World Luxury Goods Industry Essay Example for Free

World Luxury Goods Industry Essay Extravagance merchandise have more than the standard and essential attributes contrasted with different results of their class. Their attributes can be separated into 6 sections Symbolism, Price, Extraordinariness, Rarity, Esthetics and Quality. The worldwide market size for the business has been at a development pace of 9% per annum. This pattern has been found in the market since 1995 till 2000. The extravagance advertise endured a shot from 2000 to 2004 when occurrences like the September 11 and SARS scourge occurred during those years. The market was at a halt till 2005 when it got pace again until the subprime budgetary emergency. Late years the development rate has been at 11% normal and this has been occurring since 2009. At 2013 the market is measured at Euro 212 billion and has extraordinary likely going ahead. The 10 % development assessed for the market in 2013 speaks to the fourth consecutive year following the incredible downturn that extravagance products incomes will develop every year by twofold digits. Americas district is additionally anticipated to profit by the market, with incomes developing by 13 percent by year’s end and Asia-Pacific deals especially determined by China India are anticipated to develop by 18 percent. Development in Europe is relied upon to be at 5 percent this year demonstrating that the financial patterns in these territories have influenced the market for extravagance products. It is evaluated that the extravagance merchandise market will develop, in genuine terms by 4-6% every year between 2013-2015 expanding the market to somewhere in the range of â‚ ¬240 and â‚ ¬250 billion by 2015. There has been a move towards online deals in this fragment with this medium proceeding to become quicker than the remainder of the market, at 28% yearly development for the year and arriving at near 10b Euros, about 5% of all out extravagance deals which bigger than the extravagance incomes of Germany. In online deals, shoes are the top-performing class. This degree of online infiltration is when brands need to regard their online channel as a vital piece of their serious methodology, instead of an additional wellspring of income. At the point when we see the various items types in the business it is seen that the Accessories features the best execution over the period 2007-2011 drove by the developing markets clients inclinations regarding extravagance frill. We see a move in the market pattern in clothes where the mens extravagance deals expanded by 16% in 2011 outperforming deals to lady. Mens extravagance products in 2011 represented 40% of the worldwide extravagance advertise up from 35 % in 1995. As should be obvious in figure over that the adornments and hard extravagance products have seen an expansion in section. In the extravagance merchandise showcase the Italian brands have expanded to pick up the biggest piece of the pie of extravagance deals, moving from 21% in 1995 to 24% in 2013 nearly equalling French brands piece of the overall industry of 25%. In any case, in a solidifying market, French aggregates are a main impetus, possessing 29% of the market contrasted with 25% in 1995. Key Figures Category Revenues Growth Forecast. 2012 (est) 2012 Leather Goods â‚ ¬33bn 16% Shoes â‚ ¬12 bn 13% Men’s Apparel â‚ ¬26 bn 10% Women’s Apparel â‚ ¬27 bn 9% Fragrances â‚ ¬20 bn 4% Cosmetics â‚ ¬23 bn 5% Jewelry â‚ ¬11 bn 13% Watches â‚ ¬35 bn 14% Total â‚ ¬212bn 10% The various players in this market are diverse for various item types like in the extravagance watches portion it is Rolex, Omega and so forth, mens and womens clothes section it is Armani, Burberry and so forth and calfskin merchandise fragment it is LVMH, Ralph Lauren and so on. Additionally a lot more in different fragments and underneath are the diverse extravagance merchandise brand with LVMH driving in income terms. Porter’s 5 powers model. Danger OF NEW ENTRANT: Capital Requirement: The capital prerequisites for assembling, setting up stores and keeping up them are for the most part high. The make back the initial investment for these brands is high. Their showcasing and the board costs, for example, lease, significant compensations for skilled workers, overwhelming limited time exercises and so forth are extremely high as well. An examination showed that they have to have 400 stores to build up a really worldwide nearness. Brand Loyalty: The brand picture related with extravagance brands and the faithfulness made through CRM programs and excellent assistance levels is high for existing brands in the market space. Nonetheless, the business has been encountering declining brand steadfastness in developing markets since their buys are driven by status and hotshot thought processes and consequently brand exchanging between brands apparent to have comparative status is expanding. By the by it requires some investment and use to construct its image unwaveringness. Scale economies: It has been seen that union of brands in the extravagance showcase help in accomplishing higher economies of scale. Combination helps in expanding haggling power with providers, getting working cooperative energies state in publicizing and so on., better financing alternatives and hazard the board through expansion in the brand arrangement of the organizations. LVMH, PPR (Gucci), Prada Group, Richemont have all experienced solidification. Select access to providers and wholesalers: Many brands in this fragment have obtained their providers or have elite plans to secure their upper hand and protect against increasing expenses in future. Additionally the quantities of appropriation focuses are expanding as developing markets are developing and extravagance shopping centers are coming up. For example, LVMH procured Leman Cadran and ArteCad SA-watch dial makers and Delos Bottier, French craftsman shoemaker. Counter from existing Cos-The incredible set up brands will in general fight back against the littler and more current brands by state keeping them from approaching multi-brand retailers. In this way we see that the danger of new participant is high. Danger OF SUBSTITUTES: Middle value marks: The becoming mid gone, high road brands act like a potential substitute to the extravagance brands. During monetary emergency buyers tend to â€Å"trade down. † Counterfeit products: The assembling and deals of fake merchandise from Countries like China is developing. Quality structure: expanded web availability and web based shopping has made is simple for quick style brands to repeat plans and design patterns of extravagance marks inside days/long stretches of the style appears. There are no money related changing expenses to clients. Be that as it may, there is lost esteem which is imperative to extravagance brand purchasers. In this manner the danger of substitutes is moderate. BUYER’S BARGAINING POWER: Decreasing purchaser fixation: The quantity of purchasers comparative with providers is expanding. Just half of the 1. 6 MN well off were as rich 4 years prior. Level of reliance on purchaser: The business is intensely subject to top-level clients, for the most part on a little overly rich populace. Big names and so on being early adopters can drive utilization however single purchasers can't decide costs. Exchanging costs: There are passionate exchanging costs included. With presentation of devotion programs and related benefits, the exchanging costs have expanded. Probability of in reverse joining by clients is low. So all in all, the dealing intensity of purchasers is low. SUPPLIER’S BARGAINING POWER: Number of providers: The crude materials are constrained and restrictive. There are constrained high gifted specialists and there is likewise developing deficiency since relatively few adolescents are eager to learn. For example, Couture-level embroiderers in France have dropped from 10000 out of 1920 to 200 out of 2013. Level of Dependency: Some key segments and materials are redistributed. For eg: LV redistributes its monogram cowhide, in 2012, Chanel requested enormous toss of calfskin from a provider in the event that they wouldn’t discover more. Gracefully substitutes: Most materials are exceptionally specific and hard to substitute. Changing expenses to new providers are high since the quality is in danger and there is a past organizing experience which is significant. Forward combination plausibility is extremely low since the extravagance bunches are significantly more experienced and wealthier than their providers. Therefore, the haggling intensity of providers is moderate to high. Serious RIVALRY: Competitive structure: The business has an oligopoly structure since it is commanded by hardly any huge free players. LVMH, Richemont and PPR Gucci are the large three. Request conditions: The interest is developing and will develop at a moderately high pace as China and Hong Kong markets become further. Leave Barriers: Some brand exist in spite of the way that they don't make any/much benefits because of enthusiastic reasons. For example, Christian Lacroix hasn’t made any benefit in 22 years. There are some profoundly particular gracefully chain segments that might be hard to sell. Chanel has 6 atelier d’arts under it which has no elective use. The contention among existing rivalry is high. Extravagance Goods-Developed Countries Overview. There is such a great amount of discussion about China, Brazil and other developing markets as the eventual fate of extravagance advertise while there is some fact to it we can't disregard the created markets. The current development and problem area for extravagance products is still in the created nations. American area is the lord of extravagance spending; it developed at 4% in 2013 contrasted with 2012. There has been development in the quantity of new store opening in tire two urban areas in these created nations demonstrating that organizations see potential in the littler district and there is increment of discretionary cashflow in the littler urban communities. Guests from creating nations despite everything want to purchase extravagance merchandise from the created nations; this has additionally prompted an expansion in the interest of extravagance products in the created nations. As indicated by Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Study Spring 2013 there are critical territorial contrasts in the extravagance advertise created nations and every one of them have their one of a kind contrasts. Some of them are: Europe will see 2% development in the extravagance spending in the following not many years, with expanding spending by tou

