“No dammit!” screamed the man from Earth.

For several minutes he simply stared at the Mayor, apparently trying to wish him out of existence. When the native failed to disappear in a puff of smoke the ConMan decided to try another route.

“Who makes your laws?” he asked with reasonable calm.

“Laws?” the Mayor laughed. “We tried making some laws a few years back but nobody liked ‘em much so we junked ‘em.”

“Junked ‘em?” the man from BuEx was shocked into spluttering for a few moments. “You can’t simply junk all laws just because nobody liked them.”

“Why not?”

“Well … er …” The ConMan was unsure but pressed on. “Well … er … who made them?”

“Let’s see now,” the Mayor counted names off on his fingers. “There me and Jane, Fred and Mary, the two Jones girls – very good at it they were – and just about anyone who was interested chipped in some ideas.” The Mayor looked sheepish, “I suppose you think we were stupid, making up laws. It just seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Yes. I mean no. I mean I don’t know.” The ConMan was floundering and took a few moments to collect his thoughts. There seemed to be some missing.

“Let’s start again. Again.” He said eventually. “Who makes the rul … er regulations for this country?”

“What’s Country?” asked the Mayor warily.

The ConMan’s reply started off reasonably, if somewhat incoherent but quickly became an ear shattering screem.

“Well it’s … I mean it’s got … that is … Goddamit you stupid sonofabitch you must know what a country is!”

“Nope,” said the Mayor lightly.

“Oh dear God,” said the exasperated Earthman. “Look, you are a Mayor, right?”

The Mayor nodded.

“So you have a council?”

Again a nod.

“What does the council govern?” asked the ConMan in a whisper, as if he were afraid of the answer.

“The borough,” came the simple answer.

“And what,” the ConMan was becoming exited again, “Do you call a collection of boroughs.”

“A collection of boroughs,” replied the Mayor without even blinking but he did take a step backwards. Just in case.

“I … you …but … aarrgghh” screamed the Earthman who seemed to have developed a twitch just under his left eye and stuttered slightly as he spat out his next question.

“What do you get if you put all the boroughs together?”

“The World,” replied the Mayor, stepping back another pace as the ConMan seemed about to throw a fit.

He was silent for several minutes, breathing deeply as his face went through several colour changes while blood vessels at his neck and temples began throbbing visibly.

“Let’s go back to the beginning,” the ConMan almost pleaded. “How many councils are there?”

“Nobody knows for sure,” the Mayor thought for a while, “But I think it’s around two hundred and fifty thousand now.”

The Contact Manager was obviously shaken by the answer but ploughed grimly on.

“And who,” he asked, “Is above them?”

The Mayor thought long and hard, brows furrowed, face towards the sky. Eventually he said – “All right, I give up. Who is above them?”

The Universal Translator was unable to translate the reply other than to give out an ear splitting shriek.

When the ConMan was able to speak intelligibly again there was a glint of madness shining in his eyes.

“Listen you fool,” he started ranting at the native. “I am a Senior ConMan, an expert at understanding and communicating with aliens …”

“I’m no alien,” the Mayor interrupted indignantly. “I was born and raised right here.”

“No, I’m the alien,” said the Earthman. “I mean … that’s not what I mean … no it’s …”

Suddenly he turned and marched quickly back to his ship, muttering to himself.

“I’ll quit, that’s it, I’ll resign. It was a stupid job anyway. Maybe I never even found the bloody planet, they’ll never know.”

As the spaceship took off, disappearing rapidly into the clear blue sky another native, this one riding a bike, drew alongside the Mayor and stopped.

“Hello Fred,” the Mayor greeted the newcomer.

“Hello Mayor,” replied Fred. “Who was that?”

“A bloke from Earth.”

“What did he want?”

“Buggered if I know,” said the Mayor.

*****

When new technology emerged, older adults were generally skeptical and a bit annoyed – especially my grandfather. He despised devices like Alexa and Google Home. “Just a new-fangled way to be lazy,” he’d grumble. “And to ruin good music, too.”

No one – not even Granddad – spoke that way about the Button. Whether they were in awe of it, or thought of it as evil, they still spoke about the invention with reverence. However one might feel about the Button personally, it was an incredible scientific and technological accomplishment, and when people discussed it, they did so with respect.

