text:
My name is Chad Sedwick. I'm a journalist (amateur), in a small town in Kansas. I am also a vampire, and before anything, I would like to say, I think this is the shittiest thing that could possibly happen to anyone ever. Modern movies make us out to be so cool; immortal, super-powered, sex-god creatures of the night. These works forget to mention that when a human is turned, their eyesight IMMEDIATELY declines. I'm not talking like a little fuzziness, I'm talking like "holy fuck, I can't see dick" blind. You can see (pun intended) how this might be an issue. It's really fucking difficult to go about your business in rural Kansas, at night, when you can't see ten goddam feet in front of you. One minute you're stalking what you think is a large, juicy, good ol' boy, the next you've got yourself fang deep in a tractor while some troglodyte pumps you full of buckshot. So, after about 15 years of not seeing shit, and doing A LOT of meth (hey, I can't possibly OD) I decided to see if I could make it somewhere in the state that had an optometrist.

This I accomplished through some pretty fucking handy use of mesmerization on the local truckers in order to a secure a nice, nocturnal ride. Several bloody, yet hilarious, misadventures later I found myself breathing heavily (not that I have to breathe, it was for effect) over the slumbering form of one Dr. Pinkerton. He was to be my first progeny, and the one who would fix my fucking eyes. To my great misfortune, at the very moment I opened my mouth to sink my teeth into his neck, Mrs. Pinkerton, sleeping next to the good doctor, perpetrated an instance of flatulence so foul it woke her husband, who seeing me, yelled. I sloppily bit at him, like a king cobra might bite at its prey after drinking a fifth of tequila. In the middle of the bloody chaos, Mrs. Pinkerton awoke, screaming her grey-haired head off. With one surprisingly effective swiped, I took her jaw off, which didn't kill her immediately, but did get her to pass out in shock. With that obstacle out of the way, I drained the doctor properly, and waited for him to turn. It turns out, this is not how you turn a person. It just basically kills them. I mean, there's not like a fucking guidebook for this kind of thing, or I'd have known about the eyes thing. Of course, now I'm all bloody, in this goddam slaughterhouse, and I still can't see for shit. I judiciously decide to flee.

With a phonebook. Flash-forward again, and there I am, this time looming (as vampires are wont to do) over my /new/ victim; Dr. Werther. I had found him in the good ol' yellow pages, and after a quick Google search (God bless the internet, how else is one supposed to figure out vampirism?) I was sure that by feeding him some of my blood, an /then/ killing him, I could create a perfectly good vampire optometrist. I mean, pretty sure. Feeling incredibly confident in my immortal powers of patience, I waited for the poor bastard to open his mouth to snore. This in itself was an incredibly mind-numbing exercise, and for most of the wait I played BrickBreaker on my Blackberry (the phone didn't actually function, I stole it a long time ago, had never paid for a plan, and in fact only kept it around to play BrickBreaker).

Finally, (the thankfully spouseless) Mr. Werther opened his mouth, and I, with all the unfeeling, lifeless cunning of a vampire, whipped out my pocket knife, and sliced open my hand to produce the blood for him to consume. It fucking hurt, like a motherfucker. I had to bite myself to keep from screaming. but after a lot of thought-cursing, I managed to turn my attention back to the task at hand; dripping my blood into this bastard's mouth. Predictably, he awoke shortly after the thick liquid hit the back of his throat, and I had to clamp his mouth and nose shut with my hands to make him swallow. We struggled like this for several long and bloody moments until I surmised that he had swallowed enough of my blood and I set to draining what was left of his own. Nobody tells you how gross this part is either, you have to swallow a shit-ton of that stuff, and it gets all over you. You can't really do laundry as a vampire, there's just too much blood. I took to stealing clothes from 24 hour laundromats. Anyway, it was nearly morning before the good doctor awoke (scaring the shit out of me in the process) and began to ask, or shriek, the same questions that I did when I was made. Being too lazy to explain the actual facts, I put on my best Transylvanian accent, and explained that I was Count Dracula, and that I would only return him to normal after he fixed my eyes.

This was surprisingly effective, and after an incredibly difficult, eyesight-hindered ride to Werther's office, I realized the most fucked fact of all: turning Dr. Werther had made his eyesight shitty too. His driving was goddam horrible, swerving all over and shit. There was no way I was going to let this asshole anywhere near my eyes. So I was stuck with this useless middle aged baby vampire, both of us blind, the sun coming up, in a town I didn't know. God, being a vampire is shitty.

Dr. Werther wasn't even good company, he kept bitching about being undead and all, and I had already committed to the stupid accent, so talking to him was awkward and distracting. So, as the sun's rays lit up the Kansas sky, I shoved him outside. I'd like to quickly note that when a vampire dies from exposure to the sun, it's also not like the movies; they don't just up and explode into ash. If only it were so quick...it actually takes like seven minutes, as the body gradually melts into this pile of bloody goop. It was disgusting, and I was glad that I had shoved him into the backyard and not the front for all his neighbors to see. After that little incident I went inside to find entertainment. I was happy to find his home computer unprotected, and after watching some pornography, I decided to begin writing this...account? I don't know. But if I live, I'll keep you updated on what happens.

title: Shitty Things About Being Supernatural

question: Why is Chad looking for an optometrist?

answer: Chad is a vampire. Like all vampires, he is almost blind so he wants to find an optometrist that can help to improve his eyesight.

question: How successful was Chad's mission to get his eyes fixed?

answer: Chad wasn't at all successful. He succeeded in killing the first optometrist that he tried to turn. He managed to turn the second but realized that the optometrist's eyes were so bad that there was no way he was letting him anywhere near his eyes.

question: How did Chad get rid of doctor Werther?

answer: Chad shoved Dr. Werther into his backyard as the sun rose. Vampires die in the sun. It took Dr. Werther seven minutes to disintegrate into a pile of bloody gloop.

question: What does the story say about Chad's family?