Succubus Dreams CHAPTER 23

I was unable to remain in my room from that point forward, not in the wake of seeing two blessed messengers kick the bucket †one truly and one profoundly. I needed to leave, out of the condo. None of the others appeared to notice or care that I fled. With Nyx caught, there were greater things to stress over known to man than one upset succubus. I'd been driving in the vehicle for around ten minutes before I understood where I was going. Dante's. Vincent's discussion about the abhorrent appeal out of nowhere appeared to be irrelevant. What I required right currently was to converse with somebody about what I'd seen. Seth wouldn't totally comprehend, what's more, matters despite everything weren't fixed between us. Examining genuine things with the vampires was hard for me in some cases. I was as yet distraught at Hugh. I wouldn't trouble Erik since he was all the while recouping. Dante was all I had left. He made the way for his store after I hit into it for around five minutes. The muddled hair and wrinkled garments gave me that I'd woken him once more. He looked irritated, not surprisingly, when I strolled inside. â€Å"Didn't it work? I let you know †† He investigated me. â€Å"What happened?† I stumbled to one of the seats and fallen into it, hands laying on my brow. I could have been a reflection of Yasmine. I opened my mouth to talk, to clarify what had happened†¦but no words came out. He bowed close to me. â€Å"Succubus. You're cracking me around here. What happened?† I gazed vacantly at him for a few seconds before at last concentrating on his concerned face. â€Å"She fell.† â€Å"Huh? Nyx?† â€Å"No†¦Yasmine.† â€Å"Who?† My eyes went unfocused again as I recalled that dark fire. The terrible sound. Squinting, I attempted to shake it off and direct my concentration toward Dante. â€Å"She's a heavenly attendant. Was a heavenly attendant. Possibly she despite everything is. I don't have the foggiest idea. Fuck, I don't have the foggiest idea. I don't have a clue what she is.† He connected and grasped my arms, shaking me somewhat to stand out enough to be noticed once more. â€Å"Look, you're losing me. I don't have the foggiest idea how a blessed messenger falling ties into Nyx. On the off chance that it integrates with Nyx. You've gotta quiet down and start from the earliest starting point. Take a profound breath.† I did. â€Å"Now another.† I did. â€Å"Now talk.† I did. It was hard from the outset, and I had a couple of bogus beginnings. At last, in any case, I had the option to back up and clarify the cast of holy messengers to Dante. The story gradually spilled from my lips, and I disclosed to him about what had occurred: Nyx's catch, Joel's demise, and Yasmine's fall. He kept his hands on my arms when I completed, and I later acknowledged it was to consistent me. I was shaking. A few calm minutes went as we stayed there. He breathed out finally and shook his head. â€Å"Fuck, succubus. That is a great deal for one night. In any event, for you.† He contacted my jaw with his hand and tilted my face up. â€Å"But you realize holy messengers fall. You realize they despite everything fall. All the time.† â€Å"But I've never observed it,† I murmured. â€Å"In this time†¦ I've never known any individual who was a blessed messenger and afterward turned into an evil spirit. All the devils I know†¦well, they've generally been evil presences. I never observed them when they were angels.† â€Å"First time for everything.† I met his eyes. â€Å"But I enjoyed her.† I expected some remark like, â€Å"Bad things happen to great people.† Instead, he just shook his head. â€Å"I'm sorry.† I gulped back tears †I'd just cried enough today around evening time †and inclined forward, leaning my head against his chest, similarly as I had an evening or two ago. He ran a hand down my hair and shook me. â€Å"What trust is there?† I inquired. â€Å"If even heavenly attendants fall, what expectation is there for the remainder of us?† â€Å"There isn't,† he said. â€Å"We're all alone. What's more, we need to settle on the decisions we believe are best for our own endurance. On the off chance that your blessed messenger companion had been thinking that way, she wouldn't have fallen.† â€Å"But that is simply the thing†¦angels don't think, correct? They're selfless.† â€Å"Maybe,† he said dubiously. â€Å"She let things get that far with the nephilim†¦that wasn't generally caring. Presently they're both screwed, and we have another part in the club.† â€Å"What club?† â€Å"The club. Our club. The one for individuals who commit one error and are rebuffed perpetually in light of it.† He delayed. â€Å"It's a really enormous club.† I delicately pulled out of the grasp. â€Å"What did you do?† â€Å"Hmm?† â€Å"Your one misstep. Vincent found the charm†¦he said it was repulsive. Dark enchantment. He said you needed to have planned something downright awful for make it.† Dante's eyes were tragic as he respected me. â€Å"You truly need to know?† I gestured. â€Å"No. You don't. At the present time, just because, you're conversing with me like perhaps I'm not the greatest butt head on earth. I let you know the truth†¦and you'll lose all regard for me.† â€Å"I won't. I'll regard you more.† He feigned exacerbation. â€Å"People consistently express respectable things in speculative circumstances. ‘I'd never undermine my mate.' ‘I'd return the million dollars that I found in the city.' It's bullshit.† â€Å"It's not,† I contended. â€Å"I regard the truth.† â€Å"But you won't care for it. For what reason do you figure I didn't kiss you that day outside Erik's? I joke about needing to lay down with you †heck, I would like to lay down with you †yet on the off chance that we'd done it, you'd have felt how little vitality I truly have.† â€Å"I purchase the low vitality thing, yet I despite everything need to know the story behind it.† His eyes limited in disappointment. â€Å"Look, succubus. I don't figure I could recount to the story on the off chance that I needed to. It's too hard.† His remark about kissing out of nowhere enlivened me. â€Å"Can you show me?† â€Å"What?† I advanced toward him. â€Å"Kiss me. I can barely get any vitality from you, yet in the event that you open yourself to the memory, I ought to have the option to feel bits of it.† I trusted that was valid, at any rate. While my darlings' musings and emotions came through to me during sex, it wasn't actually a framework we could control. I was unable to gather up explicit things. Generally what I felt was whatever the person was thinking about simply at that point. As a general rule, it was surprise or maybe a feeling of remorse over the darling he was undermining. Be that as it may, maybe†¦maybe if Dante was explicitly thinking about whatever he had done, it would come through. It merited a shot. I inclined nearer to him. He didn't move, so I went in as far as possible and kissed him. At first, it was only a kiss †all physical. Bit by bit, I began to get a touch of his life power †however it was much the same as he'd said. His spirit was excessively dull. The existence vitality that streamed into me was scarcely a stream. It was just a couple of drops, similar to a spilling spigot. Then†¦once I'd evaluated the vitality, I felt something different. I felt his spirit †felt why it was so dark, so without the sparkling life most people had. That darkness started filling me, that sickening and overflowing evil†¦and there, behind it, was depression and outrage and misery and disappointment. It was sickening. Darkness and blood. I needed to pull away, however I needed to perceive what he was covering up. The memory came through to me in incoherent pictures, however I had the option to sort them out and structure a story. I saw a sister. More seasoned than him by ten years. She'd dealt with him all through his adolescence †both in a nurturing route and as an educator. She was a mystic as well. She'd showed him how to saddle his capacity, to tap the enchantment of the world that was concealed to most people. She had been incredible, however he was considerably more grounded. It hadn't been sufficient, however. He'd needed more than to just control his capacity †he'd needed to improve it. However, as Hugh and Vincent had let me know, barely any people were brought into the world with the size of intensity that he'd desired. Thus, he'd taken it. Torn it out. From her. I saw his face when he slaughtered her, sympathized with his agony as the knife contacted her throat. She was half-mother and stepsister to him, yet he took her life in any case. Furthermore, with that demonstration, his capacity had developed by sizes †both in light of the fact that he'd picked up hers and in view of the spell in question. The blood of the honest consistently brings power, and the dark enchantment interweaved in this passing gotten it spades. It had left him feeling like a divine being. Also, wanting to be dead. He'd condemned himself. He despite everything adored the force, despite everything cherished using it†¦but in the wake of murdering his sister, he'd despised himself. He'd pulled back from the world, attempting to cover his recollections in medications and liquor, just infrequently utilizing his forces for little, piecemeal con employments. I broke the kiss, not having any desire to see or feel any longer. On the off chance that we went further, I'd most likely observe what he needed to do to make the appeal. It wouldn't be as awful as what he'd done to his sister, yet I was through with this. Wide-peered toward, I hurried away from him on the floor. â€Å"She was Erik's lover,† I said delicately. I'd had a concise look at Tanya †that was her name †and Erik together. â€Å"She was the lady in the image. That is the reason he detests you.† Dante gestured. â€Å"The three of us†¦we would do incredible things. We were all so screwing gifted, you know?† He laid a hand on his head, eyes loaded with sadness. â€Å"Unsurprisingly, Erik decided to end our companionship after this. He needed to execute me†¦he ought to have. He should have. In any case, well. He's not that sort of guy.† â€Å"No,† I concurred, voice cold. â€Å"He's not.† I stood up and moved in an opposite direction from Dante, who was all the while sitting on the floor. He gazed upward and acknowledged what I was doing. The hopeless face turned irate. â€Å"Leaving so soon?† â€Å"Yes.† â€Å"Well. A debt of gratitude is in order for halting by. Also, a debt of gratitude is in order for demonstrating me right.† â€Å"About†¦?† He tossed his hands I

