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Topics - DJRubberducky

#1
Or Kill Me / It doesn't ever come from nowhere...
May 18, 2007, 02:39:20 PM
Courtesy of an attorney friend.  Emphasis mine.

Quote from: admnaismith
Nobody cares about my 20 year old drug addicts. They don't care about themselves. The prosecutors just want to lock them up. The judges want to lock them up too, to get their files closed. Their families are in jail, or dead, or in Oklahoma. I ask them what they want and they shrug. I ask them why they're killing themselves, and they shrug.

I talked to one today. She was probably cute a couple of years ago before her first offense. Now her mouth has started to harden and she wants it known that she can handle the six months the state wants to give her. Because, you know, she's tough. Just one little tear in the corner of her eye when I talked about a couple of meth addicts older than her who I've known, and the path they're on and how she can do better. But we both pretnded that one tear wasn't there.

Next time she'll go from jail to prison, and then more prison, and from drugs to theft to violence, and still nobody will care, and then she'll do something worse and people will wonder how someone can be so evil.
#2
Literate Chaotic / Dream transcript
March 10, 2007, 01:53:07 PM
I don't expect this to make sense, even though I'm pretty sure I added/changed stuff upon waking so that it might.  But I only rarely remember my dreams, and have never before remembered a dream that included folks from this forum, so I take that as a sign this is supposed to be shared.  I don't know the why of this, either, and I'm sure they wouldn't tell me.  :wink:
--------------------------------
I don't know where this happened, though apparently in this dream I live here.  It was somewhere right next to an ocean, in a town/city setting.
--
I walk up the street, the ocean pounding rocks just to my left.  LMNO's car is parked where I remember it, and I tap on the passenger window.  He slowly blinks awake from his nap, looks, recognizes me, and pushes a button to undo the lock on the passenger door.

As I open the door and say hi to him, his car phone rings.  And I mean "car phone" - it is a full-sized handset built into the front seat center console.  Seeing that LMNO is in the middle of a full yawn and stretch, and that he is waving his fingers toward the phone, I take that as my cue to answer it for him.

"Red," the voice on the line says.  I recognize the voice, and the tone of it, and my gut lurches.

"Rog?"

"I got nothin' to say to you, Red."

"I know."  I don't know why, actually, but those are the words that come out of my mouth anyway, and I don't know why to that either.  I hand the phone over to LMNO.  "I'm walking away now."  And I do.  I walk around the car and lean against the back bumper, the crashing ocean wiping out any possible chance I might overhear.

Roger's upset with me.  That was obvious from his first word.  But how would he know?  And the only thing I might possibly have done was - but surely that couldn't be it?  Surely they hadn't stuck their tentacles down THAT far....

I'm suddenly aware that LMNO is standing behind my right shoulder.  I turn.  His face doesn't show any anger, but he's very obviously concerned about something.  Whether it's about me personally, or just the situation I appear to have caused, or possibly both or neither, I can't tell.  He speaks.

"You voted?"

I nod, and feel my face betraying my confusion and no small amount of defensiveness.  "But it was just City Council shit!  Why would they trace little shit in a little-shit town like this?"

His expression doesn't change.  "Give me your phone."

"But I left it in the truck when -"

"It doesn't matter." LMNO's voice leaves no room for argument, and were he in a better mood, I would make a joke about not wanting to argue with something that sexy.  He promptly turns and walks over to the hood of his car, kneeling down.

I clumsily fish my cell phone out of my purse and then follow.  LMNO reaches his hand out to me as I approach, and I place my phone in it.  He plugs it into a cord that's shaped like my charger, but seems hooked up directly to his car battery.  There's a low FZZT! sound, and he unplugs it and hands it back.

"You really should have had us do that a while back," he says as I put my phone back in my purse.

"I didn't believe y'all.  I didn't want to.  I'm still not sure I do."

They'd been right all along, of course.  Last July, in an apparent show of patriotism, T-Mobile had offered plan upgrades to any of its customers who showed a valid voter registration card.  All the other companies, not wanting to be outdone, had immediately followed suit.  A couple of weeks later, Roger had come on the boards warning us all that not only were they using this scheme to collect personal data, but they were hiding transponders in the electronic voting machines that could uniquely identify a cell phone that came within range.  Now somebody somewhere (who?  Fuck knows) was able to track your personal voting habits.

The obvious solutions were to not vote, or to not carry a cell phone, but my current living arrangements made that highly unfeasible if I wanted to stay out of a straitjacket or padded room.  Still, someone had found hope.  Jolting a phone's SIM card with an overdose of electricity caused it to reset to the default sample "John Doe" name and address, and there was nothing the transponders could do about that yet.  I'd been afraid to do that, though - I didn't trust that it wasn't just some elaborate prank to render a few thousand paranoids' phones useless.  Surely between not taking my cell phone in with me and this being elections in a podunk coastal town that nobody except the Chamber of Commerce cared about, I was fine, right?

"Think, Ducky," L says.  "Roger knew you voted.  That means they know too."

"How?"

"I can't tell you now."  His emphasis on 'now' makes my gut lurch again.
--
A short olive-skinned woman in slacks and a long white jacket is walking over to us.  Precisely, to me; I can tell by the eye contact we just made.  About thirty (maybe fifty?  I suck at this) feet away...is that Roger?  Damn - yes, it is.  I can't tell if he's glad of her presence or not, but he is very clearly telegraphing that I am not to mess around with her.  LMNO steps away as she approaches, but she doesn't even seem to notice.

She's carrying a clipboard, and she asks if I want to take a quick poll.  L's behind me now, so I can't see what he thinks, but Roger nods curtly once.  I consent; I know not to mess around with him either.  It's a matter of poking holes in a ballot in answer to some truly strange questions - what year was it 20 years before you were born, things like that.

