((ooc: "Equal in Stupidity" is a five-minute opinion segment, aired every Friday as part of the nationwide conservative news show, Wolf News. It debuted in August 2009. This thread shall be the ongoing chronicle of Maxine's wish for hate mail and death threats. ))

September 25, 2009: Mission! Police Connection and Mind Games

The red head was in her very early twenties. Her hair was tied back in a loose ponytail, a few strands flying artistically loose. Artistically, mind you: not unintentionally. Not inflicted by a hurried run from the intern’s offices. Dark freckles littered her nose, clearly unhindered by any and all make up attempts. A black pen sat perched above her right ear as she leaned across the desk with a grin. The camera rolled.

“Tonight’s topic: the police department’s deputization of vigilante mutants.”

A paperclip tentacle slid over the edge of her desk; the red head pushed it back down, without breaking eye contact with her unseen audience.

“When yours truly called to ask the fine NYPD whether the mutants in question had completed any sort of actual training to warrant their new status, the department declined comment. If you can’t beat ‘em, give them a free pass to enforce their own views of the law. Plus one, humans. Weekly tally rises to humans 5, mutants 4. Until next week, dear viewers, remember: our genetics may differ, but we’re all equal in stupidity.

“Oh, and to the two mutant kids who saved the day at the orphanage massacre—next time, try to look less like Ice Man and Child Porn Boy. And hey, how about you try catching the murderer next time. Make that mutants 5. Goodnight, folks!

“Maxine Ralls, Wolf News.”

November 20, 2009: Of Cupcakes and Violence

The red head was massaging her temples as the shoot started. Her eyes were closed, as if in a migraine-induced grimace. A school of wild paperclips swam past the camera.

“A cupcake shop,” she said, dropping her hands back to her chair arms. “Seriously, mutants? A cupcake shop?

“Earlier this week, a pair of mutants went into a cupcake shop—an upscale cupcake shop, mind you—” her fingers gave a well la de da wiggle “—and picked a fight. I call it ‘picking a fight,’ because when an employee asks a woman with knife-bladed arms to leave, the appropriate response is not assault and multiple homicides. Here’s a newsflash, mutants: if a human walked in with that much lethal metal, they’d be asked to leave, too. How about you try wearing long sleeves next time, hon. Instead of, say, the blood of your victims.” The red head gave a little shrug, and a smile between women. “It might be a little more attractive.”

She leaned back again, one hand combing through her hair; a pen fluttered out of its path, then resettled over her ear.

“The point I’m trying to make here isn’t about mutant thugs and violence, though. The point I’m making is this: a cupcake shop.

“A pair of mutants picked a fight. In a cupcake shop.”

The red head leaned back in her chair, and stared at the camera for a long moment. The school of paperclips swam past in the background behind her chair, heading in the opposite direction. Slowly, she began to clap.

“Congratulations, Swiss Army and Rocky: you have hit a new low for our species. Plus one to the mutant score. And to the human thugs who stepped up to brawl a sentient can opener and got themselves opened: plus one to the human side, too. Remember, kids, it takes two to fuel a massacre: the psychopaths, and the idiots who run towards the psychopaths.

“Yet another reminder, from the Big Apple: though our genetics may differ, we’re all equal in stupidity.

“Maxine Ralls, Wolf News.”

November 27, 2009: Romanian Registration Act

“Humans,” the red head started, tossing a sheaf of papers onto the desk. They spread out in front of her in an untidy wave. “Plus one.”

She started to relax in her chair; her back barely touched it before she was leaning forward again.

“Let me qualify that: American humans. Don’t get me started on the Romanians. American humans, be proud: another country is following your fine example. And look at this!”

With a false smile, she picked out one of the papers, and made an elaborate show of reading it.

“Jessica Samson.”

She tossed the paper aside, and picked up another.

“Jerald Everett.”

She went through the stack, her plastic smile firmly in place until the very last name.

“Jaxon Kane.”