How to Manage a Medical Emergency Without Going Bankrupt

How to Manage a Medical Emergency Without Going Bankrupt How to Manage a Medical Emergency Without Going BankruptMedical bankruptcy is a major problem in this country. One study found that medical bills are the largest cause of bankruptcy in America.1  And it’s not just your average Joe or Jane who struggles with medical bills; it’s an issue for some pretty major Joes too.Take former Vice President Joe Biden, who said that he and his wife would have had to sell their house to cover the cost of their late son’s medical bills had then-President Obama not offered to help.If even the vice president can struggle with medical bills, what can you do, right now, within the current system, to protect yourself from medical bankruptcy? Well, we’ve got some tips to help you make the best of a potentially difficult situation.Prepare an emergency fund. Really.If you’re not dealing with a medical emergency right at this moment, consider starting an emergency fund.Unfortunately, you never know what can happen, andâ€"if you have anything you can spareâ€"putting aside even a smaller amount of money each month can be a literal lifesaver.As Kimberly Palmer (@KimberlyPalmer), author of Smart Mom, Rich Mom: How to Build Wealth While Raising a Family, told us, “The best advice is to always build up an emergency fund so you don’t have to go into debt when you have an unexpected expense like a medical bill. Saving at least three to six months’ worth of expenses is a good goal, and even if you don’t need it, it gives you peace of mind.” You can check out Palmer’s website for more info and insight.Michael Banks, founder of FortunateInvestor.com (@FortunateInvest), offered similar advice: “Create an emergency fund to address any unforeseen expensesâ€"including medical emergencies. You should have enough savings to cover six month’s worth of basic living expenses. (If you’re a freelancer, or contractor, save the equivalent of nine months.) This will provide you with quick access to cash, reduce your stress levels, and buy you additional time to discuss payment options with your medical provider.But hindsight is 20/20 (we’ll deal with vision-related expenses in a different post). What should you do if you’re dealing with a medical emergency right now and don’t have the funds saved up to pay for it?Carefully look over those bills!Reading over your bills seems like an obvious suggestion, but it’s still an important step, as certified financial educator Maggie Germano (@MaggieGermano) told us. “I think the first thing to do when you have a medical emergency, is to pay close attention to any bills you get. Sometimes, insurance companies or doctors’ offices make mistakes they don’t realize. They may have simply miscoded something.“It’s up to you to follow up and make sure they aren’t charging you when they shouldn’t be,” Germano advised.Medical bills can be pretty complex, especially if you or your loved one had to go through multiple procedures. Ask the staff at the doctor’s office to go over the bill with you so you can raise your concerns if you notice any discrepancies.Set up a reasonable repayment plan.Most doctors would rather see you pay your bill than watch you go through bankruptcy. That’s why Germano says that they may be willing to work out a payment plan:“If you can’t afford the bill, try to set up a payment plan with the provider. Most medical centers just want to get paid eventually, so they should work with you to make it easier to pay. Figure out a monthly payment amount that would be comfortable with you and commit to paying that until the bill is paid off. Get the agreement in writing and make sure they send you a confirmation e-mail or letter whenever you make a payment. This will prevent them from accusing you of not paying what you owe. You also want to have this agreement so that they don’t send the bill to collections, which will hurt your credit score.”Your medical provider may or may not be willing to work out a plan l ike this, but there’s no reason not to ask!Never, never, never turn to a payday lender.If you’re having trouble dealing with medical bills and don’t have great credit, you might be tempted to turn to payday lenders.They offer short payment terms with very high interest rates, and if you don’t pay back the full amount with interest and fees in time, you’ll have to pay an additional fee to extend the loan.This is how a lot of people get trapped in a cycle of debt.If you do need help and don’t have any family or friends you can borrow from, you might consider an installment loan. These loans have longer payment terms, and the best lenders will work with you to determine a payment plan you can handle, even if your medical provider won’t.Make sure the loan is amortizing, which means you’ll be paying off both interest and part of the original amount of the loan, or principal, with every payment so you don’t end up stuck in debt.If the lender reports your payments to the credit bureaus so you can build up your credit score, that’s even better.Stay safe!Medical emergencies are, sadly, a fact of life. With some preparation and a good game plan, you can hopefully keep that medical emergency from also becoming a financial one.Be healthy, and stay safe out there!Visit OppLoans on YouTube | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedINContributorsMichael Banks  is a seasoned finance professional and founder of FortunateInvestor.com. With 20 years of professional experience in the financial services industry, he uses his expertise to turn simple lessons on money into lifelong habits that form the basis for a successful financial future.Maggie Germano  is a Certified Financial Education Instructor and financial coach for women. Her mission is to give women the support and tools that they need to take control of their money, break the taboo of discussing debt and income, and achieve their goals and dreams. She does this through one-on-one financial coaching, monthly Money Circle gatherings, her weekly Money Monday newsletter, and speaking engagements. To learn more, or to schedule a free discovery call, visit  MaggieGermano.com.Kimberly Palmer  writes about making smart money and life choices. Her new personal finance guide for moms, Smart Mom, Rich Mom is now available! The New York Times calls it solid and witty and Foreword Reviews says it brings out the fun in funds. Publishers Weekly calls it an excellent book and invaluable resource that does much more than fill a niche; it bridges a huge gap.She is now a features editor on the money team at AARP (@AARP), where her focus is on work jobs content.References:1 Mangan, Dan. “Medical Bills Are The Biggest Cause of US Bankruptcies: Study” CNBC accessed on April 5, 2017 from: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100840148

Explication of Ogichidag by Jim Northrup Essays - 541 Words

Ogichidag I was born in war, WW Two. Listened as the old men told stories of getting gassed in the trenches, WW One. Saw my uncles come back from Guadalcanal, North Africa and the battle of the Bulge. Memorized war stories my cousins told of Korea. Felt the fear in their voices. Finally it was my turn, my brothers too. Joined the marines in the time for the Cuban Missile Crisis Heard the crack of rifles in the rice paddies south of Da Nang. Watched my friends die there then tasted the bitterness of the only war America ever lost My son is now a warrior. Will I listen to his war stories or cry to his open grave. This is the poem that Jim Northrup wrote about war. I am going to Explicate the poem and†¦show more content†¦He was born during World War I. He herd the old men tell the stories of what happened when they were in World War II. All of his family members went to some war in their life time. His Uncles Guadalcanal, North Africa and the battle of the Bulge, his Cousins stories of Korea. Then finally it was his and his brothers turn, they had joined the marines just in time for the for the Cuban Missile crisis. After that his friends going to Vietnam tasting defeat the only war that America has ever lost. Finally it is his sons turn and he gets the other end of the deal. He doesn’t know if his son will be able to tell him his stories of his war or if he will have to cry at his grave. The author was giving a message then at the end of the poem it changes. He was giving the message that war happens to everybody and that they will have to go to war at some point in there life. The problem is that they don’t know the bourdon that it puts on the people that he has supported and been supported by until his son is sent of. He gets a totally different feeling when he doesn’t know what could happen to his son. He gets his message across by proving that every body has something to do with war wether they like it or not. Your parents might have been to war, if not them then your uncles, cousins, friends, or your neighbors(old men). Then if it isn’t them it could be your child who is going and the feeling is different, you lose the feeling of security when you cant protect your child. He

Dystopian Society -Compare Contrast Brave New World and...

Dystopian Society Different societies have risen and fallen in the continual search for the â€Å"perfect† society. The definition of this utopia is in constant flux due to changing times and cultural values. Many works of literature have been written describing a utopian society and the steps needed to achieve it. However, there are those with a more cynical or more realistic view of society that comment on current and future trends. These individuals look at the problems in society and show how to solve them with the use of control and power. Such a society is considered undesirable and has become known as dystopian society. In the books 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, both authors depict a dystopian†¦show more content†¦Dystopian societies would be difficult to build overnight instead a long process of change is needed for them to emerge. The United States is slowly headed in that direction but a push for such a society would be rejected by the mas ses. The culture still focuses on freedom in all its many forms even though those freedoms are being eroded over time. As mentioned earlier, in each book the main characters rebelled against the current system. Both characters felt there was something intrinsically wrong with society and began to question the norms. They each used references to the past or a contrast society as comparison to the current system. Each character felt there was something wrong and tried to get other people to notice it as well and finally took a physical action to stand up for what they believe in. In each case they were brought before authority figures and eventually failed in their rebellion. However, Winston and John were forced to rebel in different ways based on the nature of the society they lived in. Winston went about rebelling by furtively writing a diary, having a love affair and joining the brotherhood. When he was caught instead of just punishment they eventually succeeded in making him love Big Brother, the ultimate admission of defeat. The process of doublethink allows people to lie to themselves and believe theShow MoreRelatedThe Brave New World, By Aldous Huxley And 1984 By George Orwell1680 Words   |  7 PagesDeath, Neil Postman compares the two dystopian societies of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and 1984 by George Orwell. He suggests that â€Å"Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us† (Postman). The Party of 1984 maintained control of the people by keeping them under constant surveillance, whereas the government of Brave New World kept the citizens so happy, they never felt threatened enough to put up a fight. Both Brave New World and 1984 multiple methodsRead MoreAnalysis Of George Orwell s A Clockwork Orange 1611 Words   |  7 PagesSlaves to a cooperate world with pre-determined life plans and ‘choices’. Always connected but never truly free to do as we please. Or is th is the path we are heading towards? 1984 and ‘A clockwork orange’ show a projection of a harsh dystopian future where the people are ruled over and oppressed by dictatorial governments. The minority who are brave enough to rebel are quickly brought to a halt and then conditioned to fit back into a ‘perfect’ society. In George Orwell’s novel ‘1984’, the reader canRead MoreComparing 1984 And Brave New World1364 Words   |  6 Pages1984 and Brave New World First Assignment Elizabeth Schepis Class: Monday and Wednesday There is a high probability that most people have heard of the saying, â€Å"Big Brother is watching you.† The saying comes from George Orwell’s book, 1984. A story which depicts a nightmarish view of society. Big Brother plays a key role throughout the novel for his surveillance state. Surveillance functions consistently in the dystopia, affecting the way individuals view themselves by their present day technologyRead MoreAnalysis Of George Orwell s The Road 3871 Words   |  16 PagesINTRODUCTION â€Å"Lord of the Flies† by William Golding, â€Å"1984† by George Orwell, â€Å"The Time Machine† by H.G. Wells and â€Å"A Brave New World† by Aldous Huxley are all novels of the dystopian genre, that explore a post-apocalyptic world. The genre of the post-apocalypse is becoming ever more popular in the post World War Two English speaking world. The authors of these novels I feel, have a very distinct voice and style they create themselves to explore this world. A recent novel that really struck me as a novel

