Good day friend,

We here at Sentenced are HARD AT WORK!

This is SENTENCED’s fourth weekly newsletter. Thank you for signing up! You will not be disappointed.

If you’re not signed up, and you’re reading this on our website, go ahead and fill out this form to hear goings-on every Tuesday:

NEW STORY: Still The Same

Hey, guys.

We published a new story by the renowned entrepreneur Cranny Boy. It’s great work, with equally great artwork by Milo Krimm. You can read it here: https://sentencedlit.org/still-the-same/

Since you just clicked on that, I bet you came right back here to your email so you could verify that what you’re seeing is true. Yes, it is. We require a one hundred dollar payment to read the story.

You’re probably asking: “Why have you done this?”

Well… in case you haven’t noticed…

We’re not normal. We’re weird. We don’t fit in.

Not understanding this simple fact, Cranny leaked our messages on Instagram, trying to make a point about how we do things “wrong”. Here’s what he posted:

But it gets worse! He published more!

And EVEN MORE.

These screenshots pissed us off.

It’s ridiculous. As if making our contributors pay one hundred dollars to publish an article is somehow non-standard. Poetry publications do it all the time for chapbooks!

Do you think you have a better way to do it, audience? How else are we supposed to pay our writers if not by getting money from the other writers?

What’s so strange about an up-and-coming Marxist non-profit publication such as ours trying to make some goddamn money?!

Cranny’s leaking of our messages is an attitude showing the peak of Western entitlement. We would do well to remember that this is the same Cranny who advertises a kind of cola called “Cranny Cola” which we’ve never actually tasted.

Going Forwards:

Due to the controversy, if you send prose, images, or comics to contributions@sentencedlit.org, we promise you will not have to pay money to get it published. That’s just not how we’ll work in the future, no matter how strongly we feel about how much better it’d be with a one hundred dollar paywall.

That being said: if you do not pay the $100 dollars to read the Cranny Boy story, we will still attempt to prosecute you for piracy.

Thank you for understanding.

EXCLUSIVE: Freelance David Brooks Column

Former New York Times and current Atlantic columnist David Brooks has decided to grace our newsletter today! For those of you who boycott the “New York War Crimes” and the “Trans Panic Atlantic”, thank you for staying principled. We’ll explain who David Brooks is for you now: David Brooks is one of the smartest men in America.

Here you go!

TSA? ICE? Where did this come from?

I can’t help but notice lots of people have been getting mad lately about the big lines in the airport. That didn’t seem that interesting to me at first, because, well, lines are supposed to be long. Isn’t that the point? My mind changed when one person reported waiting for ninety-nine hours and then passing away. I consider myself a skeptic of claims involving numbers close to one hundred, so I decided to get down there and take a look-see.

I hit the restrooms to try and figure out what was going on, and it turns out many of the security guys just didn’t show up to work that day. Case closed, I thought, until a US citizen standing next to me at the urinals spoke up. He said: “The democrats did this! They hate America. A modest increase in ICE funding for surveillance tech and special firearms training is a pretty small price to pay for my convenience at the airport.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a reasonable person. I read the NY Times. I know what’s up. But this was “news” to me. I asked him to elaborate, and he said they were holding the government hostage at gunpoint. Literally. Which raised some questions. Is the airport a part of the government? When you’re flying in the airplane to the other airport, are you “in the government” the whole time? I had to do some thinking.

I knew the government had branches, like a tree, but couldn’t figure which one covered the sky. The Air Force? The EPA?

You’ll understand how silly I felt when this question led me to a historical incident called 9/11.

Strangely enough, it changed everything about how I view the TSA.

A few measly dollars is, apparently, all that’s standing between us and a Boeing plowing into the White House. I can see Gen Z-ers quiet quit their job flipping burgers—after all, who cares if a few lardos lose some weight—but if this continues, we’ll lose the weight of a 737 Supermax (approximately 90,000 kilos) straight out of the sky into your child’s daycare center in the Edgar R. Murrow Federal Building again.