split: test

text:
	Fifty more MISSING posters came out of the office’s copier. “Thanks Mr. Reynolds.” The nervous man straightened out the stack of papers, hands shaking.
	“Not a problem Ed, anything to help find your boy.”
	“I promise I’ll pay the company back for all the paper-”
	Mr. Reynolds cut him off, “Fuck the company Ed.”
	Ed lowered his head and nodded, “Right, right.”
	He left the office feeling the same way he had for several days: drained, drained but determined. Police were on the case, or so they said, but Ed was glad his boss was doing what he could to help, it meant he didn’t have to carry the whole weight on his own. They hadn’t always gotten along and it was nice to not butt heads in a situation like this. Usually they bickered about the company’s finances or ways to keep clients, but Mr. Reynolds, a stern man, knew those things were petty compared to a missing person.
	Much later, as Ed drowsily stapled a poster to a telephone pole, a woman in high-heels and a poofy fur coat slithered over to him, “You lookin’ for some action sweetheart? It’s awful chilly tonight,” she crossed her arms and rubbed the sleeves up and down, “I’m nice n’ warm.” Ed’s eyes were unwelcoming. Hers fell to the posters clutched in his hand and then drifted to the pole, “Shit, never mind mistah.” She turned away but he grabbed her by the shoulder.
	“I used to be a cop, I know a girl like you has connections. Pimp, governor, somebody.” He handed her a poster.
	“Yeah, yeah sure, no problem.” Into the night he walked, the woman looking after him, sorrowful, “Good luck mistah old cop,” she said to herself, “good luck.”
	She sighed and looked over the paper. MISSING was in bold letters, there was a phone number and a picture of a young man aged 25. His name was Daniel Braunstein, (”That’s stein like clean, not stein like spine” often said Ed) in Universe Code: #Orange-White a father sought a son. In UC: #Beta-12 however, the poster read WANTED for Extra-Spatial Abduction and Space-Time Tampering.
-
	He felt cold and wet for a second, but back to unconsciousness Danny slipped.
	“Wake up!” Splash!
	Cold and wet again, Danny began to stir, “Wha’s going on?” The back of his captor’s hand struck his face. When he went to rub his cheek, he found his wrists bound to the chair he was sitting in, legs also. He could make out a figure in the darkness.
	“Not another peep!”
	“Just gag…him.” A woman somewhere behind Danny made herself known. “You won’t…” she struggled, “need him until…the end anyway.” Turning his head to find her, all Danny could see was blackness. A few lights glowed here and there, but nothing bright enough to see the whole room.
	“Oh, you probably would like to see mommy again.” Dropping something metal with a clang, the captor twisted his abductee’s head toward the woman and shined a flashlight on her. A hand clamped on Danny’s mouth before his yell of surprise hit the air.
	A metal , almost crown-like ring was screwed into her skull, blood coming from the punctures.
	“I couldn’t use yours obviously, but my own will work just fine. Just had to say I loved her and she was stupid enough to come.”
	“Any…thing for my boy.” She gave a weak smile, tears streaking involuntarily from the pain.
	“Years of drugs warping her mind convinced her to come as well.” He removed his hand and went to her, Danny unable to see his face. The captor reached into his pocket and brought out a small baggie of white powder. He carefully shook some onto the flashlight, “Like warm milk.” And put it up to Mrs. Braunstein’s nose. She snorted immediately and laughed.
	With the drug given, he killed the flashlight and stood at a cluster of small lights. Fiddling with something or just observing, Danny didn’t know: the shock of seeing his mother alive wouldn’t let his eyes function properly enough to tell.
	“How…my mom’s been dead for six years.”
	“Pay attention, my own, not yours.” A silhouette walked to Danny. A click, light, and a familiar smile he had seen in the mirror his entire life.
	“Boo. Guess who?” His own face.
-
	Prof. Lehrer drew a straight horizontal line on the lecture hall’s large chalkboard and tried to explain again to Ed parallel universes, “This line, yes? Our timeline and universe.” Ed was already lost, his deceased wife, Anne, was where Danny got his smarts from. Still, Lehrer continued, “This other line on top,” he drew a parallel line above the first, “this is a parallel and alternate world separate from our own.”
	“Speak English.” Ed was getting frustrated.
	“Okay um…ah! Say you flip a coin and you get heads,” Lehrer wrote an ‘H’ on the bottom line, “and now in the alternate reality where your son was taken, Beta-twelve, you might have gotten tails instead.” He drew a ‘T’ now on the top line and dusted the chalk off his hands, “Quite simple.”
	“So how many are there?”
	“How many what?”
	“The lines, worlds.”
	“An infinite number. You ate dinner later than usual one day here and skipped desert or another you ate early and had a banana split or another you can’t even chew dinner because your teeth rotted away. Every possibility.”
	“And Beta-twelve is where Danny is? How the hell do you know that?”
	“Alpha, the first universe that the known realities concluded was the first to contact a parallel world. John F. Kennedy from Alpha spoke to a grieving Jackie the day after he was killed in what we call now Universe Beta. Alpha does its best to monitor communication since it seems to know the most about contacting alternates.”
	“Did the Alphas tip our Earth off to something fishy? Do they know how my son got taken?” Ed had a load of questions firing in his head all at once.
	“Yes, and you’re not going to like this. A Daniel Braunstein from the Beta group was the first person to break through into the Color group, more specifically here, Orange-White.”
	“’Break through’? What…?”
	“Contact is relatively easy to us now, but physically moving realities…well let’s just say it can get complicated. The known groups have agreed visitation is off-limits because of the…currently known procedure. But enough about that, too complicated.”
	“Complicated how Lehrer?” Impatience growing.
	The professor paced back and forth for a brief moment before finally slumping down into a seat in the lecture hall, “It requires a neurological implosion, I know I know, English. Imagine a human brain as a bullet, kind of, you fire it, killing the person, and the shot can take you to an alternate reality…with other equipment of course.”
	“Who took Danny? Who took my son Lehrer?!” Ed bent down at the professor and held his shoulders firmly as he yelled at him.
	“Your son’s alternate from Beta-twelve. The one that broke through before. He essentially kidnapped himself. For the trip back he used a pair of twins,” he sighed and put his face in his hands, “he needed two to bring this Danny with him.”
	Ed could hardly speak, his head felt like a carnival strongman whacked it with a mallet. Finally he asked, “Why take him? Why take my boy?”
	“That’s what we don’t know.”
-
	The police had flooded the derelict, decrepit warehouse with lights aimed through the windows,  and Danny could now see what Daniel had called “my way out.” As Daniel began firing up what Danny believed to be the machine’s power source, someone outside with a bullhorn barked, “We have the place covered Frankenstein! Get out here now!”
	“Ugh, these fuckers again. Like annoying gnats, know what I mean Danny boy?”
	Danny’s head was throbbing. Seeing his mother again, even if it wasn’t really his mother, made his heart feel sore. Why did this madman still get to have her in his life? This frustration made his headache worse. Tinkering with a console of dials and buttons, Daniel began rubbing his forehead and groaned.
	“You too, Frankenstein?” mocked Danny.
	Daniel looked at him with disdain. He hated that name, “Do not call me that. If you knew the things I’ve done to earn that mutilation of our last name, you’d be frightened into silence. And the reason why our heads hurt is because we’re existing at the same time. Nature doesn’t like that.”
	“That nickname doesn’t work though, does it? Because it’s stein like clean-”
	“Not stein like spine. I guess some things aren’t so different. The headaches will go away once I’m gone, though prison might give you another one.” He crossed the room to a large, metal cylinder with two doors on it that were closed. Daniel knocked on it, “Last train to Lime-Teal. I used dad to get there the first time.”
	Danny’s heartache doubled, “Was it fucking worth it?”
	“Don’t judge me when you don’t even know how horrible he was. He deserved to die.” He turned away from Danny and turned a dial, “We’re dead in Lime-Teal, stillborn. Nature has forgotten Daniel Braunstein, I’ll have a fresh start.”
	Daniel’s mother began to cough violently and after the fit she collapsed to the floor.
	Daniel stormed over to her, “You better be alive you cunt.” He checked for a pulse but cursed when he couldn’t find one.
	“Untie me, quick!” said Danny, “I know CPR!”
	Daniel pulled out a small gun held by his belt, “Try something and you’re dead, I can just get another you from someplace else.”
	“Fine, just hurry up she doesn’t have much time.”
	Outside, the policeman barked again, “This is a final warning! Thirty more seconds and we’re coming in to light you up!”
	Daniel shot out a window. He could hear the “get down” order and that bought him more time. Furiously, he untied Danny from the chair. Once free, he and Daniel rolled Beta-12 Anne Braunstein over onto her back. Frantically pumping and giving mouth-to-mouth, Danny mimicked what he had seen in countless movies, and to his surprise, Anne’s eyes flickered open.
	“Holy shit I did it.”
	“Back in the chair, now!”
	The rusty, metal folding chair was Danny’s chance. As soon as he was close enough, he gripped the back of it and swung it wildly around. It hit Daniel with a solid blow to the head. Feeling relieved and satisfied, Danny picked up the gun. Boom. Boom. Someone was trying to bust down the door from the outside. The police would be inside soon.
	“Use…me to get…home.” Daniel’s mother said weakly, “They’ll kill you…both,…won’t take any…chances.”
	“No.” Danny’s eyes began to water, “You can’t die again.” Tears ran down his face now, “I’ve missed you so much mom.” He walked over and kissed her on the forehead.
	“I’m not her.”
	With those words, it was as if he had seen his mother disappear. He realized a stranger was in front of him, and she was right, she wasn’t her at all. He took a deep breath, wiped his face with his hands, and dropped the gun. Approaching the machine, he marveled at it, “He made all this…” Next to the console was a computer screen. Currently, LIME-TEAL was the set destination, “I wonder…” His fingers hovered over the keyboard. They began to tingle.
	“You want to do it, don’t you?” Daniel’s head was bleeding, but he managed to lift it slightly, “Go ahead, I know how curious you are. We are the same, we both want to know what else is out there, who we are in other realities. We were born to be scientists Danny!”
	Danny closed his eyes and sighed, it scared him how right Daniel was. He had to choose, “I will not be Frankenstein.” He scrolled through a list of universes on the screen until he found ORANGE-WHITE. Home. The machine whirred, a train that switched tracks. He swung open the doors of the cylinder and stepped inside. A big red button was on the inside and while pushing it, he turned to the woman on the ground, “I’m sorry.” With a blinding flash, the metal crown zapped Beta-12 Anne Braunstein to death and the cylinder was empty. Danny was gone.

title: Crimes Against Reality

question: Who kidnapped Daniel Braunstein?

answer: A Daniel Braunstein from an alternate universe.

question: Does Daniel Braunstein escape back to his own reality?

answer: The story describes him setting up the device to transport him back to his home reality, and it zapping his mother's alternate reality counterpart to get it to work. We are lead to believe that it sends him back, but doesn't explicitly say so.

question: Is Beta 12 Daniel Braunstein evil?

answer: The police call him Frankenstein and he tells the other Daniel Braunstein that he has done terrible things to earn that moniker that would frighten him into silence. He also is sacrificing his mother to travel between realities and says he used his father to do the same.

question: Does Ed Braunstein get reunited with his son?


text:
It's a little slow in the very very beginning.  Just...you'll see.

The Experiment

"Billy, eat your breakfast or you're going to fail out of Elementary school.  There been studies, you know," I told my son as he sat at the dinner table, a plate of steaming, fluffy yellow eggs sitting in front of him, waiting to be eaten.  Our kitchen was considerably small, so the fragrance of his breakfast was causing me to salivate, for I myself had not eaten yet.

"Come on dad, I don't want to eat. I never eat breakfast and I'm doing good in school," he replied to me in a high pitched squeak, a hint of annoyance in his voice as he stared idly at the eggs, contempt prevalent in his beady brown eyes.  His hair obscured them significantly, for he wore it long, much to my wife's displeasure.

"Fine son, I'll eat them for you.  But this is the last time, and don't tell your mother or I'll get in trouble!" I said as I made my way to the table, nudging Billy so that I could sit down and give into the temptation to devour the meal I made for him.

"You eat my breakfast everyday dad.  Like it's going to be the last time," Billy laughed, happily hopping off of the chair that was much too big for his slender body.  I scooped spoonful after spoonful of eggs into my mouth, guzzling them down greedily.  When I finished, I picked up the plate and placed it carefully into the dishwasher as I did every other day of my life since my son was old enough to attend elementary school.  After this was completed, I unfastened the powder white apron that read "Best Mom Ever" inside a frilly pink heart, surrounded by polka-dots.  Under this I wore a deep purple suit accompanied by a black tie and dress pants; my regular working attire.

"Billy, want to come give your dad a hug before he goes to work?" I asked in a playful voice, speaking in the third person like I did for the most part when I talked to him.

"Bye dad!" came his cheerful squeak as he bounded towards me and buried his face in my necktie.  I bend toward him slightly to put my arms around him.  He smiled at me, and it was the most beautiful thing I saw all morning.  His face glowed with an essence of childhood and a carefree attitude; he was quite amazing.  In that moment I felt a connection that only a father could feel, something that I know is special to fathers alone.

"I'll see you after work, six o'clock sharp!"

"I'll be here!"

I got into my car and smoothed out my tie with my fingers nervously, the same routine as ever.  I could never depart from home happily, because I was essentially taking my protectiveness and leaving.  How can I know what will happen to my son while I am at work?  Anything is possible.  There could be a fire at his school, a break in, some lunatic with a gun.  His bus could get into a crash, or swerve off the road into a lake, cracking the windows and slowly filling with water--

Needless to say, I was paranoid.  However, as I did everyday, I resisted the urge to get out of my vehicle and run back inside, telling him that I would be there for him forever.  It simply wasn't possible, so I pulled out of the driveway and took off.

There wasn't a moving car on the road for me to pass, something that did not strike me as odd in the least, for it was the norm.  The last time I had been on the road and seen another car drive past me... I can't even remember.  It must have been a while.  I passed a few cars parked on the side of the road every now and then, but that was it.

Screech.  My car whistled in pain as I stamped my foot onto the brake pedal to yield to a group of stupid kids as they ran across the street without looking first.  My car thudded to a halt as the last girl ran across, a blonde one with pigtails, looking no more than 6 or 7 in age.  I wondered why they weren't going to school.

"Crazy people," I whispered to myself under my breath.  Once the path was clear, I began my journey once more, turning my head to see the children running through somebody's backyard, and when I blinked they had gone, just like that, disappearing from my vision.  They must be fast runners.