Bloodsucking Fiends A Love Story Chapter 19~20 Free Essays

string(61) " this is the only one that can fail and not really kill you\." Chapter 19 Judy’s Delicate Condition For the first few weeks Tommy was uncomfortable having a dead guy in the freezer, but after a while the dead guy became a fixture, a familiar frosty face with every TV dinner. Tommy named him Peary after another arctic explorer. During the day, after he came home from work and before he crawled into bed with Jody, Tommy puttered around the loft talking first to himself, then, when he became comfortable with the idea, to Peary. We will write a custom essay sample on Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story Chapter 19~20 or any similar topic only for you Order Now â€Å"You know, Peary,† Tommy said one morning after he had pounded out two pages of a short story on his typewriter, â€Å"I am having a little trouble finding my voice in this story. When I write about the little farm girl in Georgia walking barefoot to school on the dirt road, I sound like Harper Lee, but when I write about her poor father, unjustly sentenced to a chain gang for stealing bread for his family, I start to sound a little like Mark Twain. But when the little girl grows up to become a Mafia don, I’m falling into more of a Sydney Collins Krantz style. What should I do?† Peary, safe with his lid closed and his light off, did not answer. â€Å"And how am I supposed to concentrate on literature when I’m reading all these vampire books for Jody? She doesn’t understand that a writer is a special creature – that I’m different from everyone else. I’m not saying I’m superior to other people, just more sensitive, I guess. And did you notice that she never does any of the shopping? What does she do all night while I’m at work?† Tommy was making an effort to understand Jody’s situation, and had even devised a series of experiments from his reading to try and discover the limitations of her new situation. In the evening when they woke, after they shared a shower and a tumble or two, the scientific process would begin. â€Å"Go ahead, honey, give it a try,† Tommy said, shortly after he’d read Dracula. â€Å"I am trying,† Jody said. â€Å"I don’t know what I’m supposed to try to do.† â€Å"Concentrate,† Tommy said. â€Å"Push.† â€Å"What do you mean, push? I’m not giving birth, Tommy. What am I supposed to push on?† â€Å"Try to grow fur. Try to make your arms change into wings.† Jody closed her eyes and concentrated – strained, even – and Tommy thought a little color came into her face. Finally she said, â€Å"This is ridiculous.† And it was determined that Jody could not turn into a bat. â€Å"Mist,† Tommy said. â€Å"Try to turn into mist. If you forget your key sometime, you can just ooze under the door to get in.† â€Å"It’s not working.† â€Å"Keep trying. You know how your hair gathers in the shower drain? Well, if it gets clogged, you can just flow down there and dig out the clog.† â€Å"There’s some motivation.† â€Å"Give it a try.† She tried and failed and the next day Tommy brought some Drano home from the store instead. â€Å"But I could take you to the park and throw a Frisbee for you.† â€Å"I know, but I can’t.† â€Å"I’ll buy you all kinds of chew toys – a squeaky duck if you want.† â€Å"I’m sorry, Tommy, but I can’t turn into a wolf.† â€Å"In the book, Dracula climbs down the castle wall face down.† â€Å"Good for him.† â€Å"You could try it on our building. It’s only three stories.† â€Å"That’s still a long way to fall.† â€Å"You won’t fall. He doesn’t fall in the book.† â€Å"And he levitates in the book, doesn’t he?† â€Å"Yeah.† â€Å"And we tried that, didn’t we?† â€Å"Well, yeah.† â€Å"Then I’d say that the book is fiction, wouldn’t you?† â€Å"Let’s try something else; I’ll get the list.† â€Å"Mind reading. Project your thoughts into my mind.† â€Å"Okay, I’m projecting. What am I thinking?† â€Å"I can tell by the look on your face.† â€Å"You might be wrong, what am I thinking?† â€Å"You’d like me to stop badgering you with these experiments.† â€Å"And?† â€Å"You want me to take our clothes to the Laundromat.† â€Å"And?† â€Å"That’s all I’m getting.† â€Å"I want you to stop rubbing garlic on me while I’m sleeping.† â€Å"You can read thoughts!† â€Å"No, Tommy, but I woke up this evening smelling like a pizza joint. Stop it with the garlic.† â€Å"So you don’t know about the crucifix?† â€Å"You touched me with a crucifix?† â€Å"You weren’t in any danger. I had a fire extinguisher right there in case you burst into flames.† â€Å"I don’t think it’s very nice of you to experiment on me while I’m sleeping. How would you feel if I rubbed stuff on you while you were sleeping?† â€Å"Well, it depends. What are we talking about?† â€Å"Just don’t touch me while I’m sleeping, okay? A relationship is based on mutual trust and respect.† â€Å"So I guess the mallet and the stake are out of the question?† â€Å"Tommy!† â€Å"Kmart had a sale on mallets. You were wondering if you were immortal. I wasn’t going to try it without asking you.† â€Å"How long do you think it will take for you to forget what sex feels like?† â€Å"I’m sorry, Jody. Really, I am.† The question of immortality did, indeed, bother Jody. The old vampire had said that she could be killed, but it was not the sort of thing that you could easily test. It was Tommy, of course, after a long talk with Peary while trying to avoid working on his little Southern-girl story one morning, who came up with the test. Jody awoke one evening to find him in the bathroom emptying ice cubes out of a tray into the big claw-foot tub. He said, â€Å"I was a lifeguard one summer in high school.† â€Å"So?† â€Å"I had to learn CPR. I spent half the summer pumping pissy pool water out of exhausted nine-year-olds.† â€Å"So?† â€Å"Drowning.† â€Å"Drowning?† â€Å"Yeah, we drown you. If you’re immortal, you’ll be fine. If not, the cold water will keep you fresh and I can revive you. There’s about thirty more trays of ice stacked up on Peary. Could you grab some?† â€Å"Tommy, I’m not sure about this.† â€Å"You want to know, don’t you?† â€Å"But a tub of ice water?† â€Å"I’ve run all the possibilities down – guns, knives, an injection of potassium nitrate – this is the only one that can fail and not really kill you. You read "Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story Chapter 19~20" in category "Essay examples" I know you want to know, but I don’t want to lose you to find out.† Jody, in spite of herself, was touched. â€Å"That’s the sweetest thing anyone ever said to me.† â€Å"Well, you wouldn’t want to kill me, would you?† Tommy was a little concerned about the fact that Jody had been feeding on him every four days. Not that he felt sick or weak; on the contrary, he found that each time she bit him he was energized, stronger, it seemed. He was throwing twice as much stock at the store and his mind seemed sharper, more alert. He was making good progress on his story. He was starting to look forward to being bitten. â€Å"Come on then,† he said. â€Å"In the tub.† Jody was wearing a silk nighty that she let drop to the floor. â€Å"You’re sure if this doesn’t work†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"You’ll be fine.† She took his hand. â€Å"I’m trusting you.† â€Å"I know. Get in.† Jody stepped into the cold water. â€Å"Brisk,† she said. â€Å"I didn’t think you could feel it.† â€Å"I can feel temperature changes, but they don’t bother me.† â€Å"We’ll experiment on that next. Under you go.† Jody lay down in the tub, her hair spread across the water like crimson kelp. Tommy checked his watch. â€Å"After you go under, don’t hold your breath. It’s going to be hard, but suck the water into your lungs. I’ll leave you under for four minutes, then pull you out.† Jody took deep breaths and looked at him, a glint of panic in her eyes. He bent and kissed her. â€Å"I love you,† he said. â€Å"You do?† â€Å"Of course.† He pushed her head under the water. She bobbed back up. â€Å"Me too,† she said. Then she went under. She tried to make herself take in the water but her lungs wouldn’t let her and she held her breath. Four minutes later Tommy reached under her arms and pulled her up. â€Å"I didn’t do it,† she said. â€Å"Christ, Jody, I can’t keep doing this.† â€Å"I held my breath.† â€Å"For four minutes?† â€Å"I think I could have gone hours.† â€Å"Try again. You’ve got to inhale the water or you’ll never die.† â€Å"Thanks, coach.† â€Å"Please.† She slipped under the water and sucked in a breath of water before she could think about it. She listened to the ice cubes tinkling on the surface, watched the bathroom light refracting through the water, occasionally interrupted by Tommy’s face as he looked down on her. There was no panic, no choking – she didn’t even feel the claustrophobia that she had expected. Actually, it was kind of pleasant. Tommy pulled her up and she expelled a great cough of water, then began breathing normally. â€Å"Are you okay?† â€Å"Fine.† â€Å"You really did drown.† â€Å"It wasn’t that bad.† â€Å"Try it again.† This time Tommy left her under for ten minutes before pulling her up. After the cough, she said, â€Å"I guess that’s it.† â€Å"Did you see the long tunnel with the light at the end? All your dead relatives waiting? The fiery gates of hell?† â€Å"Nope, just ice cubes.† Tommy turned around and sat down hard on the bathroom rug with his back to the tub. â€Å"I feel like I was the one that got drowned.† â€Å"I feel great.† â€Å"That’s it, you know. You are immortal.† â€Å"I guess so. As far as we can test it. Can I get out of the tub now?† â€Å"Sure.† He handed her a towel over his shoulder. â€Å"Jody, are you going to leave me when I get old?† â€Å"You’re nineteen years old.† â€Å"Yeah, but next year I’ll be twenty, then twenty-one; then I’ll be eating strained green beans and drooling all over myself and asking you what your name is every five seconds and you’ll be twenty-six and perky and you’ll resent me every time you have to change my incontinence pants.† â€Å"That’s a cheery thought.† â€Å"Well, you will resent it, won’t you?† â€Å"Aren’t you jumping the gun a little? You have great bladder control; I’ve seen you drink six beers without going to the bathroom.† â€Å"Sure, now, but†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"Look, Tommy, could you look at this from my point of view? This is the first time I’ve had to really think about this as well. Do you realize that I’ll never have blue hair and walk with tiny little steps? I’ll never drive really slow all the time and spend hours complaining about my ailments. I’ll never go to Denny’s and steal all the extra jelly packets and squirrel them away in a giant handbag.† Tommy looked up at her. â€Å"You were looking forward to those things?† â€Å"That’s not the point, Tommy. I might be immortal, but I’ve lost a big part of my life. Like French fries. I miss eating French fries. I’m Irish, you know. Ever since the Great Potato Famine my people get nervous if they don’t eat French fries every few days. Did you ever think about that?† â€Å"No, I guess I didn’t.† â€Å"I don’t even know what I am. I don’t know why I’m here. I was made by some mystery creature and I don’t have the slightest idea why, or what he wants from me, or what I am supposed to be doing. Only that he’s messing with my life in ways I can’t understand. Do you have any idea what that is like?† â€Å"Actually, I know exactly what that’s like.† â€Å"You do?† â€Å"Of course, everybody does. By the way, the Emperor told me that they found another body today. In a Laundromat in the Tenderloin. Broken neck and no blood.† Chapter 20 Angel If Inspector Alphonse Rivera had been a bird, he would have been a crow. He was lean and dark, with slick, sharp features and black eyes that shone and shifted with suspicion and guile. Time and again his crowlike looks landed him in the undercover role of coke dealer. Sometimes Cuban, sometimes Mexican, and one time Colombian, he had driven more Mercedes and worn more Armani suits than most real drug dealers, but after twenty years in narcotics, on three different departments, he had transferred to homicide, claiming that he needed to work among a better class of people – namely, dead. Oh, the joys of homicide! Simple crimes of passion, most solved within twenty-four hours or not at all. No stings, no suitcases of government money, no pretense, just simple deduction – sometimes very simple: a dead wife in the kitchen; a drunken husband standing in the foyer with a smoking thirty-eight; and Rivera, in his cheap Italian knock-off suit, gently disarming the new widower, who could only say, â€Å"Liver and onions.