved. Both the roots and the Dahlia flowers are used medicinally. The Dahlia is also the official flower of both Seattle and San Francisco. And if you're planning a wedding, Dahlias are the perfect flower for the bridal bouquet. In floriography or the language of flowers, the beautiful Dahlia represents commitment and everlasting love.   Thanks for listening to The Daily Gardener And remember: For a happy, healthy life, garden every day.    

Braeden De La Garza recently joined host Elias in the cave! You can see Braeden as the lead role as Prince Emmett in Disney Plus series The Quest. The Quest is an immersive fantasy hybrid competition series that places eight real life teenagers (Paladins) in the fictional world of Everealm. They must do everything in their power to save the kingdom and fulfil the ancient prophecy. The eight-episode series brings the world of fantasy to life with castles, royals, ethereal fates, mystical creatures and a sorceress intent on destruction and power. Braeden was born in Grapevine, Texas and raised by a family that is both musically and entertainment oriented. He caught the acting bug at the young age of seven and had already performed in multiple stage productions and acted in numerous projects both large and small. Being surrounded by family both in front and behind the camera (Demi Lovato is his cousin), Braeden is no stranger to entertainment. Not only does he act, but he records his own music, producing, mixing, and mastering everything on his own. His creative journey is just beginning, and the young rising star is excited to share all he has in store with the world! Photo Credit - Ben Cope You can watch this interview on YouTube https://youtu.be/4Npli8onbuA Have a question? Email us  themccpodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Social Media for the latest show updates  www.twitter.com/themccpodcast www.instagram.com/themccpodcast www.facebook.com/themancavechroniclespodcast www.themccpodcast.com  https://www.youtube.com/c/TheManCaveChroniclesPodcast        

This week's episode has real dad vibes thanks to an exceptionally long conversation about lawnmowers that carried over from our intermission. Nolan talks about 'Peglin' which serves as an addicting hybrid of Peggle and RPG combat. Krispy gives us a look at a surprisingly effective new Battle Royale called 'Vampire the Masquerade: Blood Hunt' and Nick introduces a throwback survival-horror game called 'Remorse: The List.' Thanks to his love of Kaiju, Chris Davis is able to talk about 'Kaiju Wars' for ten minutes without taking a breath. In the 2nd segment, we delve into Square-Enix's decision to sell it's western studios/IP to Embracer Group and we touch on the latest shakeup effecting the 'Prince of Persia: Sands of Time' remake at Ubisoft.