Of course, we didn’t have one in our apartment – the cramped three-bedroom in Brooklyn where I’d grown up and still lived today. When I was born, there were six of us, but Grandma died when I was two, so for as long as I can remember it’s always been just us five. My grandfather grumbling, my two older sisters bossing me around, and Mom in the background, quietly taking care of us, a smile and a look of wonder ever-present on her face. My mother had a way of helping all of us, even Granddad, to look at the bright side of life, to see the good in each other and in the world. While Granddad grumbled about new technology, she was in awe of it all.

“Can you even imagine?” she’d say when the news talked about the Button.

“Don’t need to imagine,” Granddad would answer. “We’ll never see one of those in this neighhborhood, not in my lifetime – or yours.”

It was Emmeline who explained to me what he meant – that new technology was never available to people like us, not at first.

“The first CD player cost like a thousand dollars,” she explained. “It was years before regular people like us could afford one and go get it at the store.”

That was certainly true of the Button. The first few Buttons built were sold for one billion dollars – apiece. Now that they’d been around for over a decade, the price had lowered considerably, and you could get one for a million dollars.

“The rich people get most things first,” Emmeline explained. “They pay a ton of money for it and it’s just theirs for a while. Then once newer things come along, the older things are mass marketed and the price goes down. Once the price goes down, people like us can get the thing – usually years later. It’s not as special anymore, but it’s ours then.”

“Why can’t we have it when it’s special?”

“Because we’re not special,” Emmeline said matter-of-factly. Mom hushed her then. Emmeline had a way of telling it like it was, which I appreciated as the youngest child in a house full of grown-ups.

A billion dollars, a million – it could have been a hundred thousand dollars, and it still would have been out of reach. Which didn’t matter a bit to us.

Until, suddenly, it did.

*****

When I burst into her office, Amelia Amour barely acknowledged my arrival. Without looking up, she launched into a speech.

“Well, I received your e-mail, and I do empathize with your circumstances, but I made a policy a long time ago, to never excuse students from their first monologue -”

“I lied,” I said quickly. “I don’t need to be excused from the monologue.” I concentrated on keeping my breathing steady, trying not to think about the fact that I’d just lied to one of my childhood heroes, and the only woman who could possibly help my family with our current difficulties.

The fact that Amelia Amour was even my professor was incredible. Her family had founded NYAA, an elite school for young artists and performers in New York City, and she had taught the introductory drama course for decades. Her name was known around the world, the shelves of her office were lined with golden statuettes, and I had just busted into her space and announced that I had lied to her.

I’d wanted to be an actress ever since I was a small child – done every community theatre performance I could, taken dozens of dance and drama classes, and bought discount tickets to every Broadway show I could get. All that hard work had led, six months ago, to my audition and acceptance to NYAA.

Which is why I was here – the only person in my family in any kind of position to get my hands on a Button. The only one in my family who had access to a billionaire.

“I don’t need to be excused from the assignment,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry I lied. I need the Button.

Amelia’s eyebrows lifted. “My button?”

I shook my head. “Not yours. But I’m gambling on the fact that you probably have more than one. And that one of them, at least, is stowed away in a box somewhere in case you need it someday.”

Amelia Amour was rich enough that I was certain I was right. Claire wasn’t so sure, when I’d revealed my plan to her, but my sisters were always underestimating me – always doubting that I could be right about something they didn’t understand. Emmeline was in her second year of medical school, a brilliant scientist destined for greatness, and Claire was pre-law at NYU.

Neither of them knew celebrities the way I did. I studied stars like Amelia. If Amelia Amour and her family could buy one Button, they could, and would, buy more than one. Everyone knew that the Buttons as they currently existed were single use only – one chance, to either slow down or speed up time at the press of a button. No reuse – no second chances. Who wouldn’t stockpile them if they could?

“I’m also gambling that you’ll forgive me for lying,” I said quietly. “Because the other part of my e-mail was true.”

Amelia nodded, her eyes fixed on my face. She was sixty-seven years old and breathtakingly beautiful. If I could have wished for anything at that moment, it would have been the chance to see my mother at sixty-seven years old, just as beautiful as the woman before me and looking at me with the same kind of focused attention.

That wish was impossible. All I wanted was what was possible.

All I wanted was a Button.

“For cash?” she asked. “You want to buy it from me?”

I shook my head. “I don’t have a dime. I’m fourteen years old, ma’am, and I’m going to try to be someone someday. But for now -”

“You want a Button. For free.”

I nodded.

She stared at me, and I waited – at the mercy of the only millionaire in the world my family could call upon for a favor.