† A body, a suspect, a weapon, and a motive: case solved and on to the next one, neat and tidy. Until now. Rivera thought, If my luck could be bottled, it would be classified a chemical weapon. He read through the coroner’s report again. â€Å"Cause of death: compression fracture of the fifth and sixth vertebrae (broken neck). Subject had lost massive amounts of blood – no visible wounds.† On its own, it was a uniquely enigmatic report, but it wasn’t on its own. It was the second body in a month that had sustained massive blood loss with no visible wounds. Rivera looked across the desk to where his partner, Nick Cavuto, was reading a copy of the report. â€Å"What do you think?† Rivera said. Cavuto chewed on an unlit cigar. He was a burly and balding, gravel-voiced, third-generation cop – six degrees tougher than his father and grandfather had been because he was gay. He said, â€Å"I think if you have any vacation time coming, this would be the time to take it.† â€Å"So we’re fucked.† â€Å"It’s too early for us to be fucked. I’d say we’ve been taken to dinner and slipped the tongue on the good-night kiss.† Rivera smiled. He liked the way Cavuto tried to make everything sound like dialogue from a Bogart movie. The big detective’s pride and joy was a complete set of signed first-edition Dashiell Hammett novels. â€Å"Give me the days when police work was done with a snub nose and a lead sap,† Cavuto would say. â€Å"Computers are for pussies.† Rivera returned to the report. â€Å"It looks like this guy would have been dead in a month anyway: ‘a ten-centimeter tumor on the liver. Malignancy the size of a grapefruit.† Cavuto shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth. â€Å"The old broad at the Van Ness Motel was on her way out too. Congestive heart disease. Too weak for a bypass. She ate nitro pills like they were MM’s.† â€Å"The euthanasia killer,† Rivera said. â€Å"So we’re assuming this was the same guy?† â€Å"Whatever you say, Nick.† â€Å"Two killings with the same MO and no motive. I don’t even like the sound of it.† Cavuto rubbed his temples as if trying to milk anxiety out through his tear ducts. â€Å"You were in San Junipero during the Night Stalker killings. We couldn’t take a piss without tripping over a reporter. I say we lock this down. As far as the papers are concerned, the victims were robbed. No connection.† Rivera nodded. â€Å"I need a smoke. Let’s go talk to those guys that got hit at the Laundromat a couple of weeks ago. Maybe there’s a connection.† Cavuto pushed himself out of the chair and grabbed his hat off the desk. â€Å"Whoever voted for nonsmoking in the station house should be pistol-whipped.† â€Å"Didn’t the President sponsor that bill?† â€Å"All the more reason. The pussy.† Tommy lay looking at the ceiling, trying to catch his breath and extricate his right foot from a hopeless tangle in the sheets. Jody was drawing a tic-tac-toe in the sweat on his chest with her finger. â€Å"You don’t sweat anymore, do you?† he asked. â€Å"Don’t seem to.† â€Å"And you’re not even out of breath. Am I doing something wrong?† â€Å"No, it was great. I only get breathless when†¦ when I†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"When you bite me.† â€Å"Yeah.† â€Å"Did you†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"Yes.† â€Å"Are you sure?† â€Å"Are you?† â€Å"No, I faked.† Tommy grinned. â€Å"Really?† Jody looked at the wet spot (on her side, of course). â€Å"Why do you think I’m so winded? It’s not easy to fake the ejaculation part.† â€Å"I, for one, was fooled.† â€Å"See.† He reached down and unwrapped the sheet from his foot, then he lay back and stared at the ceiling. Jody began to twist the sweaty locks of his hair into horns. â€Å"Jody,† Tommy said tentatively. â€Å"Hmmm?† â€Å"When I get old, I mean, if we’re still together†¦Ã¢â‚¬  She yanked on his hair. â€Å"Ouch. Okay, we’ll still be together. Have you ever heard of satyriasis?† â€Å"No.† â€Å"Well, it happens to real old guys. They run around with a perpetual hard-on, chasing teenage girls and humping anything that moves until they have to be put in restraints.† â€Å"Wow, interesting disease.† â€Å"Yeah, well, when I get old, if I start to show the symptoms†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"Yeah?† â€Å"Just let it run its course, okay?† â€Å"I’ll look forward to it.† Rivera held a plastic cup of orange juice for the mass of plaster and tubes that was LaOtis Small. LaOtis sipped from the straw, then pushed it away with his tongue. The body cast ran from below his knees to the top of his head, with holes for his face and outgoing tubes. Cavuto stood by the hospital bed taking notes. â€Å"So you and your friends were doing laundry when an unarmed, redheaded woman attacked you and put all three of you in the hospital? Right?† â€Å"She was a ninja, man. I know. I get the kick-boxing channel on cable.† Cavuto chomped an unlit cigar. â€Å"Your friend James says that she was six-four and weighed two hundred pounds.† â€Å"No, man, she was five-five, five-six.† â€Å"Your other buddy† – Cavuto checked his notepad for the name – â€Å"Kid Jay, said that it was a gang of Mexicans.† â€Å"No, man, he dreamin’; it was one ninja bitch.† â€Å"A five-and-a-half-foot woman put the three of you big strong guys in the hospital?† â€Å"Yeah. We was just mindin’ our own bidness. She come in and axed for some change. James tell her no, he got to put a load in the dryer, and she go fifty-one-fifty on him. She a ninja.† â€Å"Thank you, LaOtis, you’ve been very helpful.† Cavuto shot Rivera a look and they left the hospital room. In the hallway Rivera said, â€Å"So we’re looking for a gang of redheaded, ninja Mexicans.† Cavuto said, â€Å"You think there’s a molecule of truth in any of that?† â€Å"They were all unconscious when they were brought in, and obviously they haven’t tried to match up their stories. So if you throw out everything that doesn’t match, you end up with a woman with long red hair.† â€Å"You think a woman could do that to them and manage to snap the neck of two other people without a struggle?† â€Å"Not a chance,† Rivera said. His beeper went off and he checked the number. â€Å"I’ll call in.† Cavuto pulled up. â€Å"Go ahead, I’m going back in to talk to LaOtis. Meet me outside emergency.† â€Å"Take it easy, Nick, the guy’s in a body cast.† Cavuto grinned. â€Å"Kind’a erotic, ain’t it?† He turned and lumbered back toward LaOtis Small’s room. Jody walked Tommy up to Market Street, watched him eat a burger and fries, and put him on the 42 bus to work. Killing the time while Tommy worked was becoming tedious. She tried to stay in the loft, watched the late-night talk shows and old movies on cable, read magazines, and did a little cleaning, but by two in the morning the caged-cat feeling came over her and she went out to wander the streets. Sometimes she walked Market among the street people and the convention crowds, other times she took a bus to North Beach and hung out on Broadway watching the sailors and the punks stagger, drunk and stoned, or the hookers and the hustlers running their games. It was on these crowded streets that she felt most lonely. Time and again she wanted to turn to someone and point out a unique heat pattern or the dark aura she sensed around the sick; like a child sharing the cloud animals flying through a summer sky. But no one else could see what she saw, no one heard the whispered propositions, the pointed refusals, or the rustle of money exchanging hands in alleys and doorways. Other times she crept through the back streets and listened to the symphony of noises that no one else heard, smelled the spectrum of odors that had long ago exhausted her vocabulary. Each night there were more nameless sights and smells and sounds, and they came so fast and subtle that she eventually gave up trying to name them. She thought, This is what it is to be an animal. Just experience – direct, instant, and wordless; memory and recognition, but no words. A poet with my senses could spend a lifetime trying to describe what it is to hear a building breathe and smell the aging of concrete. And for what? Why write a song when no one can play the notes or understand the lyrics? I’m alone. Cavuto came through the double doors of the emergency room and joined Rivera, who was standing by the brown, City-issue Ford smoking a cigarette. â€Å"What was the call?† Cavuto asked. â€Å"We got another one. Broken neck. South of Market. Elderly male.† â€Å"Fuck,† Cavuto said, yanking open the car door. â€Å"What about blood loss?† â€Å"They don’t know yet. This one’s still warm.† Rivera flipped his cigarette butt into the parking lot and climbed into the car. â€Å"You get anything more out of LaOtis?† â€Å"Nothing important. They weren’t doing their laundry, they went in looking for the girl, but he’s sticking with the ninja story.† River started the car and looked at Cavuto. â€Å"You didn’t rough him up?† Cavuto pulled a Cross pen out of his shirt pocket and held it up. â€Å"Mightier than the sword.† Rivera cringed at the thought of what Cavuto might have done to LaOtis with the pen. â€Å"You didn’t leave any marks, did you?† â€Å"Lots,† Cavuto grinned. â€Å"Nick, you can’t do that kind of – â€Å" â€Å"Relax,† Cavuto interrupted. â€Å"I just wrote, ‘Thanks for all the information; I’m sure we’ll get some convictions out of this, on his cast. Then I signed it and told him that I wouldn’t scratch it out until he told me the truth.† â€Å"Did you scratch it out?† â€Å"Nope.† â€Å"If his friends see it, they’ll kill him.† â€Å"Fuck him,† Cavuto said. â€Å"Ninja redheads, my ass.† Four in the morning. Jody watched neon beer signs buzzing color across the dew-damp sidewalks of Polk Street. The street was deserted, so she played sensory games to amuse herself – closing her eyes and listening to the soft scratch of her sneakers echoing off the buildings as she walked. If she concentrated, she could walk several blocks without looking, listening for the streetlight switches at the corners and feeling the subtle changes in wind currents at the cross streets. When she felt she was going to run into something, she could shuffle her feet and the sound would form a rough image in her mind of the walls and poles and wires around her. If she stood quietly, she could reach out and form a map of the whole City in her head – sounds drew the lines, and smells filled in the colors. She was listening to the fishing boats idling at the wharf a mile away when she heard footsteps and opened her eyes. A single figure had rounded the corner a couple of blocks ahead of her and was walking, head down, up Polk. She stepped into the doorway of a closed Russian restaurant and watched him. Sadness came off him in black waves. His name was Philip. His friends called him Philly. He was twenty-three. He had grown up in Georgia and had run away to the City when he was sixteen so he wouldn’t have to pretend to be something he was not. He had run away to the City to find love. After the one-night stands with rich older men, after the bars and the bathhouses, after finding out that he wasn’t a freak, that there were other people just like him, after the last of the confusion and shame had settled like red Georgia dust, he’d found love. He’d lived with his lover in a studio in the Castro district. And in that studio, sitting on the edge of a rented hospital bed, he had filled a syringe with morphine and injected it into his lover and held his hand while he died. Later, he cleared away the bed pans and the IV stand and the machine that he used to suck the fluid out of his lover’s lungs and he threw them in the trash. The doctor said to hold on to them – that he would need them. They buried Philly’s lover in the morning and they took the embroidered square of fabric that was draped on the casket and folded it and handed it to him like the flag to a war widow. He got to keep it for a while before it was added to the quilt. He had it in his pocket now. His hair was gone from the chemotherapy. His lungs hurt, and his feet hurt; the sarcomas that spotted his body were worst on his feet and his face. His joints ached and he couldn’t keep his food down, but he could still walk. So he walked. He walked up Polk Street, head down, at four in the morning, because he could. He could still walk. When he reached the doorway of a Russian restaurant, Jody stepped out in front of him and he stopped and looked at her. Somewhere, way down deep, he found that there was a smile left. â€Å"Are you the Angel of Death?† he asked. â€Å"Yes,† she said. â€Å"It’s good to see you,† Philly said. She held her arms out to him. How to cite Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story Chapter 19~20, Essay examples