When I got to the light, it was yellow, so I decided to wait for the next green cycle; I wasn't in the mood to risk getting pulled over, although I had not seen a police car in ages.  As always, the intersection was completely devoid of cars.  It was only my lone Chevrolet, brake lights illuminating the ground behind me, idling at the roadway.  I looked around me to the stores.  The grocery store, to my right, was coruscating into the dim morning air, it's bright halo of light adding an angelic touch to it's friendly atmosphere.  I was friends with most of the cashiers, for I stopped there every day after work.  To my right, the liquor store was still dark, dormant always until 10 AM.

The light switched to green, and I sped along the deserted roadways, humming to myself as I went.  When I arrived at my office, I was greeted by my assistant, a short young man with red hair and an even redder face.

"Hello sir!  Can I get you anything?  Coffee, water, iced tea?  I already wiped down your desk, and emptied your trash, and vacuumed your office floor.  Do you want me to take your coat?  I can dry clean it if you want.  Can I get you anything to eat?  I can get take-out.  Do you want to pass along any messages to anyone else?  Do you need anything copied, filed, organized?  I can--"

"Thank you Henry, but I'm alright!  Except, I suppose you could take my coat," I replied to his rant, all spoken in, at best guess, under five seconds.  I took off my jacket and dropped it into his opened arms.  It slumped straight to the floor.

"Whoa, that's expensive Henry, be careful," I said to him, picking it up off of the floor as he stammered a nervous response.  "I'll take it up myself, Henry.  It's okay.  I'll take some water though, thank you."  He stumbled off down the hallway in the direction of the water cooler to obtain the water I knew would never come.  Every morning I asked him for waterm, and every morning he walked down that hallway, and every morning he never returned after that.  The water never arrived, and the next time I saw Henry would be the next day.  Thinking nothing of it, I proceeded towards my office room.

"Morning, Elizabeth!" I called to our secretary, and she waved.  "Hi, Rob!" I called to our sales manager, and he nodded dismally.  It was common knowledge at our office that Rob hated his job, but we tried to maintain a healthy attitude around him so that maybe we could change his opinion.  "Weather's looking nice today, eh Rob?"  He shrugged his shoulders, his eyes twitching ever so slightly, and then looked back down at his papers.

"Alright then!" I attempted to keep the cheeriness in my voice as I unlocked my office door and stepped inside.  It smelled faintly of lemons, for Henry's cleaning supplies were all lemon scented.  I was impressed with his work; nothing looked disturbed, everything was untouched.  The same mahogany desk sat in the middle, a window behind it and a vase with a fern in it on either side, swaying slightly in the breeze from the heater vent.  It was a cozy little space, blanketed with a gray carpet and a ceiling light that was just a little too bright.  I put my bag down and slowly descended into my 2013 AX 500 desk chair model 98-B with swivel control, calibrated to comfort me and at the same time support my spine.  A quick glance at my in-box showed that I had a light workday, at least to start out with.

"Sir, the water cooler was out!" The voice of my assistant pierced through the air, reverberating in my eardrums, it's eager yet professional tone sickening me.

"Why are you here."  I tried to ask it in the calmest voice possible, but I found it difficult to repress my newfound anger.  I didn't even know why I was angry that my assistant was here, I just was.  Never had he come back from the water cooler, never.

He was silent.  For once in his life, at the least convenient time, he did not open his mouth or speak a word.  He simply stood there, staring, teetering back and forth on his heels.

"I'm going to ask you again.  What in God's name are you in my office right now, Henry?" This time, my voice was raised quite a bit higher, my anger was building up, bubbling inside of me like searing hot water.  Again, he was silent.

"Henry, if you don't say why you're here, I am going to KILL YOU!"  I said the last two words with force and at only a few decibels below a scream, so that everyone in the office could hear me.  I glanced out the window, and nobody so much as looked up from their work.  Rob scratched his head.

"Okay, I need a day off," I said to myself, mimicking Rob and rubbing my own scalp and getting up, grabbing my still unopened bag.

"But sir, don't you want your water?" Henry asked.  As I walked across the floor towards the door, I could hear him following me.

"No, Henry, I don't want any water, now please stop talking to me," I said to him.  He grew silent and the footsteps behind me stopped.

"Elizabeth, I'm going home, I'll be in tomorrow," I told her quickly as I rushed out the door.  Why had Henry returned?  Never in 2 years had he returned once he went off to the water cooler, and that was how I liked it.  It gave me a sense of order, this daily routine.  Eating my son's breakfast, Henry's greeting, working for 8 hours, stopping at the grocery store, then going home to my wife and Billy.  It had been disrupted and I was not in my normal mental state, so it was with no surprise that I sped right past the grocery store on my way home.

"God," I breathed, making an illegal U-turn and pulling into the grocery store parking lot, into the same front spot that I always occupied.

"Morning John, I didn't expect to see you here this early!" called the cashier Linda, waving at me as she stood at her empty register.

"Hi there, I took the day off from work," I said back as I walked through the front doors, proceeding in the direction of the cracker aisle.  The only thing that I needed today was a box of saltines to complete our evening meal.

"This all today John?" she asked as I placed it on the register for her to ring up.

"Yep, that'll be it!" I said, pulling out my wallet.  I handed her the money, but it fell onto the register.  "Oops, sorry Linda!" I picked up the money and pushed it closer to her, noticing a large pile of money already present.  I thought nothing of it, however.

"I'll just let you take care of that for me."  I grabbed my saltines and left the store, still humming the song that was playing over the intercom, an old piano piece from some long forgotten decade.

When I got home, the house was deserted.  My son had already left for school and my wife was at work.  It was eerily quiet, but the silence was oddly comforting to me.  It was like an old friend wrapping it's arms around me, embracing me with love.

Curiously, the document that always hung on the refrigerator had already changed.  Every day when I got home from work, a new piece of paper was to be found stuck to the fridge door among other magnets and a paper bearing "Great Job!" from Billy's class.  It was typed in black ink, and looked very professional.  My wife always told me not to read it, so I never did, all I knew about it was that it was never the same two days in a row, I could tell by the line breaks.  Feeling mischievous, however, and with nobody home to stop me, I tentatively approached the paper and scanned it over.

Jonathan Henry Cinder: Subject 1: Isolation
Week 309,  Isolation Experiment
***Subject is still observed talking to himself on multiple occasions; appears to believe he is not alone.  Sanity in question.  Emotional outbursts have begun as expected.  Mental stability may be degrading: has broken daily schedule.  No further reports***

I read it several times, then, when after the fifth time I still could not understand what the paper meant, I turned away and headed towards my bedroom, still humming the song from the grocery store.

title: The Isolation Experiment [format edited]

question: Describe the twist in the tale

answer: The story appears to be about the daily routine of a perfectly normal working man. In the end, however, we discover that the man is in isolation and most of what we have observed in the story is a figment of his imagination.

question: Name the signs that things may not be quite what they seem.

answer: There are several clues that the events in the story are not normal. The narrator makes breakfast for his son each morning. Then eats it himself. He sees children that disappear. What kind of assistant behaves the way that the narrator's does? The narrator becomes furiously angry without knowing why and the money at the shop is not in the till. It's lying on the counter.


text:
PURLEY is an area of the London Borough of Croydon in London, England. It was part of the county of Surrey until 1965. It is located south of the town of Croydon, and south of Charing Cross. It had a population of about 14,000 in 2011.

History

Toponymy

The name derives from Purley Farm which was originally part of the Benendon estates owned in the Middle Ages by the Huscarle and Carew families. They also held estates in Berkshire and men from this area who had worked on the estates were brought up to 'headquarters' to work and were generally known as xx de Pirley or xx de Woodcote etc. denoting the villages whence they came. (there was no consistent spelling in those days so you will find the Berkshire Purley variously spelled Purle, P'lee, Pirley etc.) One, John de Purley, tenanted the farm which became known as Purley Farm after his family succeeded him for several generations. The original meaning of Purley was a riverside field inhabited by snipe or bittern.

Local government

Under the Local Government Act 1894, Purley became part of the Croydon Rural District of Surrey. In 1915 Purley and the neighbouring town of Coulsdon formed the Coulsdon and Purley Urban District which in 1965, under the London Government Act 1963, was abolished and its area transferred to Greater London and used to form part of the London Borough of Croydon.

The urban district council was based in a colonial-style building opened in 1930. The building, on the A23 Brighton Road near Reedham Station, became the property of the London Borough of Croydon and was sold to developers. It was left derelict for many years but was converted into flats in 2012. Plans to dig under the building and build additional flats were refused in 2015.[1]

Aviation

Kenley Aerodrome, to the east of the town, is currently official property of the Ministry of Defence. It was one of the key fighter stations – together with Croydon Airport and Biggin Hill – during the World War II support of Dunkirk, Battle of Britain and for the defence of London.[2][3]

Suburban growth

Purley grew rapidly in the 1920s and 1930s, providing spacious homes in a green environment. Northeast Purley stretches into the chalk hill spurs of the North Downs.

[Former offices of Coulsdon and Purley Urban District on Brighton Road, Purley. Now a residential development.]

One road, Promenade de Verdun, created by William Webb, has a distinction all of its own. It is 600 yards (550 m) long and has on one side Lombardy poplars planted in local soil mixed with French earth specially shipped over to the UK. A plaque at one end of the road explains that the French ministry of the interior donated the soil from Armentières, as a memorial to the alliance of World War One and the soldiers who died. At the other end stands an obelisk carved from a single piece of stone with the inscription “Aux soldats de France morts glorieusement pendant la Grande Guerre”.[4]

The 32nd Surrey Battalion of the Home Guard was known as the Factory Battalion, and had the specific task of guarding the Purley Way factories: its units were mainly based on staff from the individual firms. The factories adjoining Croydon Airport took the worst of the air raid of 15 August 1940: the British NSF factory was almost entirely destroyed, and the Bourjois factory gutted, with a total of over sixty civilian deaths.[5]

A comprehensive history of Purley and its growth around Caterham Junction (now Purley Station) with the coming of the railways some 150 years ago is found in the Bourne Society's 'Purley Village History' and in its Local History Records publications.

