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Thursday just bit the wax tadpole, hard. Neighborhood fracas at the school. Just some high-spirited kids! With knives and guns. Seems like every cop car in town came to the school where it happened. Just saw a video of one kid pummeling another on the sidewalk, familiar house of the neighborhood up the street, a place I pass daily. I will save our part of the story for later, but let's just say that we learned today that Birch will give every indication that he will rip your guts out if you move one step closer.
Other than that, great day. Kidding! Not a great day. So let's change the subject and finish up with the usual Friday stuff, written before this burst of mindless savagery.
We'll end with a few faces. Any idea?
Father of the first computer programmer. So they say.
This fellow must have insisted on a realistic portrait, complete with smallpox scars. C'est moi! Le Comte de Mirabeau!
He was a Jacobin, but "advocated the establishment of a constitutional monarchy rather than a republic."
Get this:
Mirabeau died of pericarditis in 1791 and was regarded as a national hero and a father of the Revolution. He received a grand burial and was the first to be interred at the Panthéon. During the 1792 Trial of Louis XVI, the discovery that Mirabeau had secretly been in the pay of the king brought him into posthumous disgrace, and two years later his remains were removed from the Panthéon. Historians are split on whether Mirabeau was a great leader who almost saved the nation from the Terror, a venal demagogue lacking political or moral values, or a traitor in the pay of the enemy.
Why choose?
And now, the weekly dream-journal entry, illustrated by artificial intelligence.
I was working undercover at a lesbian-only lingerie factory. Let’s just say they made me the first day, and I had to leave.
I was walking back when I realized I was being followed, and it wasn’t just some random criminal. I suspected it was a serial killer known only as The Headache Killer. I ducked into some woods and saw him take another path to follow me. When he doubled around to my path, I shot him three times. I think he had a gun at some point.
This seemed to have the desired effect, and he fell backwards into a pit. I called it in, and the first detective on the scene was a real jerk. “I just shot the Headache Killer,” I said, and he said “why do you call him that?”
"Well, that’s what we’ve all been calling him."
“I haven’t. I’m not your partner. Are we using little private names for suspects now?”
"It’s not a private name. Even the papers have called him that."
“Oh so we’re taking orders from the newspapers now.”
I give up. I remembered the Headache Killer had a gun, and went back to the pit. He was still conscious, even though he had a hole in the head, and I saw a gun in his hand.
“Don’t move around with that gun,” I said, and he apologized and threw the gun out of the pit.
Prompt: man in city reading a newspaper about the Headache Killer
It's been a while! Let's check in on the stadium apartment tower.
Eh.
The Firehouse project, which was a pit the last time we saw it, is moving up:
Nothing at the site that was cleared last fall. Not a good sign. And this old blue-glass thing . . .
Is slated for destruction for a big new project. It will be missed by no one.
"I know I'm going to be picked up, so I'd better rip up this card in full view of the police"
Solution is here.
This year's old newspaper feature: a "social no-no" single-panel illustration. Can you figure out what's wrong?
Speculate on the etiquette foh-paw in the comments; extract any story you wish. Answer on Monday.
That'll do. Have a grand weekend, and we'll start it all up again on Monday.
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