“How long does she have?” Amelia Amour asked me, her voice softening.

I swallowed, hard. Everything had been happening so fast. This was the first time I’d said it out loud. “Six weeks.”

*****

Mom got the diagnosis two months ago, and ever since the day she told us, I’ve thought of nothing but the Button – nothing but the chance to slow down the hands of time.

When the Button was advertised, exact figures weren’t utilized. The way the invention worked was through a combination of technology and science. The organic materials infused within the Button combined with the individual cells of the person whose hand pressed it, creating the phenomenon of either the acceleration or deceleration of time. Because there seemed to be an element unique to the person involved, the numbers weren’t exact, but the general expectation was that you could speed up time so that a week would feel like a day, and vice versa – a day could be slowed down so that it felt like it was seven days long.

Nothing changed for the rest of the world when one person used the Button – the change that occurred was internal. That was why some protestors – and my grandfather – compared it to drugs.

“But Granddad, it’s all natural,” Claire protested whenever he started ranting and raving about the Button being a new opioid. “It’s not addictive, and it doesn’t alter your body permanently at all.”

“So they say,” Granddad said roughly.

“You wouldn’t have used it, Granddad?” I asked. “When Granny was sick?”

That surprised him. He didn’t answer right away, and I felt a little guilty for having asked the question.

My grandmother had died of pancreatic cancer. I had no memories of her illness, but Emmeline did, and what she remembered was Granny being in inexcrutiating pain with little relief. For months, she suffered, with Mom and Granddad taking care of her round the clock and doing anything they could think of to make her comfortable to absolutely no avail.

“For me, or for her?” Granddad finally replied. No one answered him, and I never brought it up with him again.

*****

I ran the three flights of stairs up to our apartment, elated in a way I had never been before. I was the youngest, in all the ways. I was never the one who came through for the family.

Amelia had lost her own mother last year, which was one of the things I figured would help my cause. It was the reason I told her the truth instead of trying to make up a sympathetic story. Was there any daughter on Earth who wouldn’t relate to what I was going through – losing my mother, and wishing desperately to keep her with me for longer?

She had an extra Button stowed away on the top shelf of a closet in her office. She retrieved it for me and placed it in a bag for me to transport home on the subway.

“Do you know which -” Amelia Amour started to ask me as she handed it to me. I never heard her question in its entirety. I was already backing out of the office, ready to get home to my family with my news – and the Button.

They were in Mom’s room when I burst into the apartment. Emmeline and Claire got to their feet when I ran into the room.

“I got it,” I told them.

Claire began to cry. Emmeline nodded at me, as if she’d been expecting the news. “Good job, little sister,” she said, holding out her hand.

I passed her the small cloth gift bag in which Amelia Amour had placed the Button. I might have secured the item our family needed, but it was understood by all that Emmeline would now take the lead, as she always did.

The Button was designed simply; you’d never know how powerful it was by looking at it. It was all white, about the length and width of a sheet of looseleaf paper, with the thickness of a mobile phone. There was a dial at the top – that was where you set the speed of time you wanted to experience. At the center was a smooth, wide open area where you would place your hand and press down gently. Once you did that, the rate at which you experienced time would immediately change, or so we’d all been told.

Emmeline moved expertly, almost as if she’d installed a Button previously. Claire had wiped away her tears and was watching Emmeline closely. So was I. That was why I immediately noticed when she made a mistake.

It was so unlike her that it took me a moment to respond.

“Emmeline!”

She turned to look at me over her shoulder. “We don’t have to do it right now, Anna. I just want to have it ready for when Mom wakes up.”

I nodded. “That’s fine. But you have it wrong.”

All three of us looked at the dial, which Emmeline had set, incorrectly, to speed up time. If Mom used the Button without correcting it, she would experience the next six weeks – the time she had left – as six days.

It was a mistake.

Yet Emmeline didn’t make mistakes, and as my two sisters shifted their gazes from the Button to my face, I realized that we were experiencing a horrible misunderstanding.

Emmeline and Claire didn’t want the Button to slow down Mom’s time left with us.

They wanted to speed it up.

*****

It was as if time froze the moment Emmeline stepped away from the Button. They continued to stare at me, and I stared right back.

“Anna -”

“No,” I said sharply. “You have it wrong. You can’t do it.”

“She’s in pain, Anna,” Claire said softly. “Just look at her.”