The Webb Estate made headlines in a 2002 survey, which found that it had over the years attracted the highest-earning residents in the UK. In the same year Purley topped Britain's rich list becoming the most affluent suburb and consistently features among the most affluent suburbs in Britain owing to its exclusive gated estates, large houses and greenery yet only less than 30 minutes from central London thus attracting wealthy city workers.[6]

Education

Purley is home to a number of schools; including four notable Catholic schools, two of which are in Peaks Hill, Surrey: these schools are The John Fisher School a high-performing Catholic all boys state school (formerly an independent and then highly selective state school), Laleham Lea School a co-educational prep-school and Oakwood School, a co-educational Catholic primary. Cumnor House School, a prep school, is also in Purley. Oakwood Prep School is located on Godstone Road, Purley, and has been awarded Outstanding by Ofsted for over 10 years. Purley has one of the UK's longest-established language schools, Purley Language College, founded in 1928.

Other schools in Purley include:

-   Beaumont Primary School
-   Thomas More Catholic Secondary School (co-ed)
-   Riddlesdown High School (co-ed)
-   St David's School
-   Margaret Roper Catholic Primary School (co-ed)
-   Purley Language College

Retail and commerce

[Shops in Purley] Purley used to have many different kinds of shops such as greengrocers, butchers, fishmongers, card shops, sport shops, etc. The old Sainsbury's was closed in the early 1980s (and has now been demolished as part of redevelopment plans by the congregation of Purley Baptist Church). Since the opening of a new Sainsbury's in the early 1980s (closed 2001) and, more significantly, a Tesco superstore in 1991, there has been a shift in the town's retail offering towards estate agents, restaurants and bars.

The island opposite Purley Baptist Church has been refurbished and the Church, under the banner of 58:12[7] (a company and charity set up by the Church) are planning to redevelop it. Other partners in the development of a strategy for the regeneration of central Purley include the Purley & Woodcote Residents' Association and Purley Rotary who actively participate in the Neighbourhood Partnership forums hosted by Croydon Council.

Demography

White British is the largest ethnic group at 61%, as of the 2011 census.[8]

Politics

Purley has consistently returned Conservative Party MPs to the local seat of Croydon South since 1974 and has also returned Conservative members to Croydon Council since 1965. Since the north of Croydon tends to return Labour councillors, the two-halves of the borough are often at loggerheads. In the 2006 local elections the Conservatives were returned to power in Croydon removing Liberal Democrats and replacing Labour from the local political scene. Prominent members of the new Council are residents of Purley & of Woodcote (now part of Coulsdon West Ward). In 2018, Purley was split into two wards; Purley and Woodcote, and Purley Oaks and Riddlesdown.

Fictional references

-   On television the town became known in the sitcom, _Terry and June_ where Terry and June Medford (Terry Scott and June Whitfield), had moved after the characters' previous series, _Happy Ever After_. The sitcom was set on the cusp of Purley and Wallington (on Church Road in a house within sight of St Mark's Church) and the opening credits featured them searching for each other around the (now unrecognisable) Whitgift Centre – a shopping precinct in Croydon.
-   One of the houses used in _Footballer's Wives_ is 7 Rose Walk, Purley, owned by former Crystal Palace FC Chairman Ron Noades.[9]
-   Purley is famous for a reference in both the “Marriage Guidance Counsellor”, “Nudge Nudge”, and “Kilimanjaro Expedition” (mentioned in the film _And Now for Something Completely Different_) sketches by the Monty Python team.
-   The CBBC children's sitcom _Little Howard's Big Question_ is based in Purley, and also features continuous references to Croydon.
-   Mr Angry, a character on Steve Wright's Radio 1 afternoon show in the 1980s, is from Purley.

Notable residents

-   Michael Arthur, Vice-Chancellor of Leeds University, Provost of University College London from September 2013, was born in Purley
-   Jay Aston, singer with Bucks Fizz, was born in Purley.
-   Derren Brown, magician and mentalist, was born and grew up in Purley.
-   June Brown, actress, used to live in South Croydon near Purley.
-   Laura Hamilton, TV presenter and Dancing on Ice Contestant, lives in Purley
-   Peter Cushing OBE, actor, grew up and went to school in Purley.
-   Shelagh Fraser, actress, was born in Purley[10]
-   Andy Frampton, professional footballer who currently plays for AFC Wimbledon, grew up in Purley.
-   Nigel Harman, actor, was born and grew up in Purley.
-   Sir Bernard Ingham, Margaret Thatcher's former press secretary, lives in Purley.
-   Sir David P. Lane, oncologist best known for identifying P53, went to school and grew up in Purley.
-   Martin Lee, singer with Brotherhood of Man, was born in Purley.
-   Archibald Low, pioneer of radio guidance systems, was born in Purley.
-   Ray Mears (author), TV survivalist
-   Innes Hope Pearse, doctor and co-founder of the Peckham Experiment, grew up in Purley.[11]
-   Francis Rossi, lead singer of Status Quo, lives in the Webb Estate in Purley.
-   Isabel Trigo, top five candidate for Miss Phillippines 2017, lives in Purley
-   John Horne Tooke, an English politician and philologist, lived in Purley at the end of the 18th century where he began writing _Epea Pteroenta, Or, The Diversions of Purley_.
-   Ron Noades, former chairman of Wimbledon FC, Crystal Palace FC and Brentford FC and owner of the Altonwood Golf Group, lived in Rose Walk, Purley, from 1993 until 2013.

Transport

[Purley railway station] Purley Cross gyratory connects routes leading south-east to East Grinstead and Eastbourne (the A22), west to Epsom and Kingston (the A2022), south to Redhill and Brighton (the A23), and north to Croydon and Central London (the A23 and A235). The A23 north from Purley forms the Purley Way, which leads to Croydon's trading and industrial hinterland and also to the former Croydon Airport, the predecessor of the present London Heathrow Airport and London Gatwick Airport.

The town is on the main London-to-Brighton railway line and is served by Purley and Purley Oaks stations on that line, and Reedham station on the Tattenham Corner Line.

Nearest railway stations

-   Purley railway station
-   Purley Oaks railway station
-   Riddlesdown railway station
-   Reedham railway station
-   Sanderstead railway station

Nearest places

-   Coulsdon
-   Croydon
-   Kenley
-   Riddlesdown
-   South Croydon
-   Selsdon
-   Sanderstead
-   Warlingham
-   Woldingham
-   Banstead

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8] http://www.ukcensusdata.com/purley-e05000159

[9]

[10]

[11] David Goodway, ‘Williamson, George Scott (1883–1953)’, _Oxford Dictionary of National Biography_, Oxford University Press, May 2012

title: Purley, London

question: Explain the origins of Purley, London.

answer: Purley is a place south of Croydon, London. It was part of Surrey County until 1965. The name Purley was taken from Purley Farm which is a farm owned by Huscarle and Carew families in the Middle Ages. A man named John de Purley once tenanted the farm with his family working it for generations. From there on, the name kind of stuck.

question: Explain Purley's ties with the First and Second World War?

answer:
There is a road in Purley called Promenade de Verdum (600 yards long) with Lombardy poplars planted on one side of it. It was said to have been planted in local soil mixed with soil from France. The soil was a gift from the French government as a memorial to the alliance of World War One and the soldiers who died.

Purley is reported to have been the home f the 32nd Surrey Battalion of the Home Guard during World War 2. The battalion was tasked with guarding the Purley Way factories.


text:
[Noël Moon, c.1924] NOËL ROSE OAKESHOTT, née MOON (1904–1976) was a British classical archaeologist.

Life

She was the daughter of the physician Robert Oswald Moon and his wife Ethel Waddington (died 1933), daughter of Major-General Thomas Waddington of Pangbourne, and sister of Penderel Moon the historian.[1][2][3] Her mother was a suffragist and artist.[4]

Noël was a pupil at the Farmhouse School, Mayortorne Manor near Wendover, run by Isabel Fry;[5] her mother had known Constance Masefield (née Crommelin), Fry's friend, during the 1890s.[6] There she learned Latin, and was taught Greek individually at her father's request. She acted there in a production of _Iphigenia in Tauris_, in Gilbert Murray's translation.[7] She entered the University of Oxford as a non-college student, lodging with David George Hogarth. Following the _Literae humaniores_ course from 1922, she completed “Mods”. She was then advised to transfer to the Diploma in Classical Archaeology.[8] In this early period at Oxford, Richard Hughes wooed her by letter.[9]

Socially, Noël met at this time classical scholars including Cyril Bailey. She fell in with Balliol College students, through Hugh Keen, father of Maurice Keen.[10][11] In 1926 she acted the role of Leader of the chorus in a Balliol production of _Hippolytus_. The title role was played by Walter Oakeshott, who proposed marriage to her at the end of the year.[12]

In 1926, also, Noël was the top student in the Diploma in Classical Archaeology, and was awarded the Gilchrist Scholarship to the British School at Rome.[13] She was there for four months from January 1927. With the support of John Beazley she worked on Greek vases from southern Italy.[14]

Works and influence

Noël Oakeshott's essay _Some Early South Italian Vase-Painters_ from 1929 remains a basic contribution in the field. The pioneering work of Beazley and Oakeshott was followed up by Arthur Dale Trendall.[15] In the 1930s she did work for Trendall's _Paestan Pottery_ (1936), and visited the British School at Rome again in 1937, spending some time with Trendall and seeing museum collections in southern Italy.[16]

Noël used Beazley's method of separation of individual painters, on examples of Italian vase painting. It was an application of connoisseurship, and some attributions have been reconsidered since.[17]

Family

Noël Moon married the educational administrator and historian Walter Oakeshott in April 1928 at Aston Tirrold. The engagement from 1926 was prolonged by Walter's need to move from his teaching post at Bec School; an operation for chronic appendicitis he had; and opposition and stalling tactics from her wealthy father, who considered that Walter's social position was inadequate.[18] Much later, Beazley named the so-called Oakeshott Painter of vases after the couple.[19]

They had twin sons born in 1933, Evelyn and Robert, and daughters Helena (born 1931) and Rose (born 1940).[20]

Notes

Category:1904 births Category:1976 deaths Category:British archaeologists Category:Classical archaeologists Category:British women archaeologists Category:20th-century archaeologists