Ms. Kane's paper got tossed over her shoulder; perched on the back of her chair, something metallic and many-armed caught it, and began the slow, steady job of methodically crushing it between paperclip tentacles.

“These are the names of American citizens who were in Romania when the Registration Act was passed. Let me repeat that: American citizens. They are currently missing; their families and friends turned to us out of fear that they had been arrested by Romanian authorities. American citizens, there on vacation or work, breaking no laws except being born. Some of them, not even that: some of these people are human. To all the zealots in the audience, let me make sure that’s clear: humans have disappeared, as well. The State Department was surprisingly unavailable for comment. According to our sources, they haven’t been too keen on returning the phone calls of worried loved ones, either.

“American citizens are likely being detained, arrested, or made to simply disappear by a foreign power, and our government is doing nothing.

“Plus one, humans. Plus one.

“And to all the American mutants, smugly watching this: you are no better. If you don’t speak out against an injustice, you are condoning it. Plus one, until I hear about a wide-spread mutant lobby fighting for US intervention.”

The wire mesh on her chair back had crumpled the paper as tight as possible: bored with its toy, it let the white ball drop to the floor. It continued to sit behind her, its clip tentacles moving in a pantomime of life.

“Until next time, remember: though our genetics may differ, we’re all equal in stupidity. Some of us are just more equal than others.”

“Maxine Ralls, Wolf News.”

December 25, 2009: A Cthulhu Christmas

The red head was grinning. On her red hair sat a red Santa hat; on the red Santa hat sat a red ballpoint pen. The red pen had a black square clipped under its cap. It fluttered and resettled as she spoke, clearly pleased with itself.

“Mutants, minus one. You heard me: minus.”

“Welcome to a very special edition of Equal in Stupidity. Today, I bring happy tidings for the holiday season: sometimes, we’re all equal in awesome, as well.”

She crossed her legs; a dangerous maneuver in her red li’l Ms. Claus skirt, though the desk safely hid anything she risked flashing. No harm done. Network surveys showed that most of her viewers were male, anyway, in the puberty to Viagra age bracket.

The red head looked as pleased as the cat who’d gotten into the cream.

“Yesterday, I had the privilege of last-minute shopping my way into a fight in Central Park. By now, I trust you’ve all heard of it: last night in New York, a group consisting largely of mutant children took on H.P. Lovecraft and won. There’s only one word for what I saw there: epic.

“What’s more: the NYPD responded beautifully. They cordoned off the area, and let the pint-sized pros handle things. For recognizing that they couldn’t fight that monster, for realizing that those kids could, and for not arresting anyone afterwards: I humbly minus a point from the human stupidity score, as well.”

“You’ve all seen the clips. You’ve all heard the sound bites. You know what happened last night: there’s no need for me to say more. If you want to see the full, unedited video of the fight, taken from beginning to end by yours truly, visit the Wolf News homepage. We’ll be streaming it for the next week. If you want it on DVD or Blue Ray in high def, visit the store on my blog, at WolfNews.com/equalinstupidity.

“Ten percent of profits will be donated to the fire department and transit authority, to help them buy a new truck and a new bus, respectively, and to the New York Parks and Recreation Department, to help replant the trees in Central Park this spring.”

She leaned forward, her green eyes sparkling impishly as she rested her elbows on the desk. “And now, a special message to the people who tried to destroy my footage last night.”

She held out her hand, palm up: the red pen flew lightly down to perch on it, carrying its black burden. “This,” the red head said, unclipping the lithium battery and holding it up to the camera, “is not a memory card.”

“Until next time, remember—we’re all equal in awesome, as well. Especially you, Child Porn Boy. Anytime you want that autograph, just attack another clay monster.” The red head blew a a little kiss at the screen. “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good fight. Oh, and Mirror Mirror--you better be taking care of those ribs. I want you whole.”

“Maxine Ralls, Wolf News.”