Bloodsucking Fiends A Love Story Chapter 19~20 Free Essays

string(61) " this is the only one that can fail and not really kill you\." Chapter 19 Judy’s Delicate Condition For the first few weeks Tommy was uncomfortable having a dead guy in the freezer, but after a while the dead guy became a fixture, a familiar frosty face with every TV dinner. Tommy named him Peary after another arctic explorer. During the day, after he came home from work and before he crawled into bed with Jody, Tommy puttered around the loft talking first to himself, then, when he became comfortable with the idea, to Peary. We will write a custom essay sample on Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story Chapter 19~20 or any similar topic only for you Order Now â€Å"You know, Peary,† Tommy said one morning after he had pounded out two pages of a short story on his typewriter, â€Å"I am having a little trouble finding my voice in this story. When I write about the little farm girl in Georgia walking barefoot to school on the dirt road, I sound like Harper Lee, but when I write about her poor father, unjustly sentenced to a chain gang for stealing bread for his family, I start to sound a little like Mark Twain. But when the little girl grows up to become a Mafia don, I’m falling into more of a Sydney Collins Krantz style. What should I do?† Peary, safe with his lid closed and his light off, did not answer. â€Å"And how am I supposed to concentrate on literature when I’m reading all these vampire books for Jody? She doesn’t understand that a writer is a special creature – that I’m different from everyone else. I’m not saying I’m superior to other people, just more sensitive, I guess. And did you notice that she never does any of the shopping? What does she do all night while I’m at work?† Tommy was making an effort to understand Jody’s situation, and had even devised a series of experiments from his reading to try and discover the limitations of her new situation. In the evening when they woke, after they shared a shower and a tumble or two, the scientific process would begin. â€Å"Go ahead, honey, give it a try,† Tommy said, shortly after he’d read Dracula. â€Å"I am trying,† Jody said. â€Å"I don’t know what I’m supposed to try to do.† â€Å"Concentrate,† Tommy said. â€Å"Push.† â€Å"What do you mean, push? I’m not giving birth, Tommy. What am I supposed to push on?† â€Å"Try to grow fur. Try to make your arms change into wings.† Jody closed her eyes and concentrated – strained, even – and Tommy thought a little color came into her face. Finally she said, â€Å"This is ridiculous.† And it was determined that Jody could not turn into a bat. â€Å"Mist,† Tommy said. â€Å"Try to turn into mist. If you forget your key sometime, you can just ooze under the door to get in.† â€Å"It’s not working.† â€Å"Keep trying. You know how your hair gathers in the shower drain? Well, if it gets clogged, you can just flow down there and dig out the clog.† â€Å"There’s some motivation.† â€Å"Give it a try.† She tried and failed and the next day Tommy brought some Drano home from the store instead. â€Å"But I could take you to the park and throw a Frisbee for you.† â€Å"I know, but I can’t.† â€Å"I’ll buy you all kinds of chew toys – a squeaky duck if you want.† â€Å"I’m sorry, Tommy, but I can’t turn into a wolf.† â€Å"In the book, Dracula climbs down the castle wall face down.† â€Å"Good for him.† â€Å"You could try it on our building. It’s only three stories.† â€Å"That’s still a long way to fall.† â€Å"You won’t fall. He doesn’t fall in the book.† â€Å"And he levitates in the book, doesn’t he?† â€Å"Yeah.† â€Å"And we tried that, didn’t we?† â€Å"Well, yeah.† â€Å"Then I’d say that the book is fiction, wouldn’t you?† â€Å"Let’s try something else; I’ll get the list.† â€Å"Mind reading. Project your thoughts into my mind.† â€Å"Okay, I’m projecting. What am I thinking?† â€Å"I can tell by the look on your face.† â€Å"You might be wrong, what am I thinking?† â€Å"You’d like me to stop badgering you with these experiments.† â€Å"And?† â€Å"You want me to take our clothes to the Laundromat.† â€Å"And?† â€Å"That’s all I’m getting.† â€Å"I want you to stop rubbing garlic on me while I’m sleeping.† â€Å"You can read thoughts!† â€Å"No, Tommy, but I woke up this evening smelling like a pizza joint. Stop it with the garlic.† â€Å"So you don’t know about the crucifix?† â€Å"You touched me with a crucifix?† â€Å"You weren’t in any danger. I had a fire extinguisher right there in case you burst into flames.† â€Å"I don’t think it’s very nice of you to experiment on me while I’m sleeping. How would you feel if I rubbed stuff on you while you were sleeping?† â€Å"Well, it depends. What are we talking about?† â€Å"Just don’t touch me while I’m sleeping, okay? A relationship is based on mutual trust and respect.† â€Å"So I guess the mallet and the stake are out of the question?† â€Å"Tommy!† â€Å"Kmart had a sale on mallets. You were wondering if you were immortal. I wasn’t going to try it without asking you.† â€Å"How long do you think it will take for you to forget what sex feels like?† â€Å"I’m sorry, Jody. Really, I am.† The question of immortality did, indeed, bother Jody. The old vampire had said that she could be killed, but it was not the sort of thing that you could easily test. It was Tommy, of course, after a long talk with Peary while trying to avoid working on his little Southern-girl story one morning, who came up with the test. Jody awoke one evening to find him in the bathroom emptying ice cubes out of a tray into the big claw-foot tub. He said, â€Å"I was a lifeguard one summer in high school.† â€Å"So?† â€Å"I had to learn CPR. I spent half the summer pumping pissy pool water out of exhausted nine-year-olds.† â€Å"So?† â€Å"Drowning.† â€Å"Drowning?† â€Å"Yeah, we drown you. If you’re immortal, you’ll be fine. If not, the cold water will keep you fresh and I can revive you. There’s about thirty more trays of ice stacked up on Peary. Could you grab some?† â€Å"Tommy, I’m not sure about this.† â€Å"You want to know, don’t you?† â€Å"But a tub of ice water?† â€Å"I’ve run all the possibilities down – guns, knives, an injection of potassium nitrate – this is the only one that can fail and not really kill you. You read "Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story Chapter 19~20" in category "Essay examples" I know you want to know, but I don’t want to lose you to find out.† Jody, in spite of herself, was touched. â€Å"That’s the sweetest thing anyone ever said to me.† â€Å"Well, you wouldn’t want to kill me, would you?† Tommy was a little concerned about the fact that Jody had been feeding on him every four days. Not that he felt sick or weak; on the contrary, he found that each time she bit him he was energized, stronger, it seemed. He was throwing twice as much stock at the store and his mind seemed sharper, more alert. He was making good progress on his story. He was starting to look forward to being bitten. â€Å"Come on then,† he said. â€Å"In the tub.† Jody was wearing a silk nighty that she let drop to the floor. â€Å"You’re sure if this doesn’t work†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"You’ll be fine.† She took his hand. â€Å"I’m trusting you.† â€Å"I know. Get in.† Jody stepped into the cold water. â€Å"Brisk,† she said. â€Å"I didn’t think you could feel it.† â€Å"I can feel temperature changes, but they don’t bother me.† â€Å"We’ll experiment on that next. Under you go.† Jody lay down in the tub, her hair spread across the water like crimson kelp. Tommy checked his watch. â€Å"After you go under, don’t hold your breath. It’s going to be hard, but suck the water into your lungs. I’ll leave you under for four minutes, then pull you out.† Jody took deep breaths and looked at him, a glint of panic in her eyes. He bent and kissed her. â€Å"I love you,† he said. â€Å"You do?† â€Å"Of course.† He pushed her head under the water. She bobbed back up. â€Å"Me too,† she said. Then she went under. She tried to make herself take in the water but her lungs wouldn’t let her and she held her breath. Four minutes later Tommy reached under her arms and pulled her up. â€Å"I didn’t do it,† she said. â€Å"Christ, Jody, I can’t keep doing this.† â€Å"I held my breath.† â€Å"For four minutes?† â€Å"I think I could have gone hours.† â€Å"Try again. You’ve got to inhale the water or you’ll never die.† â€Å"Thanks, coach.† â€Å"Please.† She slipped under the water and sucked in a breath of water before she could think about it. She listened to the ice cubes tinkling on the surface, watched the bathroom light refracting through the water, occasionally interrupted by Tommy’s face as he looked down on her. There was no panic, no choking – she didn’t even feel the claustrophobia that she had expected. Actually, it was kind of pleasant. Tommy pulled her up and she expelled a great cough of water, then began breathing normally. â€Å"Are you okay?† â€Å"Fine.† â€Å"You really did drown.† â€Å"It wasn’t that bad.† â€Å"Try it again.† This time Tommy left her under for ten minutes before pulling her up. After the cough, she said, â€Å"I guess that’s it.† â€Å"Did you see the long tunnel with the light at the end? All your dead relatives waiting? The fiery gates of hell?† â€Å"Nope, just ice cubes.† Tommy turned around and sat down hard on the bathroom rug with his back to the tub. â€Å"I feel like I was the one that got drowned.† â€Å"I feel great.† â€Å"That’s it, you know. You are immortal.† â€Å"I guess so. As far as we can test it. Can I get out of the tub now?† â€Å"Sure.† He handed her a towel over his shoulder. â€Å"Jody, are you going to leave me when I get old?† â€Å"You’re nineteen years old.† â€Å"Yeah, but next year I’ll be twenty, then twenty-one; then I’ll be eating strained green beans and drooling all over myself and asking you what your name is every five seconds and you’ll be twenty-six and perky and you’ll resent me every time you have to change my incontinence pants.† â€Å"That’s a cheery thought.† â€Å"Well, you will resent it, won’t you?† â€Å"Aren’t you jumping the gun a little? You have great bladder control; I’ve seen you drink six beers without going to the bathroom.† â€Å"Sure, now, but†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"Look, Tommy, could you look at this from my point of view? This is the first time I’ve had to really think about this as well. Do you realize that I’ll never have blue hair and walk with tiny little steps? I’ll never drive really slow all the time and spend hours complaining about my ailments. I’ll never go to Denny’s and steal all the extra jelly packets and squirrel them away in a giant handbag.† Tommy looked up at her. â€Å"You were looking forward to those things?† â€Å"That’s not the point, Tommy. I might be immortal, but I’ve lost a big part of my life. Like French fries. I miss eating French fries. I’m Irish, you know. Ever since the Great Potato Famine my people get nervous if they don’t eat French fries every few days. Did you ever think about that?† â€Å"No, I guess I didn’t.† â€Å"I don’t even know what I am. I don’t know why I’m here. I was made by some mystery creature and I don’t have the slightest idea why, or what he wants from me, or what I am supposed to be doing. Only that he’s messing with my life in ways I can’t understand. Do you have any idea what that is like?† â€Å"Actually, I know exactly what that’s like.† â€Å"You do?† â€Å"Of course, everybody does. By the way, the Emperor told me that they found another body today. In a Laundromat in the Tenderloin. Broken neck and no blood.† Chapter 20 Angel If Inspector Alphonse Rivera had been a bird, he would have been a crow. He was lean and dark, with slick, sharp features and black eyes that shone and shifted with suspicion and guile. Time and again his crowlike looks landed him in the undercover role of coke dealer. Sometimes Cuban, sometimes Mexican, and one time Colombian, he had driven more Mercedes and worn more Armani suits than most real drug dealers, but after twenty years in narcotics, on three different departments, he had transferred to homicide, claiming that he needed to work among a better class of people – namely, dead. Oh, the joys of homicide! Simple crimes of passion, most solved within twenty-four hours or not at all. No stings, no suitcases of government money, no pretense, just simple deduction – sometimes very simple: a dead wife in the kitchen; a drunken husband standing in the foyer with a smoking thirty-eight; and Rivera, in his cheap Italian knock-off suit, gently disarming the new widower, who could only say, â€Å"Liver and onions.