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[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

[12]

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[14]

[15]

[16]

[17]

[18]

[19]

[20]

title: Noël Oakeshott

question: Discuss Noël Oakeshott's family.

answer: In April 1928, at the age of 24, Noël married historian and administrator Walter Oakeshott at the Aston Tirrold. In 1926, Walter extended their engagement because he had to leave his teaching position at Bec School. In addition, he underwent surgery for a long-term case of appendicitis. Noël's father opposed their relationship and contributed to the delay in their engagement by claiming that Walter's social status was insufficient. Noël and her husband had four children: twin boys, Evelyn and Robert, born in 1933, and Helena and Rose, born in 1931 and 1940, respectively.

question: What does the text say about Oakeshott's early life and education?

answer: Noël Rose Oakeshott was born in 1904 to Robert Oswald Moon and Ethel Waddington, daughter of Major-General Thomas Waddington of Pangbourne. Her mother was a suffragist, artist, and Penderel Moon's sister. Noël attended The Farmhouse School in Mayortorne Manor, near Wendover. At her father's insistence, she studied Latin and Greek. In Gilbert Murray's translation, Noël acted in Iphigenia in Tauris. She enrolled in Oxford as a non-college student, staying with David George Hogarth. She finished "Mods" after the 1922 Literae humaniores course. Noël was then encouraged to switch to the Diploma in Classical Archaeology. In a 1926 Balliol production of Hippolytus, she met her future husband, Walter Oakeshott. In 1926, Noël received the Gilchrist Scholarship to the British School at Rome for her outstanding performance in the Diploma in Classical Archaeology.

question: What was the relationship between Noël and John Beazley?

answer: To honor her achievement as the top student in the Diploma in Classical Archaeology, Noël was awarded a Gilchrist Scholarship to study at Rome's British School in 1926. She stayed there for four months, from January 1927. She then met John Beazley, who assisted her on Greek vases from southern Italy. Noël Oakeshott's essay "Some Early South Italian Vase-Painters" from 1929 remains a basic contribution in the field. Arthur Dale Trendall continued Beazley and Oakeshott's pioneering work. She then used Beazley's separation method of individual painters on examples of Italian vase painting, which was an application of connoisseurship, and some attributions have been reconsidered since. Years after she married Walter Oakeshott in 1928, Beazley named the so-called Oakeshott Painter of vases after the couple.

question: What does the text say about how Noël Oakeshott died?


text:
Ever since I was a child I have been very aware of the visual environment people build around themselves. When I got older, I wanted to decode their choices. Why did my Nan’s front room, with its brass ornaments and pot plants, look like it did? Why do middle-class people love organic food and recycling? Why does the owner of a castle and 6,000 acres wear a threadbare tweed jacket? People seem to be curating their possessions to communicate consciously, or more often unconsciously, where they want to fit into society.

The British care about taste because it is inextricably woven into our system of social class. I think that – more than any other factor, more than age, race, religion or sexuality – one’s social class determines one’s taste. The anthropologist Kate Fox, in her book Watching the English (2004), observes that, even amid the homogenised dress codes of youth, class plays a part. A middle-class teenager may still wear a hoodie but it will be a more cotton-rich brand, or they will sport a toned-down version of the fashionable haircut, such is the pervasiveness of bourgeois regard for authenticity and restraint.

I am not an anthropologist, though; neither am I a sociologist or a design historian. I am an artist, so when I was given the chance to present a television series – last year’s Bafta-winning Channel 4 documentary All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry – I wanted to use the opportunity to research a series of artworks about class and taste.

I decided to make a series of six tapestries. I usually choose a medium because of the resonances it has acquired; tapestries are grand – they hang in the vast saloons and bedchambers of ancestral piles, they often depict classical myths or military victories.

I thought it refreshing to use tapestries – traditionally status symbols of the rich – to depict a commonplace drama (though not as common as it should be): the drama of social mobility. As a working-class grammar-school boy from the tail-end of the “baby boomer” generation, social mobility is a theme close to my heart.

The\ Agony\ in\ the\ Car\ Park,\ 2012,\ by\ Grayson\ Perry\ (Grayson\ Perry/Victoria\ Miro\ Gallery,\ London)

As we oiks climb the greasy pole, we may pick up a deceptively authentic-looking set of middle-class predilections: a book-lined study, a modest grubby car, a full wine rack and original window frames. All the while, from deep inside our urbane metropolitan exterior, an embarrassing former self wails from his oubliette: “I want a gold Porsche.” Such a primal desire for the gewgaws of one’s culture of origin lead to the downfall of the hero of my tapestries, Tim Rakewell.

Class is something bred into us like a religious faith. We drink in our aesthetic heritage with our mother’s milk, with our mates at the pub, or on the playing fields of Eton. We learn the texture of our place in the world from the curlicue of a neck tattoo, the clank of a Le Creuset casserole dish, or the scent of a mouldering hunting print. A childhood spent marinating in the material culture of one’s class means taste is soaked right through you. Cut me and, beneath the thick crust of Islington, it still says “Essex” all the way through.

As with many aspects of our behaviour, a lot of the interesting stuff happens when we think we are not even making a decision. It’s those default settings we all have, those unexamined “natural” and “normal” choices, which often say the most about us: where and when we eat, when and where we might expose a bit of flesh, the kind of curtains we buy, what television you watch, how you bring up your children. We often become aware of these unconscious choices only when we move between social classes. I think my middle-class wife screamed when I first came into the kitchen without a shirt on.

In my series of six works, The Vanity of Small Differences, we follow the life of Tim Rakewell, from humble birth to famous death. The main thread of this journey is his progress through the social strata of modern British society. Nearly all of the places, people and objects that feature in the work were inspired by my televised taste safari.

We chose the three locations for our television series – Sunderland, Tunbridge Wells and the Cotswolds – because they are each already strongly identified with the social classes. Sunderland has a proud working-class heritage from its heyday as a mining and shipbuilding town. The phrase “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells” – referring to a fictional writer of letters of complaint, invented by staff at the Tunbridge Wells Advertiser in the Fifties – makes this town almost synonymous with conservative middle-class values. The Cotswolds have also become associated with a deeply rooted, landed upper class, owing to the prevalence of mellow, limestone stately homes among the rolling hills of this scenic area.

The\ Adoration\ of\ the\ Cage\ Fighters,\ 2012\ (Grayson\ Perry\ /\ Victoria\ Miro\ Gallery,\ London)

Within each social group, taste seems to play a slightly different role. When I asked club singer Sean Foster-Conley what I should feature in my tapestries to show working-class taste, he said “the mines and shipyards”. “But they no longer exist,” I replied. In a very important way, however, he was right. The heavy industries that shaped the north of England also shaped the emotional lives of the generations of people who lived there. Winding towers and cranes can be torn down in a day, but the bonds, formed through shared hardship working under them, live on. Taste is an emotional business; working-class people often talk of a strong sense of community, and taste decisions are often made to demonstrate loyalty to the clan. Now that those communities are no longer held together by working in the same mine, mill or shipyard, call-centre workers or spray-tanners pledge allegiance to a locale, to their friends and family, through football, soap operas, bodybuilding, tattoos, hot cars, elaborate hairstyles and the ritual of dressing up for a Friday night on the town.

Among the gentry, taste also binds the tribe, but not much personal expression seems to be involved. The word that kept cropping up with the people I met was “appropriate”. The owners of grand country houses were custodians of a scene that they were unwilling to let change. They felt deeply obliged to maintain these landmarks and the roles that come with them. Curiously, having to preserve these beautiful and costly piles has helped form the overriding aesthetic of the upper class – one of refined entropy. The houses are lovingly patched, a man wears his grandfather’s coat, the sofa collapses, and the creation of a museum of clutter is blithely encouraged.

Talking to Rollo and Janie Clifford, who own four Grade I listed properties in Gloucestershire, I thought they took pleasure from a crumbling stone staircase or her 50 year-old car, covered in stickers. When quizzed, they denied an attachment to hard-won decay and pleaded poverty. When I pointed out that Rollo carried around his papers held together by a metal clip attached to a stump of dog-chewed cardboard when he could probably afford a new clipboard, he very grudgingly admitted to an appreciation of patina. How much of this is due to lack of funds and how much to inbred taste I do not know, but, as an Englishman, even a jumped-up prole like me feels genetically drawn to crumbling, faded glory.

This elegantly arrested decomposition gives off useful signals. It says “We are not in a hurry to change and upset anyone, we have owned this for ages and therefore are not billionaire incomers, who would install a swimming pool and electric gates.”

The drama of taste really gets going when people betray their aspiration to a higher social status through their purchases. The broad swath of the British who describe themselves as the middle class are most aware of, and also the most anxious about, taste. At Kings Hill in Kent I encountered a set of unwritten rules. “Discreet branding” was a phrase that cropped up – Prada loafers with a little badge, a Paul Smith shirt with telltale eccentric buttons, a “low key” Rolex. Residents of these PVC clapboard houses sensed they had moved away from a tribe where crude bling gained respect, but they still needed the reassurance of an easily read code. Ostentation was still a difficult drug to resist – Range Rover Sports were everywhere and one resident poetically summed up the combination of pretension and banality when she described the estate as “the only place you would see a Bentley parked on a roundabout”.

The ambience of the estate was maintained by a mixture of contractual obligation (“no caravans”) and communal taboos (“no net curtains”). Talking to the residents, I found a genuine community spirit, but I sensed that for all of the convenience, security and luxury of their lifestyle, true middle-class status, if they actually wanted it, was beyond an intangible exclusion barrier. What that divide is made of, I think, is largely culture and education. The people basking on the sunlit uplands of the chattering classes have either passed through this miasmic barrier at university, or were born beyond it, where people just seem to know how to be fully middle class. Crucially, they understand that despite all the rules about taste that they have picked up by osmosis – when to wear shorts, what to name one’s child, what to serve at a kitchen supper – none of them matters; one can flout them all as long as, and this is paramount, everyone knows you are doing it on purpose. So I can buy a Porsche and have it gold-plated, but it has to be full of rubbish and dog hair, and I must NEVER, EVER wash it.