January 15, 2010: Unity

The red head wasn’t sitting at her usual desk: her usual desk, in fact, was unusually absent. Instead, she stood in front of an easel. It was the sort of cheap wooden stand used in high school art classes, or scrounged up at the last minute for a meeting. On its stand rested several brightly colored poster boards, stacked one behind the other. The one on top framed a blown up image of a fashion victim in red fur and a suggestive dress, speaking in front of a crowd at Times Square.

“This,” the red head stated, giving the woman’s questionably clad chest a tap with her Very Official wooden pointy stick, “is Pompei Yuen. She likes to be called 'Miss East' by us Western-folk. She's a businesswoman from Hong Kong, who came to America to fix our social ills. Thank you very much for that, Ms. Yuen. We sure do appreciate it.”

In a move she must have been practicing all day, the red head used her pointer to flick the picture forward, sending it tumbling off of the stand. It hit the floor below, face down. She tapped the next picture: an image of a walking armory with a young woman’s head attached.

“This,” the red head stated, “is a can opener. Some of you may recognize her: she’s stared on our show, before. Someone at the factory forgot to tell her that people are not cans. The poor dear has been clearly confused, ever since. The police want to talk to her in connection to several homicides, but I'm sure it's all just a big misunderstanding. Right, Swiss Army?”

Flick: picture number two fell down to join its predecessor on the floor. The next image was of the politician and the weapon walking down an isle of reporters together towards a black limousine.

“This,” the woman said instructively, tapping the appropriate areas of the photo as she spoke, “is Ms. Yuen. This is the can opener. This is Ms. Yuen’s private limo. This is Ms. Yuen and the can opener, walking to Ms. Yuen’s private limo.” The red head looked at the camera with the beaming smile of a kindergarten teacher. “What happens next, kids?”

Flick: Ms. Yuen opened the limousine’s door, and graciously motioned the bladed woman inside.

Flick: the knife store took her up on the offer, and packaged herself inside.

Flick: Ms. Yuen closed the door behind them for a private chat as reporters flashed photographs and a little boy stood nearby, looked a bit lost.

The red head turned back to her audience, beaming. At her feet, something metallic and tentacled was dragging that last picture off, out of the camera's frame. She didn’t pay it any mind.

“Silly Ms. Yuen. Didn’t they teach her in the Hong Kong Business School for Suave Young Ladies that she shouldn't publically cavort with suspected serial killers?” She batted her eyelashes sweetly. “It’s okay: I’m sure the public will forget all about it, before the next election. It’s not like you were going to run for Governor anyway, right, Ms. Yuen?”

“I hope we learned something today, kids: some of us are gifted with deeper wells of stupidity than others. Gratefully, do the rest of us turn to them for a drink.”

The red head dropped a smooth curtsy.

“Maxine Ralls, Wolf News.”

April 7, 2010: The Curious Case of the Shared Bedroom

The round table discussion was being broadcast live, like any good circus. A blurry band of grayish-silver clips snaked across the camera lens; a smudgy pink hand followed soon after, dragging the offending tentacle back off screen. Five chairs sat in a semi-circle, in a spread of professional suits and lips pressed down to civil lines.

“Have you even stopped to consider that what you’re doing is furthering prejudices against our kind?” Thus spoke the man with the moth antennae and the quiet disposition of an academic. Lawrence Kaplan, head of the Sociology department at Berkley. Whether his hair was silver from age or mutation was a matter of much speculation amongst his students.

“Kaplan, shut up.” A man in a beige suit scowled. Trent White, head priest at the Church of Humanity in Queens. He nodded to the young woman seated further down the line. “Go ahead, Ms. Ralls. Tell it like it is.”