† A body, a suspect, a weapon, and a motive: case solved and on to the next one, neat and tidy. Until now. Rivera thought, If my luck could be bottled, it would be classified a chemical weapon. He read through the coroner’s report again. â€Å"Cause of death: compression fracture of the fifth and sixth vertebrae (broken neck). Subject had lost massive amounts of blood – no visible wounds.† On its own, it was a uniquely enigmatic report, but it wasn’t on its own. It was the second body in a month that had sustained massive blood loss with no visible wounds. Rivera looked across the desk to where his partner, Nick Cavuto, was reading a copy of the report. â€Å"What do you think?† Rivera said. Cavuto chewed on an unlit cigar. He was a burly and balding, gravel-voiced, third-generation cop – six degrees tougher than his father and grandfather had been because he was gay. He said, â€Å"I think if you have any vacation time coming, this would be the time to take it.† â€Å"So we’re fucked.† â€Å"It’s too early for us to be fucked. I’d say we’ve been taken to dinner and slipped the tongue on the good-night kiss.† Rivera smiled. He liked the way Cavuto tried to make everything sound like dialogue from a Bogart movie. The big detective’s pride and joy was a complete set of signed first-edition Dashiell Hammett novels. â€Å"Give me the days when police work was done with a snub nose and a lead sap,† Cavuto would say. â€Å"Computers are for pussies.† Rivera returned to the report. â€Å"It looks like this guy would have been dead in a month anyway: ‘a ten-centimeter tumor on the liver. Malignancy the size of a grapefruit.† Cavuto shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth. â€Å"The old broad at the Van Ness Motel was on her way out too. Congestive heart disease. Too weak for a bypass. She ate nitro pills like they were MM’s.† â€Å"The euthanasia killer,† Rivera said. â€Å"So we’re assuming this was the same guy?† â€Å"Whatever you say, Nick.† â€Å"Two killings with the same MO and no motive. I don’t even like the sound of it.† Cavuto rubbed his temples as if trying to milk anxiety out through his tear ducts. â€Å"You were in San Junipero during the Night Stalker killings. We couldn’t take a piss without tripping over a reporter. I say we lock this down. As far as the papers are concerned, the victims were robbed. No connection.† Rivera nodded. â€Å"I need a smoke. Let’s go talk to those guys that got hit at the Laundromat a couple of weeks ago. Maybe there’s a connection.† Cavuto pushed himself out of the chair and grabbed his hat off the desk. â€Å"Whoever voted for nonsmoking in the station house should be pistol-whipped.† â€Å"Didn’t the President sponsor that bill?† â€Å"All the more reason. The pussy.† Tommy lay looking at the ceiling, trying to catch his breath and extricate his right foot from a hopeless tangle in the sheets. Jody was drawing a tic-tac-toe in the sweat on his chest with her finger. â€Å"You don’t sweat anymore, do you?† he asked. â€Å"Don’t seem to.† â€Å"And you’re not even out of breath. Am I doing something wrong?† â€Å"No, it was great. I only get breathless when†¦ when I†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"When you bite me.† â€Å"Yeah.† â€Å"Did you†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"Yes.† â€Å"Are you sure?† â€Å"Are you?† â€Å"No, I faked.† Tommy grinned. â€Å"Really?† Jody looked at the wet spot (on her side, of course). â€Å"Why do you think I’m so winded? It’s not easy to fake the ejaculation part.† â€Å"I, for one, was fooled.† â€Å"See.† He reached down and unwrapped the sheet from his foot, then he lay back and stared at the ceiling. Jody began to twist the sweaty locks of his hair into horns. â€Å"Jody,† Tommy said tentatively. â€Å"Hmmm?† â€Å"When I get old, I mean, if we’re still together†¦Ã¢â‚¬  She yanked on his hair. â€Å"Ouch. Okay, we’ll still be together. Have you ever heard of satyriasis?† â€Å"No.† â€Å"Well, it happens to real old guys. They run around with a perpetual hard-on, chasing teenage girls and humping anything that moves until they have to be put in restraints.† â€Å"Wow, interesting disease.† â€Å"Yeah, well, when I get old, if I start to show the symptoms†¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"Yeah?† â€Å"Just let it run its course, okay?† â€Å"I’ll look forward to it.† Rivera held a plastic cup of orange juice for the mass of plaster and tubes that was LaOtis Small. LaOtis sipped from the straw, then pushed it away with his tongue. The body cast ran from below his knees to the top of his head, with holes for his face and outgoing tubes. Cavuto stood by the hospital bed taking notes. â€Å"So you and your friends were doing laundry when an unarmed, redheaded woman attacked you and put all three of you in the hospital? Right?† â€Å"She was a ninja, man. I know. I get the kick-boxing channel on cable.† Cavuto chomped an unlit cigar. â€Å"Your friend James says that she was six-four and weighed two hundred pounds.† â€Å"No, man, she was five-five, five-six.† â€Å"Your other buddy† – Cavuto checked his notepad for the name – â€Å"Kid Jay, said that it was a gang of Mexicans.† â€Å"No, man, he dreamin’; it was one ninja bitch.† â€Å"A five-and-a-half-foot woman put the three of you big strong guys in the hospital?† â€Å"Yeah. We was just mindin’ our own bidness. She come in and axed for some change. James tell her no, he got to put a load in the dryer, and she go fifty-one-fifty on him. She a ninja.† â€Å"Thank you, LaOtis, you’ve been very helpful.† Cavuto shot Rivera a look and they left the hospital room. In the hallway Rivera said, â€Å"So we’re looking for a gang of redheaded, ninja Mexicans.† Cavuto said, â€Å"You think there’s a molecule of truth in any of that?† â€Å"They were all unconscious when they were brought in, and obviously they haven’t tried to match up their stories. So if you throw out everything that doesn’t match, you end up with a woman with long red hair.† â€Å"You think a woman could do that to them and manage to snap the neck of two other people without a struggle?† â€Å"Not a chance,† Rivera said. His beeper went off and he checked the number. â€Å"I’ll call in.† Cavuto pulled up. â€Å"Go ahead, I’m going back in to talk to LaOtis. Meet me outside emergency.† â€Å"Take it easy, Nick, the guy’s in a body cast.† Cavuto grinned. â€Å"Kind’a erotic, ain’t it?† He turned and lumbered back toward LaOtis Small’s room. Jody walked Tommy up to Market Street, watched him eat a burger and fries, and put him on the 42 bus to work. Killing the time while Tommy worked was becoming tedious. She tried to stay in the loft, watched the late-night talk shows and old movies on cable, read magazines, and did a little cleaning, but by two in the morning the caged-cat feeling came over her and she went out to wander the streets. Sometimes she walked Market among the street people and the convention crowds, other times she took a bus to North Beach and hung out on Broadway watching the sailors and the punks stagger, drunk and stoned, or the hookers and the hustlers running their games. It was on these crowded streets that she felt most lonely. Time and again she wanted to turn to someone and point out a unique heat pattern or the dark aura she sensed around the sick; like a child sharing the cloud animals flying through a summer sky. But no one else could see what she saw, no one heard the whispered propositions, the pointed refusals, or the rustle of money exchanging hands in alleys and doorways. Other times she crept through the back streets and listened to the symphony of noises that no one else heard, smelled the spectrum of odors that had long ago exhausted her vocabulary. Each night there were more nameless sights and smells and sounds, and they came so fast and subtle that she eventually gave up trying to name them. She thought, This is what it is to be an animal. Just experience – direct, instant, and wordless; memory and recognition, but no words. A poet with my senses could spend a lifetime trying to describe what it is to hear a building breathe and smell the aging of concrete. And for what? Why write a song when no one can play the notes or understand the lyrics? I’m alone. Cavuto came through the double doors of the emergency room and joined Rivera, who was standing by the brown, City-issue Ford smoking a cigarette. â€Å"What was the call?† Cavuto asked. â€Å"We got another one. Broken neck. South of Market. Elderly male.† â€Å"Fuck,† Cavuto said, yanking open the car door. â€Å"What about blood loss?† â€Å"They don’t know yet. This one’s still warm.† Rivera flipped his cigarette butt into the parking lot and climbed into the car. â€Å"You get anything more out of LaOtis?† â€Å"Nothing important. They weren’t doing their laundry, they went in looking for the girl, but he’s sticking with the ninja story.† River started the car and looked at Cavuto. â€Å"You didn’t rough him up?† Cavuto pulled a Cross pen out of his shirt pocket and held it up. â€Å"Mightier than the sword.† Rivera cringed at the thought of what Cavuto might have done to LaOtis with the pen. â€Å"You didn’t leave any marks, did you?† â€Å"Lots,† Cavuto grinned. â€Å"Nick, you can’t do that kind of – â€Å" â€Å"Relax,† Cavuto interrupted. â€Å"I just wrote, ‘Thanks for all the information; I’m sure we’ll get some convictions out of this, on his cast. Then I signed it and told him that I wouldn’t scratch it out until he told me the truth.† â€Å"Did you scratch it out?† â€Å"Nope.† â€Å"If his friends see it, they’ll kill him.† â€Å"Fuck him,† Cavuto said. â€Å"Ninja redheads, my ass.† Four in the morning. Jody watched neon beer signs buzzing color across the dew-damp sidewalks of Polk Street. The street was deserted, so she played sensory games to amuse herself – closing her eyes and listening to the soft scratch of her sneakers echoing off the buildings as she walked. If she concentrated, she could walk several blocks without looking, listening for the streetlight switches at the corners and feeling the subtle changes in wind currents at the cross streets. When she felt she was going to run into something, she could shuffle her feet and the sound would form a rough image in her mind of the walls and poles and wires around her. If she stood quietly, she could reach out and form a map of the whole City in her head – sounds drew the lines, and smells filled in the colors. She was listening to the fishing boats idling at the wharf a mile away when she heard footsteps and opened her eyes. A single figure had rounded the corner a couple of blocks ahead of her and was walking, head down, up Polk. She stepped into the doorway of a closed Russian restaurant and watched him. Sadness came off him in black waves. His name was Philip. His friends called him Philly. He was twenty-three. He had grown up in Georgia and had run away to the City when he was sixteen so he wouldn’t have to pretend to be something he was not. He had run away to the City to find love. After the one-night stands with rich older men, after the bars and the bathhouses, after finding out that he wasn’t a freak, that there were other people just like him, after the last of the confusion and shame had settled like red Georgia dust, he’d found love. He’d lived with his lover in a studio in the Castro district. And in that studio, sitting on the edge of a rented hospital bed, he had filled a syringe with morphine and injected it into his lover and held his hand while he died. Later, he cleared away the bed pans and the IV stand and the machine that he used to suck the fluid out of his lover’s lungs and he threw them in the trash. The doctor said to hold on to them – that he would need them. They buried Philly’s lover in the morning and they took the embroidered square of fabric that was draped on the casket and folded it and handed it to him like the flag to a war widow. He got to keep it for a while before it was added to the quilt. He had it in his pocket now. His hair was gone from the chemotherapy. His lungs hurt, and his feet hurt; the sarcomas that spotted his body were worst on his feet and his face. His joints ached and he couldn’t keep his food down, but he could still walk. So he walked. He walked up Polk Street, head down, at four in the morning, because he could. He could still walk. When he reached the doorway of a Russian restaurant, Jody stepped out in front of him and he stopped and looked at her. Somewhere, way down deep, he found that there was a smile left. â€Å"Are you the Angel of Death?† he asked. â€Å"Yes,† she said. â€Å"It’s good to see you,† Philly said. She held her arms out to him. How to cite Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story Chapter 19~20, Essay examples