Another driver of taste that I noticed among the upper middle class was the desire to show the world that one was an upright moral citizen. In the past, a good burgher might have regularly attended church or done voluntary work; today they buy organic, recycle, drive an electric car or deny their child television. This need to pay inconvenient penance to society seems to come partly from guilt. The liberal, educated middle class have done well, but they must pay with hard labour on their allotment, or by cycling to work.

Professional aesthetes in deconstructed suits and statement spectacles would love it if there were strict overarching rules of good taste. I fear they search in vain. I started my research with a full set of prejudices about the “inferior” taste of the working class I had left behind. I now find myself agreeing with the cultural critic Stephen Bayley that good taste is that which does not alienate your peers. Shared taste helps bind the tribe. It signals to fellow adherents of a particular subculture that you understand the rules. Within the group of, say, modified hatchback drivers, there is good and bad taste in loud cars in much the same way as there is good and bad taste in installations within the art world. Outsiders may find it baffling or irritating, but that is of less importance to insiders than impressing one’s peers.

_GRAYSON PERRY’S TAPESTRY SERIES THE VANITY OF SMALL DIFFERENCES IS ON SHOW AT THE RA, LONDON W1, UNTIL AUGUST 18. THE ARTS COUNCIL COLLECTION TOUR OF THE VANITY OF SMALL DIFFERENCES STARTS AT SUNDERLAND MUSEUM ON JUNE 28. DETAILS:ARTSCOUNCILCOLLECTION.ORG.UK_

question: What is the primary focus of this article?

answer: The author is interested in how taste intersects with class, and how taste manifests itself in one's home décor and personal objects. The author created a series of tapestry works titled "The Vanity of Small Differences," which documents the life and death of Tim Rakewell.

question: Who is Tim Rakewell?

answer: Tim Rakewell is the character that the author tells the story of through the six tapestries they created.


text:
Congress just gaveled in for the second half of the 115th Congress and already a record number of senior Republican lawmakers, along with some vulnerable incumbents, are running for the exits. But in this hyper-partisan Washington, most of the retiring lawmakers and Republican Party leaders are reporting that their party remains strong and unified, even as their Democratic counterparts are showing increasing optimism over their party’s chances in November.

The newly announced retirement of nine-term incumbent Darrell Issa (who may still run in a more GOP-friendly neighboring district) means that a whopping 31 incumbents are now walking away from their seats ahead of the 2018 midterms. The map this cycle heavily favors the GOP, but the retirements are starting to make Democrats salivate because they only need 25 more seats to recapture control of the House.

“Generally, when
the sea retreats from the shore for kilometers on end, it portends a dangerous
and large wave coming back in, and I think we are seeing that right now,” Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly tells _Rolling Stone._ “Denying that the wave is likely to come back into shore, I think, is maybe a feel-good kind of coping mechanism, but it’s not a political strategy for dealing with the reality that they are supportive of and enabling of one of the most unpopular presidents in American history.”

Democrats are claiming momentum after a string of overwhelming victories in off-year races, including capturing an Alabama Senate seat for the first time in 25 years and a surprising slate of state legislature seats in places like Virginia and New Jersey. But most Republicans laugh off the optimism emanating from their counterparts.

“They’re full of crap,” Republican Rep. Raul Labrador tells _Rolling Stone_, before dismissively brushing aside the opposition. “Democrats are always going to be Democrats.”

Labrador, who has launched a gubernatorial bid in Idaho, is one of a handful of Republicans leaving a House seat behind to run for higher office. Internal GOP rules also place term limits on anyone who chairs a committee, and that’s partly why eight sitting chairs are hanging up their gavels and heading home (or, more likely, to a lobbying shop over on K St.).

“When you finish your chairmanship, you don’t want to just wander the halls aimlessly,” Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, the chair of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, tells _Rolling Stone_. “I don’t think this is that much out of the ordinary to have this many people not running for reelection.”

But this is out of the ordinary. When Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake announced his retirement, he took to the Senate floor and unleashed a blistering indictment against his party and their titular head, President Trump, telling his colleagues, “I will not be complicit.” Retiring Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker also has unleashed on Trump at the end of last year, at one point even tweeting “#AlertTheDaycareStaff” before he took to cable shows to call the president a liar.

But there may be something different in the water on the House side of the Capitol, because the bulk of these retiring GOP lawmakers, at least in public, maintain their party is on the right path.

“Last I looked, I was term-limited and that has a wonderful way of focusing ones attention,” Republican Rep. Jeb Hensarling, who chairs the Financial Services Committee, tells _Rolling Stone_. “Listen, I’m bullish. I think this is a great tax reform plan. I think it’s historic and I think it is going to lead to great economic growth. And I think people will start to feel it and see it and, as it does, I think so will follow our political fortunes.”

And leaders on the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) are also putting a happy face on the opportunities.

“I always think it’s good when we have new generations of candidates stepping forward, and I think they need to put together strong campaigns, I have confidence that they’ll do so,” Rep. Elise Stefanik tells _Rolling Stone._ “And hopefully they’ll tap into this yearning for new styles of leadership.”

Stefanik herself has12 Democratic primary opponents vying to oust her from her upstate New York district, but she brushes the opposition aside and says the Democratic Party has become too progressive to win seats like hers.

“I feel great going into this year. Again, they are running further and further to the left getting out of touch with voters in my district. I feel great about where we are,” Stefanik adds.

But more senior Republicans are bracing for what could be that impending Democratic wave.

“I’ve been worried since the day after the election. Nobody has had a good midterm, literally, since 2002,” Republican Rep. Tom Cole, a former NRCC chair, tells _Rolling Stone_. “It’s not like there’s some guaranteed loss of the majority. But, look, the odds of gaining seats are essentially zero, so you’re playing defense across the board. You never like to be in that situation.”

With Trump’s maintaining a steadily low approval rating, the midterms could prove to be the Democrats’ to lose, though Democratic officials deny they’re getting cocky.

“But the idea that we’re getting over confident? No,” Rep. Keith Ellison, the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, tells _Rolling Stone._ The only sure thing, the only certain thing is a lot of work and engaging people. And we know that historically midterms are very, very difficult, particularly for House races, so we have our work cut out.”

And now that former anti-immigrant sheriff Joe Arpaio who was pardoned by Trump announced he’s running for the open Arizona Senate seat, Ellison says he welcomes the “criminal, felon” into the race.

“Awesome. They can keep putting those nasty, hateful people up and we’re just going to keep knocking them down,” Ellison adds. “But we’re not going to depend upon them being awful. We’re offering an inclusive vision; a fair economy. You know what about that? They’re shuffling money to the rich, and we’re trying to make sure this country’s economy and society is about working people, middle class people, regular folks.”

question: What does the article say about Keith Ellison?

answer: Keith Ellison is a Republican and the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee. Ellison says that the former anti-immigrant sheriff Joe Arpaio welcomes the “criminal, felon” into the race. He also says that they are trying to make sure the U.S. economy and society are about working people and middle-class people.

question: What does the article say about President Obama?


text:
On May 1, 1969, Fred Rogers stepped before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Communication and explained what exactly his job entailed.

Rogers, the man behind the PBS show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” had gone to Washington, D.C., to defend public television from budget cuts. President Richard Nixon had proposed slashing funding for programming such as Rogers’ in half as the war in Vietnam raged on.

Sitting in front of Sen. John O. Pastore, the chairman of the subcommittee, Rogers didn’t get bogged down in budgetary minutia. Instead, he talked about what he hoped to accomplish with his show. He used it, he said, to help children learn to deal with their problems in a healthy manner ― to instill a sense of confidence in the kids he worked with and who watched him. He used simple sentences and simple words to get his point across:

  This is what I give. I give an expression of care every day to each child, to help him realize that he is unique. I end the program by saying, “You’ve made this day a special day, by just your being you. There’s no person in the whole world like you, and I like you, just the way you are.” And I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health. I think that it’s much more dramatic that two men could be working out their feelings of anger ― much more dramatic than showing something of gunfire.

After telling Pastore what he did, Rogers decided to show him as well.

“Could I tell you the words of one of the songs, which I feel is very important?” he asked. “This has to do with that good feeling of control which I feel that children need to know is there. And it starts out, ‘What do you do with the mad that you feel?’”

He then recited its words:

  What do you do with the mad that you feel? When you feel so mad you could bite. When the whole wide world seems oh so wrong, and nothing you do seems very right. What do you do? Do you punch a bag? Do you pound some clay or some dough? Do you round up friends for a game of tag or see how fast you go? It’s great to be able to stop when you’ve planned the thing that’s wrong. And be able to do something else instead ― and think this song ―

  “I can stop when I want to. Can stop when I wish. Can stop, stop, stop anytime ... And what a good feeling to feel like this! And know that the feeling is really mine. Know that there’s something deep inside that helps us become what we can. For a girl can be someday a lady, and a boy can be someday a man.”

Pastore, who had never seen Rogers’ show, was visibly touched by the speech.

“I’m supposed to be a pretty tough guy, and this is the first time I’ve had goose bumps for the last two days,” he said. “Looks like you just earned the $20 million.”

Rogers’ speech became one of the most iconic moments in the history of public media. But hidden within it was Rogers’ quiet acknowledgement that shows such as his would face trouble in the free market.

“We don’t have to bop somebody over the head to ... make drama on the screen,” he said. “We deal with such things as getting a haircut.”

For anyone who grew up with Mr. Rogers on the screen, it’s not hard to decipher what the ever-optimistic man was actually saying. Rogers knew his haircut discussion could excite children once he was in front of them, but he also knew it would be hard to compete for their attention as on-screen violence and special effects became ever more present outside of public media.

  I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health. Fred Rogers in 1969

Rogers died in 2003, but public media has continued to provide educational programming that remains trustworthy and popular. NPR ratings reached an all-time high last fall. A bipartisan polling team found earlier this year that 73 percent of all Americans ― including more than 60 percent of Republicans ― opposed eliminating federal funding for public television.

Nevertheless, on Thursday, President Donald Trump went even further than Nixon did in 1969. The president’s budget plan proposed pulling all federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports NPR and PBS. The CPB receives about $485 million annually from the U.S. government, much less than $54 billion Trump hopes to add to the defense budget.

There would be significant consequences if such a decision went through, according to Patricia Harrison, the president and CEO of CPB.