I didn’t want to look at her. I had barely looked at Mom for days. The diagnosis was pancreatic cancer – same as Granny, except it was already Stage 4. She’d lost a lot of weight, and her skin was pale with tints of yellow. She napped constantly, which was the most unsettling thing; Mom at her healthiest was always moving, cooking, hugging, tidying. Now she was still, and almost always whimpering. Her back ached, she said, and it was incredibly difficult for her to get comfortable.

It was all the more difficult because we’d seen this before.

Mom and Granddad had cared for my grandmother for months – soothed her, read to her, adminstered medication that did little to ease her pain. I understood my sisters’ impulse to want to speed up Mom’s experience – less time should mean less pain, and no one would ever want someone they loved to suffer. Not if they could make the time – and the pain – go by quicker.

I couldn’t remember another time in my life when I’d disagreed with my sisters about something that actually mattered. I steeled myself for the argument of my life, with an aspiring litigator and a sister who was unaccustomed to being wrong.

“Seems like rather than arguing amongst yourselves, you should just ask her.”

The three of us looked over toward the doorway. Granddad was leaning against the door frame. He was as healthy and strong as he’d ever been, but he seemed smaller just then – like he wasn’t standing as tall as he usually was. Mom was his only child, and she was slipping away.

“Granddad, I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you don’t like the Button -”

He waved my words away. “Kathleen!” he said sharply. “Wake up.”

My mother’s eyes opened slowly. I wondered if she’d heard anything we said so far. She looked at each of us, her three daughters, a small smile on her face. Then we watched as her eyes wandered over to the Button and lit up; I felt proud when I saw that.

She squinted. “Emmeline?”

“Yes, Mom?” Emmeline stepped closer to her, and Claire and I leaned in as well.

“You have it set wrong,” my mother said.

My sisters looked at me immediately, but I kept my eyes on Mom, who looked at me and smiled.

“I’m ready,” she said. “Slow it down.”

I was a police officer for 40 years. Every few years I would get a jury summons, and a few times for a serious criminal offense. Of course, as a law enforcement officer there’s no way I’m going to serve on a criminal case. It used to be that a police officer’s word in court was gold, but not so much anymore. I was on a jury panel for an as yet unrevealed criminal case, but being in state district court, it was a felony.

The fellow next to me was a physician. The prosecutor asked him about his practice (internal medicine), how long he had been a doctor, and if he thought he could objectively hear the evidence and render an impartial verdict. Yes, of course.

Then he turned to me.

Prosecutor: So, you’re a police officer?

Me: Yes.

P: For how long? (Where, assignment, experience etc)

Me: 30 years.

P: This case occurred in (not my city). Do you know anyone involved in this case?

Me: Probably not.

P: You’re going to hear the testimony of police officers. Would you give their testimony any greater weight than any other witness (expecting me to say no)?

Me: Absolutely. Police officers swear an oath to obey the law and tell the truth long before they get to court. If they falsify a document, that’s a crime in itself. They have an obligation and incentive to tell the truth. Police officers know police stuff, just like this man next to me knows medical stuff. If you ask him medical questions I’m probably going to believe him.

P: (Beet red) Thank you. Excused.

As I picked up my release chit from the judge, he leaned over and whispered, “Good answer.”

Electric Light Orchestra – Mr. Blue Sky (Official Video)

America Is Being Absolutely Ripped Apart By Hate, And The End Result Will Be Unparalleled Chaos In Our Streets

September 17, 2024 by Michael

The way that people are responding to the latest attempt to assassinate Donald Trump says a lot about where we are as a nation.  There was a time when something like this would have been considered an attack on all of us.  But today things are completely different.  Many on the left are doing their best to downplay what just happened because it might help Trump get more votes.  And just like last time, there are some that truly wish that he had been killed.  They have worked themselves up into such a frenzy of hatred that they are actually hoping for the death of their political opponents.

Of course the same thing is true for some people on the right as well.  There was so much hate for Joe Biden when he was the Democratic nominee, and now there seems to be even more hate for Kamala Harris.  This is not the way to achieve anything.

We will never win by hating our enemies.

We win by loving our enemies and using the truth to persuade them to come over to our side.

If people perceive that you hate them, they will be extremely unlikely to listen to what you have to say.

But if people perceive that you love them, they will be much more likely to listen to what you have to say.

To love someone does not mean that you agree with them.  Personally, I fundamentally disagree with almost everything that our politicians do, and I express my opinions very strongly.