I was ecstatic to learn Donald Trump is deploying ICE to become a new kind of sky cop, to prevent terrorists from immigrating to a place with no laws, the sky. But, after a few phone calls to the Pentagon, I discovered something upsetting.

THE SKY IS NOT A COUNTRY.

Try as you might, you can’t emigrate into the sky. You’d suffocate.

This “ICE” situation is unworkable. The agents scanning my luggage didn’t even seem interested in invading my personal space, they looked bored and annoyed. I felt utterly alone until I noticed there was an untapped resource all around me, one much more powerful than jihadist rage: the trust of my fellow passengers.

Who has more to lose than people flying on a plane that could detonate at any moment? The entire airline industry could save millions, perhaps billions of dollars if the TSA were dissolved, the responsibilities handed over to us. Scheduling would be voluntary, motivated by love and passion for your fellow man’s safety, instead of by greed, sloth, and vape addiction. The long-line problem would be solved overnight, and a lot of their arbitrary and capricious luggage rules swept away with it.

Why are we still throwing away water bottles when TSA could have long ago hired taste-testers? I get it. The frequent bathroom trips would hold up the line. But, what if we just pick a passenger at random to taste any suspicious liquids that are discovered?

While we’re at it, let’s start searching each other’s luggage. Who knows what secrets beyond compare are ready for probing and prodding? With all this extra vigor, optional pat-downs could become universal.

What’s important to remember in all this is that nobody is above suspicion. There is always a new way to cause havoc in the air with everyday objects, always a new grievance waiting to snap the feeble mind of the brainless dolts living in our country, triggering violence.

Signed,

David Brooks, professional columnist.

Wow! Thanks, Dave!

Fluke Again :/

Fluke sent in another message, but this time, it’s very short.

Thanks for cranny going to kill again though

put this in news letter thanks or k ill kill more extra people

watche dseverance btw wow that was good. I binged it with Crazy Jake who isnt that bad a guy i rhink noq but dont think that means I wont end him because i am crazy and i have innate innie+outie dynamic withinn myself+my garage

Fluke

Where is this going?

We’re sure you’re asking the same question we are.

What is happening with Fluke Dimsworth, Private Detective? How could this possibly continue?

We feel like we’re being held hostage by him and his story, right there alongside his therapist and the infamous burglar, Crazy Jake.

We want Fluke to stop demanding that we put him in the newsletter. We really, really want him to stop. This has been about a third of the newsletter every single week for the past nine weeks!

Fluke is in control of our only recurring narrative, and yet there’s no arc and no character development. The plot, if you could call it that, is fucked. Why, there’s not so much as a lead on the case! When is he going to reveal the information he’s found out about us, instead of just going on and on about how he has it?

This week, the Sentenced team discussed our options with regards to this storyline. The consensus was that it would be best to terminate the story entirely.

We know this will upset some people.

The therapist and Crazy Jake might be killed at the hands of a madman who styles himself after the vicious and evil, not to mention uncaught, Zodiac killer. But… if we continue on with this storyline, it might go on forever!

Does anyone even remember how this thing started? Our mascot was murdered. That tragedy has been overshadowed by Fluke’s insanity, and it’s not normal. None of this is normal!

But we guess, in some ways, that’s just America these days.

We leave you with this:

That Sherlock Holmes appears to divine the truth by means of a series of astute and uniquely “Holmesian” deductions is a trap for the naive reader, who forgets immediately that these deductions are predicated upon fiction, fabrications designed to puff up his wretched detective. Should “Sir” Doyle be tried for his crimes against our national literature, we would do well to remind him of reality’s visceral cleverness by dropping the guillotine blade upon the brain, not the neck.

– controversial figure George Bernard Shaw

1924

March the twenty-fourth be with you!

See you in a week,

Sentenced Lit

​sentencedlit.org