“The elimination of federal funding to CPB would initially devastate and ultimately destroy public media’s role in early childhood education, public safety, connecting citizens to our history, and promoting civil discussions ― all for Americans in both rural and urban communities,” she said Thursday.

Free-market proponents have long argued that eliminating such educational shows would be fine. If “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” can’t survive in the free market, they say, maybe it shouldn’t be able to survive at all. But to many other people, the educational programs provided by public media ― programs that might not be able to otherwise compete with the empty calories available on other channels ― remains inarguably valuable.

Mr. Rogers is gone now. When the time comes later this year to eloquently argue for public media, he won’t be there to save the day. Of course, the question then becomes: Who will?

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question: What does the text say about feelings?

answer: Mr. Rogers makes a plain effort to talk about feelings on his TV show. His hope was that by making feelings okay to discuss and offering ways to manage them, it would benefit the mental health of children watching his show. A song is quoted from Mr. Rogers about how to manage anger. The text also says that Senator John O. Pastore was emotionally moved by the content of Mr. Rogers' speech.

question: What does the text say about Mr. Rogers' journey from being anti- to pro-public media?

question: What does the text say about the free market?

answer: The author of the text suggests public media shows would face challenges in the free market, and that Mr. Rogers knew that. Because his show, and shows like it, are up against much more dramatic privately funded entertainment. Advocates of the free market argue that publicly funded media probably shouldn't survive unless it can survive on its own.


text:
The Candidate
	“I accept your nomination for President of the United States.”
	With those few words, the young, ambitious New York Senator accepted the nomination on the grand stage of the Democratic National Convention in front of a robust crowd of his peers and fans. The venue glimmered with blue confetti and ribbon after the Senator’s response. Fellow Democrats applauded, fans cheered, and the entire room erupted with excitement. The Republicans had held the Presidency for four years already, and the conglomerate of Democrats across the nation had set their sights on 2016. They saw opportunity for change and options for success. They saw a chance to welcome a new era in American history. Their hopes rested on the back of one man: Patrick Ipsum.

	Patrick had always fostered an interest in politics. He liked the interaction, the pressure, the importance of the job. All through his years of schooling, Patrick could be seen at the head of student government. It was in these early years of adolescence that Patrick developed his genuine personality, charisma, and honest aura, three characteristics that now stood at the foundation of Patrick’s image. People described Patrick as a people person: someone everyone knew, someone everyone had talked to, someone everyone could relate to.
	Patrick graduated from New York University at the top of his class, double majoring in Political Science and International Affairs. He spent summers interning at city halls, mayor’s offices, and even the Governor’s office. Friends and family often praised Patrick for his ambition, confidence, and eloquence. Patrick could look at someone and instantly connect with his or her situation. It did not matter if they were friends for a lifetime or strangers off the street.
	His mother supported him all throughout his life, helping him draw election posters in middle school, listening to campaign speeches in high school, commenting on slogan ideas. His father, on the other hand, a stoic, reserved man, remained aloof for most of his son’s endeavors. It seemed as if nothing Patrick had accomplished pleased his father, and this hurt Patrick tremendously.

	“Mr. Ipsum, the question now goes to you. What is your stance on gay marriage?”
	Patrick stood up straight behind the mahogany podium that shielded his lower body from the audience. His hands rested gently upon the sides of the dark wood as if cushioned by the softest of pillows. Not a blemish could be seen on his face and not a wrinkle could be spotted on his fine-pressed navy suit. The lights illuminated his soft face and the blue tie that sat with a perfect knot under his collar.
	“I have said it before, and I will say it again. I believe that gay marriage should be legal in all of our glorious states. This is not a religious issue. This is an issue of equality. I would like to describe our nation as a place where all types of people can seek haven. No matter their sexuality. Gay or straight. If elected, I will continually support the passage of gay marriage laws until we reach a state of complete equality. Thank you.”
	Patrick rested himself and looked to his opponent for a rebuttal. George Stultus, the hardcore conservative Senator of Alabama, stood at the other end of the stage behind a podium just like Patrick’s. His face showed the expression of an old, experienced man. A man who had spent a lifetime in politics, while Patrick had only begun his political career.
	“This guy knows the game. He goes up there and makes me look like an inexperienced ass during the debate. He has been in politics for so long; he has an exact understanding of how to become President. Me, I’m some young Senator who decided to run and see what happens.”
	“Listen to me, Patrick. I want you to shut the hell up for once second and take a deep breath. Why do you think I would sign on to run your campaign if I didn’t have a great deal of confidence in you? You need to stop this stuff right now and focus on the matter at hand. I don’t want to hear another word about this again. You understand me?” uttered Patrick’s campaign manager as he stormed of to attend to more pressing matters.

	No one could ever prepare a presidential candidate for the rigorous campaign. Patrick began his campaign with rays of excitement, eagerness, and wonder. Traveling from town to town, city to city, state to state appealed to Patrick because it meant he could do what he did best: personal interaction.
	“Why aren’t you that candidate for president? The Democratic one?” said an eager man standing above the table Patrick was seated at.
	“Patrick Ipsum, pleased to meet you!” he said as he lifted the napkin from his lap and stood up to the great the fellow. “I am the man you are thinking of. I am trying to become the next president. You do have that right. Now, my friend, what is your name?”
	“Joe, sir. Joe Burns.”
	“Nice to meet you, Joe. What do you do for a living, Joe?”
	“Well,” after a long pause, “I’m actually unemployed for the moment. I was laid off about six months ago, and I haven’t been able to get back on my feet. This economy is just killing me right now.”
	“Joe, I am going to make you a promise. You elect me as president, and I will make it my duty to end this unemployment that continues to plague this glorious nation. I will put my word on that, my friend. You believe in me, and I pledge to make things better for you.”
	“Mr. Ipsum,” taking a long gaze at the trusting eyes and genuine face that provided him with an unexpected warmth and connection, “I would just like to say thank you. You have my vote, for sure. Some of these big politicians in Washington don’t give a damn about the real Americans, but you seem different. God bless you.”
	Even to the brightest of politicians, the campaign takes its toll and has different effects on everyone. The presidential race puts enormous stresses on the candidates and ultimately requires strength, resilience, and intelligence at all stages of the process.
	“Are you kidding me? That is the second media attack this week. Why do they keep running these stories on us? God forbid, they run one harsh story on our opponent. I swear, I don’t think I’ve seen one negative story about that man. What, is he perfect? His campaign is flawless?”
	“Patrick, the media is one of the craziest things in America. They make up fat lies based on whispers of mendacity. If they hear even an iota of a somewhat juicy story, they will run it. I know it looks bad for us now, but you just have to wait. Stultus is going to be hit by some bad press soon, and you can mark my words on that. Nobody said this campaign would be easy, Patrick. I’ve run lots of campaigns, and one is more work than the last.”
	“It’s just so much damn stress. Everyday, I wake up and have to hope that the media isn’t against me. I have to hope that the public will still support me. I have to hope that nothing goes wrong. I don’t know if it is this media attack or the campaign in general, but I don’t feel too good about this whole thing anymore.”
	“Right now, I am going to talk to you as a friend, not as your official campaign manager. The only way for you to feel better and for the people to feel better about supporting you is to regain that sense of confidence that made you known. Get back the charm. Get back the old Patrick that everyone used to know and love. You do that, and I am willing to bet that you will have success in this race.”

	Patrick often remembered his father during the campaign. He remembered the blank face he’d always had when Patrick told him about his day at school. Patrick would tell his father about how he’d won the high school election, how he’d finally gotten that internship at the Governor’s office. Numerous achievements that all left his father apparently unchanged.
	“Dad, I won the class election at school. You’re looking at the new Eleventh Grade Class President!”
	“Oh, that’s great.”
	“It was a total landslide. The other candidate only got, like, twenty votes. I swept the entire election! I think it was my speech. I really tried to connect with the students. I think it worked. It might have been the awesome posters that Mom and I made.”
	“That’s great.”
	“Thanks,” Patrick said as he turned away from his father and made his way upstairs.
	The fact that his father never truly took pride in his son utterly tormented Patrick. This torment fermented into a deep, uninhibited drive for success in Patrick. Everything he had done, everything he would do was, in an effort to bring some sort of change to the blank, cold face of his father.
	Patrick realized that his whole life had been an attempt to impress his father and finally gain his true pride. Patrick pushed himself to the limits with the hopes of attaining some sort of satisfaction. He desired a form of gratification; he wanted to hear an appreciation for all his hard work. Patrick Ipsum, a man who had already experienced a great amount of success in his life, could not accept the fact that his father never expressed pride for him. Patrick’s cold paternal relationship remained the sole problem in his life. To some extent, all that he had accomplished thus far, his stellar performance throughout school, his early success in the game of American politics, his chances of becoming the next United States’ President, did not mean anything to Patrick without a sense of love and pride.

	“My name is Patrick Ipsum. Believe in me. Believe in this nation. Vote Ipsum tomorrow!”
	Those words echoed over the loudspeaker at the high school stadium in Tampa Bay, Florida. Patrick stood upon the stage for what seemed like hours, smiling at the crowd of cheering supporters and waving feverishly at every single one. The effects of the campaign could be seen on Patrick as he stood on that stage. The youthful face that once glimmered with excitement was now speckled with blemishes and the occasional wrinkle. Patrick’s eyes did not show the expression of a hopeful, young Senator, but rather they depicted the expression of a man who had been changed. A man who had experienced firsthand the hardships and troubles with a political career. A young man who had come into this race with just too much on his plate. Patrick Ipsum represented a man who had tried to do everything but had not realized the difficulties of it all.
	 Patrick dealt with the long nights, tiring commutes from state to state, and constant attention easily. The physical constraints of the campaign proved tough for the candidate, but rather the mental hardships of the campaign had broken down the once hopeful Senator. It was the doubt and the thought that all of the endless, stressful work could possibly amount to nothing that tormented Patrick. This factor, the unpredictability of the entire election, remained the only idea that infected Patrick’s brain and altered his mentality during the campaign.