But I am not against anyone.  Ultimately, I want the best for everyone and for our society as a whole.

If we do not learn how to love one another, we simply aren’t going to make it as a society.  Today, there are millions upon millions of Americans that deeply hate entire groups of people for one reason or another.  I have never seen so much hatred, and this is the most divided that our nation has been in my entire lifetime.

Where do you think that all of this hatred is going to get us?

Everyone can see that this election is going to end very badly.

If we stay on the path that we are on, it is just a matter of time before we see uncontrolled chaos in our streets.

Is that what you want?

I sure don’t.

One of the reasons why I write the way that I do is so that people will wake up and choose to change direction before it is too late.

Because right now America is on a road that only leads to disaster.

We are being fed a constant diet of hatred, and just look at what this has done to our society.

According to one recent survey, 41 percent of Americans are currently experiencing “peak stress”…

In a year marked by financial worries and political tension, a new survey has uncovered the staggering impact of stress on everyday Americans. The average person feels their head “spinning” from stress a whopping 156 times per year, translating to about three times a week.

This alarming statistic is just one of many eye-opening findings from a recent study conducted by Talker Research for Traditional Medicinals. The survey, which polled 2,000 adults, also found that 41% of respondents are currently experiencing their peak stress levels for the year.

That is almost half the country!

Another recent survey discovered that the percentage of Americans that have been clinically diagnosed with depression at some point in their lives is at the highest level ever…

According to survey data, three in ten people in the United States had been clinically diagnosed with depression at a point in their lives in 2023.

As Statista’s Anna Fleck points out in the chart below, this is the highest rate since the question started being asked, up 10.6 percentage points from 2015. The rate of increase was particularly steep in the first year of the pandemic, jumping up from 22.9 percent in 2020 to 28.6 percent in 2021.

Sadly, levels of depression are especially high among women and among young people…

According to the survey, 36.7 percent of women report having been diagnosed with depression in their lifetimes versus 20.4 percent of men. For young people aged 18-29, 34.3 percent had been diagnosed with depression, while for 30-44 year olds it was 34.9 percent.

If we keep going down this path, our mental health is only going to get worse.

At this stage, even many of our children are really struggling…

A recent study from the University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital has uncovered an often-overlooked aspect of childhood development, finding a surprising number of children struggle to make friends. In fact, the poll finds one in five parents fear their children currently have no friends at all.

Imagine being a kid without a buddy to share your favorite video game with or someone to sit next to on the school bus. It’s a reality for more children than we might think. The poll of 1,031 parents with kids between six and 12 years-old reveals that 20% of kids potentially feel lonely or isolated during crucial years of social development.

I could go on and on about what a giant mess our society has become.

Needless to say, hating people is not the way out of this mess.

There are a lot of people out there that seem to believe that if they are going to be truly radical for a cause they must have someone to hate.

No.

If you want to be truly radical, become a person of great love.

Of course a person of great love tells the truth, and when you share the truth with others you will often be hated for it.

But if you respond with hate when others hate you, you will never win.

It is so easy to get pulled into all of the negativity that we see online and in the mainstream media these days.

Often, those that are the most filled with hate are the ones that get the most attention.

We must resist that temptation.

If we keep going the same direction that we have been going, there is no future for our country.

Love is the answer, but right now hatred just continues to grow all around us.

Mr.Kitty • After Dark // Jennifer Connelly • Career Opportunities

Beef and Mushrooms

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 1/4 pounds sirloin steak, cut into 1 inch pieces
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1 (10 ounce) package sliced mushrooms
• 1 (16 ounce) package frozen pearl onions
• 2 cups red wine
• 1 (10.75 ounce) can Campbell’s Golden Mushroom soup
• 1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley, chopped (optional)

Instructions

1. Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium high heat.
2. Season steak with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper and cook until browned, about 5 minutes.
3. Transfer steak to a bowl and set aside.
4. Add mushrooms and onions to the pan and cook until liquid has evaporated.
5. Add the wine and simmer until reduced by half, 5 to 6 minutes.
6. Stir in soup and 1/4 cup water and bring to a boil.
7. Add steak and its juices from the bowl and simmer, 2 minutes.
8. Divide into individual bowls and sprinkle with the parsley, if using.

ALL Men Need To See This – Man OUTSMARTS Ex-wife After She Tried To Take EVERYTHING He Has

Don’t you all sign anything.