“Thank you, Mr. White.” The red head graciously smiled. “Mr. Kaplan, I found your recent thesis on furthering mutant rights to be a work of either naïveté or negligence. You talk about prejudices like there’s no truth behind them. If blacks didn’t keep ending up in jail, if Muslims didn’t keep strapping explosives to themselves, if mutants didn’t go on casual killing sprees in the name of equality, I’d be happy to report about orphans and puppies. Until then, I’ll report what I see. Have you ever considered that publishing in academic journals doesn’t help put a human face on--”

She was cut off by a scream. The camera listed briefly to the side as the cameraman startled.

“It’s coming through the wall!”

“Philman, relax. Oh, wow. Would you just look at it? I’ve always wanted to see a—”

“Is it hurt--?”

“The blood! The blood is coming from its hooves!”

“Oh god. Oh god oh god. I read about this—it caved in a whole street downtown. It’s going to kill us all. It’s going to—”

Mr. White stood suddenly tall and furious amidst the chaos. “Unicorn.”

Someone tripped onto screen; their foot caught on a cord, ending all sound on the broadcast. This later allowed a legion of YouTube posters to edit in the song of their choice, no matter their skill in making videos. The Church of Humanity priest grabbed a boom mike. Gripping it like a lance, his face curled in wordless rage, he charged towards the camera.

A blurry gray mesh of paperclips crawled over the lens, obscuring the view. The broadcast was cut.

Technical difficulties.

July 15, 2011: Chaotic Chronicles/ New York Inquisitor, and Rule #3: Run while you still can.

The red head was stretched out on a cloth beach chair, on a swath of white sand. She wore a modest white towel wrapped artistically around her hips, in contrast with her rather shameless red bikini top. Behind her was as fake a painting of the ocean as an hour of the intern’s time could provide. Oh, interns: she could really see the appeal in bossing them around. One of them, a college boy dressed in a T-shirt with a tux on it, stepped on screen to hand her a very pink drink with an umbrella in it. She liked the little dramatic bow he cut on his way out: she could get used to people bowing.

The red head took a sip from her drink, and handed it off to the side. Paperclip tentacles rose up from behind her chair to envelop it.

“New York City. Summer in the concrete jungle. I hope you’re all watching from somewhere cool, because tonight our Summer Series is rolling on with something hot. Hit it, boys.”

The opening chords of I Kissed a Girl kicked up. So did the footage.

Isabel Gone Wild

The film was black and white. Enhanced security tape footage, spliced together to the beat. Isabel and another woman, with their own tentacle-arm action. Cut to them crashing through a pair of glass doors in a Ferrari, the bonemancer giddily steering from the other woman’s lap, as hands disappeared under the lines of her half-way unbuttoned shirt; fire sprinklers first sprouting to life, rapidly turning the bonemancer’s white top into something that wasn’t suitable for younger viewers—

The black-and-white kiss, take two. Woo.

The clips rolled on in the top corner of the screen as the red head’s little slice of beach reappeared in the bottom.

“Bone Bikini Babe posters, calendars, and the extended Isabel Gone Wild footage now on sale at my blog: WolfNews.com/EqualInStupidity. Ten percent of sales will be donated to the NYPD. Just like Ms. Duskmoor would have wanted. Right, Isabel?”

Tentacles brought her drink back; she took a sip, and gave a devil-may-care grin.

“Maxine Ralls, Wolf News.”

December 7, 2012: Riot Plot

By now, everyone had seen it. That was clear enough by the red head's face, and the way her hand was hovering over her mouth as the segment opened. Had she been stifling a yawn?

She wasn't facing the screen. There was a TV set up on her desk, angled so that both she and her viewers could see it; on that screen was playing a ViewTube clip most of the city would recognize on sight by now. Most of its genetically divergent citizens, anyway. A gray gargoyle mutant was walking down the street; insert punch line here.

Pun not intended.

"Gosh, this is horrible," the redhead deadpanned, still looking at the TV rather than at her viewers. "My outrage. It is outrageous. Why, someone should go do this to humans, so they know what it feels like to be targeted based on how they look."

She brushed a strand of errant hair out of her face; a silver tentacle uncoiled itself from her metallic hair tie, and drew the strand back into her ponytail. She finally turned enough to cast a glance at her viewers.