	The staff sat around the coffee table in Patrick Ipsum’s suite at the Hilton Hotel. Takeout food containers littered the floor, paper coffee cups spotted the tables and desks around the room, and individuals sat in chairs and on the floor. Faces were illuminated by the white glow of laptops and iPhones. The sound of vibrating phones and clattering keyboards buzzed around the room as members of the campaign calculated the probabilities and attempted to look up the current standings. The candidate, Patrick Ipsum, sat in an armchair, staring at the CNN broadcast on the television. Patrick looked at the screen with the blankest of expressions.
	The race remained close for the entire night. Ipsum took the lead early, but then Stultus inched ahead. It went back and forth between the two hopeful candidates, but neither of the two achieved a substantial lead. The staff knew it would be a close one, but they had severely underestimated their opponent. Stultus took states that the staff had assured Ipsum he would sweep. Moods remained optimistic until Stultus took Florida. Once the state filled with red, the staff’s chat died to a silence. Everyone in the room knew how the night would turn out.
	Patrick remained in his armchair for the remainder of the night. He remained in it when they announced Stultus’ victory. He remained in it when his staff began their work on a concession speech. He sat there, speechless with the same blank expression on his face. He reviewed the events of the last year of his life. He thought about the unthinkable amount of work he and his staff had put into this campaign for this, a loss. He was disappointed in himself.
	A phone began vibrating on the coffee table. Once. Twice. Three times. Four. Patrick’s eyes jumped to the phone, realizing it was his own. He pulled himself up, slowly as if he were stuck to the chair. He read the name on the screen: Dad. His hand grasped the phone and pulled it close to his ear.
	Patrick stared in disbelief at the phone for a second but then accepted the call.
	“Son, It’s me, Dad. I know we haven’t talked in a while. I just wanted to call and let you know that I’m proud of you...”
	The phone slowly slipped from Patrick’s grasp. As it fell to the floor, Patrick remained standing for a moment. He then returned to his relaxed position in the armchair. Patrick closed his eyes and smiled, wiping away the tears on his cheek.

title: [RF] The Candidate (any feedback would be wonderful!)

question: Explain Patrick Ipsum's qualities and experiences he had accumulated on his way to becoming a nominee for the office of the United States President.

answer: Patrick had always had an interest in politics. He thrives in the pressure and interaction politics afforded him. While he was in school, he campaigned to be the head of the student government. The process helped him develop charisma and the required personality needed to succeed. Patrick attended New York University where he studied Political Science and International Affairs. During holidays, he would spend time interning at city halls, the mayor's office, and the Governor's office. People praised Patrick for his ambition, eloquence, and empathy that made him magnetic to voters everywhere.

question: What prompted Patrick's father to call him after the Presidential election?


text:
[]

Andrew Janz (left) and Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.)Mother Jones illustration

Let our journalists help you make sense of the noise: Subscribe to the _Mother Jones Daily_ newsletter and get a recap of news that matters.

At high noon on a sunny Tuesday, a crowd of protestors lined the block where Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) has an office in Clovis, California. There are about 250 people at this Tuesday Vigil, a weekly event that’s grown over the past year from its humble beginnings as two people with a sign that read, “No ban. No wall,” protesting President Donald Trump’s travel ban, which Nunes supported.

Even as Nunes, the chairman of the House intelligence committee, has become a lightning rod for his now-infamous memo, which sought to undermine the Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of the Trump campaign, he represents an extremely safe Republican district. He’s won seven of his eight elections with more than two-thirds of the vote. Yet there are some registered Republicans among the throng chanting “Kick him out!” on the sidewalk outside his office. “This memo trick? It’s ridiculous,” Micki Whitaker says. “I’ve written to Nunes several times,” says Janet Kroeger, “with no response.”

For months, the message at the Tuesday Vigil has been anti-Trump and anti-Nunes, but now the protesters have someone to root for: Andrew Janz, a 34-year-old Fresno prosecutor who has staked his claim as Nunes’s main Democratic opponent in a race that, for once, promises to be interesting. He’s at today’s rally, dressed in a gray suit with an obligatory American flag pin, doing the politician thing: shaking hands, giving hugs, and getting pulled aside by TV news crews. A car rolls by and a woman yells, “I’m voting for you, Andrew!” “Thank you!” he shouts back. “Tell everybody, okay? We gotta do this.”

Until a little more than a year ago, Janz says, he had no real political ambitions. He grew up in the district, the son of immigrant parents from Canada and Thailand who worked low-wage factory jobs and insisted that he go to college. Eventually, he went to law school and became a prosecutor. His last assignment at the Fresno district attorney’s office was in the violent crimes unit, going after “people who try to kill people,” as he puts it. His goal had always been to rise through the ranks as a D.A. and maybe then join the U.S. Attorney’s office. “That was always my trajectory,” he says.

Then Trump won the election, and Nunes started landing in the news for making a secret trip to the White House and pushing the baseless theory that the Obama administration authorized the illegal “unmasking” of Trump campaign officials. “To me, it appeared early on that [Nunes] was obstructing justice,” says Janz. Previously, he had mostly thought of Nunes as a politician who never met with his constituents. (He hasn’t held a town hall meeting since 2010.) “I started asking, “Who is going to take on Nunes? And I found out: nobody.”

Last April, Janz decided to run. The House Ethics Committee had just opened an investigation to determine whether Nunes had disclosed classified information when he publicly stated that intelligence agencies had incidentally collected information about the president’s associates. “And I thought, ‘What better person to challenge someone who’s under an ethics investigation than a prosecutor that’s sworn to uphold the highest of ethical standards?’” Janz says. (The ethics investigation was closed in December.)

Janz has already gotten attention for trolling Nunes on his own turf: In November, he put up a billboard in Fresno that depicted Nunes and Trump as monkey-backpack-wearing children under the control of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Last week, he released a campaign ad that strung together media clips slamming Nunes’s recent behavior.

[]
Andrew Janz for Congress
Even as Janz turns up the heat on Nunes, he has a long way to go. In a district with an 11-point voter registration advantage for Republicans, Nunes has easily slayed one Democratic opponent after another since 2002. In 2016, he was reelected with 68 percent of the vote, and Trump took the district by a nearly 10-point margin.

In previous elections, the Democratic candidates facing Nunes have mostly been “of the sacrificial lamb variety,” Thomas Holyoke, a professor of political science at Fresno State University, told _Mother Jones_. But Janz seems more serious. “All three major candidates are good candidates,” says Joseph Altschule, the former chair of the Tulare County Democratic Central Committee, referring to the other Democrats lining up to challenge Nunes. (They include Ricardo “Rico” Franco, a businessman, and Bobby Bliatout, the son of Hmong refugees who manages community healthcare clinics.) But with Janz’s background as a prosecutor, he says, “There’s a good chance law enforcement will back him. The crossover potential is there for him perhaps more than others. He understands where he is, and he understands the makeup of his district.”

Democrats in the district will also have to overcome their historic timidity. Altschule describes Democrats in the region as “leaners.” “I’m a fairly visible Democrat in this community,” he says, “and every once in a while, I will get someone who will kind of lean in, and whisper, ‘You know, I’m a Democrat, too.’ _Shhh._ _Don’t tell anybody_.”

Janz will also have to win over voters who once supported Nunes. Bob Whalen, the Republican mayor of Clovis and a friend of both candidates, says, “There’s a reason Democrats haven’t fielded any reasonable candidates that were going to make much progress against Devin—and it’s because Devin is well-liked.” Despite the national attention Nunes has received due to his association with Trump, Whalen says, “We’re not defining Devin’s work on our behalf in the district based on the last 18 months.”

Plenty of Nunes’s constituents care little about the Russia collusion story and his role in it. “It’s fake—the whole Russia deal,” a fifth-generation farmer in the district recently told the _Los Angeles Times_. Agriculture is the region’s main economic driver, and many residents care most about increasingly scarce water and jobs. “Devin has focused on trying to improve business and the economy here,” Whalen says. However, he acknowledges that unemployment in the district “is lagging behind the state and national unemployment rates,” to the point of being “depressing.” (District 22 has a 7.9 percent unemployment rate, compared to 4.2 percent for California as a whole.)

Whalen thinks Janz will have put more emphasis on local issues to make any headway with voters. “So far it’s been a campaign about, ‘Hey, look at Devin. He’s closely associated with Trump. Here’s Devin and he’s dropped this memo.’ And it’s like, ‘Okay, we’re kinda tired of hearing about all of that. Let us know what you think about water, about how it’s tough for people to do business here. If he starts talking about those things, then, yeah, he can get some traction,” says Whalen. “But right now his campaign is all about nationalizing the election and bringing in the money.”

Lately, Janz is seeing a lot of money come in. His campaign has raised more than $800,000, according to campaign manager Heather Greven. (None of Nunes’ previous opponents raised more than $399,000.) Its best day so far—the day after the Nunes memo was released—brought in $164,000. It’s still nowhere near the kind of cash that Nunes has at his disposal—$3.8 million—but it’s enough to launch an ambitious campaign. And advertising dollars go a lot further in the Central Valley media market.

Janz says that the money will allow his campaign to launch “a massive voter education effort” to drill into local issues. “We have some of the most underserved communities, some of the least funded schools. We have one gun-related crime a night in Fresno. We have some of the dirtiest water in the country. We have lead contamination that is worse than some of what is being seen in Flint, Michigan, and it’s completely being ignored by the media and by our members of Congress—in particular Devin Nunes.” Janz is also building his ground game. He and his supporters have been hosting events and knocking on doors.

Local organizers say momentum is building. “Is there going to be enough force to make this change?” asks Valerie Ehrlich, the co-leader of South Valley Civics, a political outreach group, at a meeting with local Democrats. “Well, some of those ‘leaners’ Joe [Altschule] was talking about, they’re now holding a poster on Main Street downtown, and they’ve never done that before. And they’re coming to meetings and organizing candidate forums, and they’ve never done that before. They’re coming out to a political meeting of an indie grassroots group, and that’s never existed before. I think that there is the start of something that’s shifting.”

_Image credit: Andrew Janz for Congress; J. Scott Applewhite/AP_

question: Is Rep. Devin Nunes' position in serious trouble in the forthcoming election?

answer: According to the passage, it doesn't look like Janz have much of a chance against Nunez?

question: What might tilt the election in Janz' favor?

answer: As much as Janz is exposing what Nunes is getting wrong, he must set an agenda for what he will do for his constituents once he is elected.