Securities and Exchange Commission Market Structure

Question: Discuss about the Securities and Exchange Commission Market Structure. Answer: Introduction: Market structure is an important element in every market. It is the collection of factors that determine how buyers and sellers interact within a particular market. It is best defined as the organizational characteristics that make up a particular market which affects the nature of competition, changes in prices and how different levels of production interact. It also refers to the specific social organization that exists between buyers and sellers in a given market. Various elements that determine the type of market structure within a particular industry. This includes the degree of buyer concentration, the degree of seller concentration, the conditions of entry into that particular market and the degree of product differentiation. There are four major types of market structures in Australia, among them perfect competition, monopolies, oligopolies, and monopolistic competition. There are various characteristics that distinguish one market structure from the other (Market Structures 2016). For instance, the number of firms in the market will affect the firms strategy and ability to influence market prices. Additionally, the availability of similar and differentiated products affects the firms conduct. Specifically, an increase in the price of a product that has close substitutes will affect its sales (Market Structure n.d). The cost of information and barriers to entry are also major elements in market structure determination. Oligopoly Market Structure in Australia An oligopoly is a market dominated by few large firms. Often, key firms collude to create barriers that discourage the entry of new firms into that particular market. Typically, oligopolies aim at maximizing profits (Oligopoly 2016). As a result, they set their prices where the marginal cost equals marginal revenue. Furthermore, the barriers to entry are high. The most prominent barriers to entry include government licenses, patents, economies of scale, and other strategic actions by existing firms designed to discourage the entry of new firms. Also, oligopolies tend to compete on non-price factors. As such, they try to create brand loyalty and increase their sales through loyalty schemes, product differentiation, and advertisements (Khan 2016). A good example of the oligopoly market structure in Australia is the Beer industry. Although there are various manufacturers of beer in Australia the key players in the beer industry are Lion Nathan National Foods and SABMiller which together make up the largest portion of the Beer Industry. By 2014, the two firms controlled approximately 90 percent of the market. These two firms use their dominance to overcome the challenges in the beer market. They also capitalize on the new beer preferences by utilizing their market share to dominate the industry, making the other firms have an almost negligible market share. Moreover, the firms collude and put in place high entry barriers to discourage competition. Monopoly Market Structure A monopoly market structure in which a single firm which has exclusive control and high market power over a particular market. In this structure, the firm is the price setter and maximizes its profits at the point where marginal revenue equals the marginal cost. Often, the firms products have no close substitutes and therefore no competition from other firms. In addition, there are strict barriers to entry (Stigler n.d). Usually, a monopolist has total control over the price and the quality of its products. In case the firm intends to increase its prices, it reduces the amount of output produced. Similarly, it can reduce the price by increasing the amount of quantity of produced. In Australia, economic barriers are a major source of monopoly power. They entail factors such as economies of scale whereby monopolies experience decreasing costs for as quantity of production increases. They are able to reduce their prices below new entrants operating costs to prevent them from achieving profits. Likewise, capital requirements are a major economic barrier for new entrants as production often require large capital investments, research, and development. Such huge costs make it difficult for small companies to enter a market (Monopolies 2016). Technological superiority and control over natural resources may contribute to monopolies. Monopolies are often characterized by their notorious behavior of raising prices above the prices that would normally prevail in a competitive market structure. The Eastern State Gas Suppliers and Pipeline Operators are a perfect example of a monopoly in Australia. The firm raises gas prices over and beyond their operation costs. Gas supp liers have formed a cartel whereby they restrict output to increase prices. Monopolistic Competition in Australia Monopolistic competition is a market structure that combines aspects of perfect competition and monopoly. It is a type of imperfect competition characterized by freedom of entry and exit. Therefore, there are many sellers who produce differentiated products or services. As a result, firms face an inelastic demand curve and can influence their price and obtain supernormal profits in the short run. However, given that there is freedom of entry, the supernormal profits attract new firms who enter into the market. In the long run, the supernormal profits diminish, and firms earn only normal profits (Pettinger 2008). Often, these markets are regarded as productively and allocative inefficient. The coffee industry in Australia is a good example of monopolistic competition. Particularly, the industry is characterized by many firms that have a market share within the coffee industry (Monopolistic Competition n.d). Examples of coffee firms in this market are Most of the coffee firms offer differentiated products and therefore set their own prices with regard to quality. In addition, the Australian coffee market allows firms to make independent production decisions and each firm has some market power. As a result, individual firms can determine the prices of their products and risk losing only a small proportion of their customers. Conclusion The market structure is an important factor in any market as it determines the pattern in which the constituent parts of a particular market are arranged together. It determines the relationship between buyers and sellers, sellers and sellers. It also determines the degree of competition and the level of product differentiation (Levin 2009). It is worth to note that the Australian economy is made up of oligopolies, monopolies, and monopolistic competition. The structure of the market in Australia determines the degree to which the firm can change its prices without losing their loyal customers as well as how companies conduct their business. Reference List Ellickson B. Market Structure and Performance. 1st ed. [Pdf] University of Rochester, pp. 2-13. Available athttps://paulellickson.com/MarketStructure.pdf[Accessed 2 Dec. 2016]. https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microeconomics/perfect-competition-topic/monopolistic-competition-oligop/v/oligopolies-and-monopolisitc-competition[Accessed 2 Dec. 2016]. Khan, S. (2016) Oligopolies and Monopolistic Competition [Online] Available from: Levin, J. (2009). Entry and Market Structure. 1st ed. [ebook] Stanford: Stanford Univeristy, pp.23-40. Available at: https://web.stanford.edu/~jdlevin/Econ%20257/Entry%20and%20Market%20Structure.pdf [Accessed 2 Dec. 2016]. Market Structure: Oligopoly (Imperfect Competition). (2016). 1st ed. [ebook] Missouri state: Missouri state, pp.2-16. Available at: https://courses.missouristate.edu/reedolsen/courses/eco165/Notes/oligopoly.pdf [Accessed 2 Dec. 2016]. Pettinger, T. (n.d.). Monopolistic Competition. [Online] Economics Help. Available at: https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/311/markets/monopolistic-competition/ [Accessed 2 Dec. 2016]. Policonomics (2016), Market Structures [Online] Available from: https://www.policonomics.com/lp-market-structures-market-structure/ Stigler, M. (2016). Monopoly: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. [Online] Available at: https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Monopoly.html [Accessed 2 Dec. 2016]. US Securities and Exchange Commission Market Structure [Online] Available from: https://www.sec.gov/marketstructure/