"There's a lot of that sentiment going around the internet right now. I'd quote you some of the juiciest ViewTube comments, but you'd really miss out on the bad spelling and caps lock. But hey, why am I being a grammar Nazi? That's not the point here, right? The point is, some cops just went excessive force all over our fellow mutant. Time to get angry, right?"

She snapped her fingers, and a small stack of papers jumped on top of the desk and crouched there like an angry terrier. The red head made a point of pulling on a pair of black dress gloves; then she picked the top page off of the snarling stack, and began to read.

"Lawrence Metzler."

"James Cervini."

"Jeffrey Fletcher."

"Evelyn Jolitz."

"Martin Bailey."

She tossed the paper behind her; with a vehement flutter, it drifted back in front of her and rejoined its stack.

"I could go on, but we've only got five minutes. Those," she gestured to the stack, "These, are the names of the NYPD officers injured or killed on our streets in the past five years while responding to mutant-related calls. Honestly, I'm not surprised this little beat down happened: I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner, and I'm happy the girl survived. All in all, our boys in blue have shown a hell of a lot of restraint, as their friends get taken down around them. A superior amount, one could say. So all you Homo superiors out in the audience: prove that you're the better race, and chill. Every group of people has its idiots. Far be it for me to say, but just because some people are stupid doesn't mean we all have to be."

"Any mutants with ideas of vengeance: leave it to the legal system, please. Unlike with us, it works for humans."

"Until next week, remember: though our genetics may differ, we’re all equal in stupidity. Though I'd love to be proven wrong, one of these days.”

She sat up a little straighter, changing gears from somber deadpan to cordial host.

"Before I sign off, remember: all Bone Bikini Babe and Bone Bikini Nurse calendars are on sale for Christmas. By popular demand, NYC's very own Cthulhu Christmas Special is also back in stock, on DVD and BluRay. Merry commercialized giving season, and a happy New Year."

“Maxine Ralls, Wolf News.”

April 6, 2013: Live From New York; this is a part of the Riot Plot.

The redhead faced the cameras with a smile her viewers had never seen before, except perhaps in their dreams.

"Good evening, New York," she began, with all her usual cordiality.

"At ten o'clock this morning, I received a call from Officer Maru. Some of you may remember him: he's one of the five officers recently exonerated in the Gina Schuyler beating." The redhead's lips quirked. "That's the gargoyle girl, for those of you who have trouble remembering mutant names."

"Officer Maru informed me that there was something the investigating committee had repressed; a new angle to the story that the police did not want getting out. He invited me out to meet with him and his fellow officers, for an exclusive interview."

There was something conspiratorial in her eyes and her posture; something that beckoned the viewer closer to their screen. She herself leaned subtly across the desk, and the camera obligingly zoomed in.

"Here's the real story, New York: here's what the NYPD didn't want you to know."

The screen framed her messy hair, and her torn shirt, quite nicely. The senior cameraman at Wolf News had quite the flare for the dramatic.

"The attack on Gina? That was no accident. She was targeted because she was a mutant; beaten because she was a mutant. Some of you knew that already; but I—I had really thought—"

The smile flickered off for a moment, then was back.

"Four members of the NYPD called me out to a deserted street this morning, and physically assaulted me. Do you know what they said? That they didn't need help from a freak like me. That if I told anyone what they'd done, they'd kill me. They said they were untouchable."

The same emotion that her lips carried crawled up her face, and settled in the laugh lines around her eyes.

"Untouchable," she repeated, like it was the cutest thing in the world.

"You heard them, mutants—they don't need our help, and they don't want it. They're going to keep doing whatever they want to do to us, because they're untouchable, and because the NYPD is actively covering up hate crimes perpetrated by its officers. On the scales of stupidity, I think humanity just tipped things to burn this city down."

She was serious; in that moment, she was deadly serious.

"Maxine Ralls, Wolf News."