She is unfailingly pleasant the entire time, and when I hand the paper back to her, she hands me a coupon for a free pound of chocolates at one of the nearby tourist shops, then wanders off to find her next target.  I'm reading the coupon and wondering what the hell "no charge for mounting with additional purchase" means, and I almost don't notice Roger walking up to LMNO's car.

"Congratulations," Roger says, his voice somewhat low.  "You just gave them the potassium they need for their next bomb."

I want to ask how, but I don't bother.  They probably wouldn't tell me that either.  I realize I'm holding the coupon in front of my chest as if somehow it could shield me from their disapproval.

Roger's got a hell of a poker face.  I can't tell if I just redeemed myself to him or alienated him further.  But he looks at the paper, then to LMNO, and jerks his thumb in the direction of the tourist traps.  "Might as well go get your chocolates," he says, almost cheerfully.  "Hey, it's better than some groups pay for terrorism."
--
The chocolate shop is a little bizarre in that the lighting is dim and the walls are dark stained wood, more like a tobacco shop.  Also, there's apparently some sort of lecture or seminar going on to one side, but the lecturer is a very young boy with a thick Irish brogue, and between the difficulty of understanding the brogue itself and the noise generated by the shop patrons, I can't figure out anything of what he says.  I get my chocolates, though.  I don't remember if they're any good.  I do remember that neither L nor Rog wanted to touch them.
--
I'm walking on one of the "piers" in the tourist trap area.  I walk through a store that's pretty to look at but really impractically located; I have no idea why a home decor store would locate in the tourist trap area - most of these people are not here to shop for drapery and chair back covers.  I give everything a once-over and walk out again.  I notice the silhouette of a small figure on the roof, but the sun is in the wrong place for me to see anything more detailed than that.

Two hours later, a bomb explodes on the shop's roof.

Thirty minutes after that, my cell phone rings.  Good to know it really does still work after being fried, I guess.

It's Roger.  They want to try and blame LMNO for the bomb.  I am able to go to the police and describe the small silhouette convincingly enough (honestly, it's more likely that Irish kid from the chocolate shop) that L's no longer a suspect.

I don't remember where the two of them go from there.  But they're definitely gone, and I'm relieved - I was starting to feel like I was stuck in a good cop/bad cop situation, and resenting it.

Now my phone is off the radar.  I'm still not sure I'm happy with this.  I still want to believe it's easier to fuck with Them if they don't suspect you're one of Us.  But I may be wrong.
#3
Propaganda Depository / Meme bomb cartoon
February 09, 2007, 10:10:18 PM


I also have it in a smaller size, possibly suitable for signature files, etc.  Just rename the URL to "blacksheepsmall.jpg".  Or hell, scale down this one yer damn self; I don't care.

Bon appetit!  MS Word clip art FTW!
#4
Bring and Brag / Couldn't let well enough alone
February 01, 2007, 01:13:42 AM
Sorry, Kaou Suu, but you inspired me.  I just had to do one with the little Monopoly guy:



Everyone is, of course, free to swipe and modify this image.  I mean, that's what I did to get this; I'm hardly in much of a place to complain if others do likewise to this piece.
#6
Think for Yourself, Schmuck! / Architecture
December 08, 2006, 09:44:41 PM
More than anything, I'm trying to sort out my thoughts on the matter, not really inflict them on anybody.  But you're welcome to discuss, as that may help the sorting process.

From what I can tell, the exterior walls of the BIP are put in place by our existence as humans.  As has been said before in other treatises, our perceptions are limited by the relatively narrow ranges of our physical senses, and by the fact that our brains can only process so much information at a given time.  Even when we try to expand our sensory ranges by building and using mechanical devices, it's very difficult for us to observe both those expanded ranges and our "natural" ranges - we have to focus our attention on what's under the microscope and can't necessarily notice the fire that just caught in the far corner of the laboratory.  This is why we can never fully escape the Black Iron Prison - we either don't have the sensory perception, or we don't have the mental processing power, and if we try to expand both at once, we end up frying our brains with data overload.  None can look upon the face of God and live.

However, the BIP is chock full of interior walls, and we can smash those to our heart's content because we're the ones who put them there, or who allowed them to be put there (which is almost the same thing).  Smashing those walls doesn't change the fact that we're in prison, but it gives us a little more wiggle room.

One of the troubles in wall-smashing, though, is that many of us knock down a wall, then take those bricks and use them to build a new and different wall.  I actually had that revelation back in high school, but only in a very specific sense - I was complaining about how so many guitarists wanted to sound like Jimi Hendrix because "he was so innovative".  That idea just totally boggled my mind.  They admired Hendrix for being innovative, so they were going to very diligently copy everything he had already done, and think they were somehow better for it.  Hendrix had smashed a wall, and these kids were very meticulously picking up the bricks and building a new one - but it was okay because this was a Hendrix wall and therefore cooler than the other walls out there!

On the other hand, is it bad to rebuild walls in new and different places?  If you knock down too many walls without rebuilding at least one or two somewhere else, do you risk collapsing the ceiling on yourself and going completely mad?  (If you want to argue whether or not going mad is a bad thing, let's do that elsewhere.)  And is it somehow less offensive to live with walls that you have built, since you chose to have them there and you will probably remain aware of their existence?  I tend to think it is - if a girl who grows up reaping all the benefits of gender equality who *chooses* to be a stay-at-home mom when she grows up is IMO better off than a girl who grew up never knowing that she didn't have to do that if she didn't want to.
#7
Or Kill Me / Courtesy of my friend Tiny
October 23, 2006, 08:38:21 PM
Posted here because I want to see how Mangrove and LMNO react to it.  :D
-----
OK, retards, one last time:

If you don't have a solid understanding of both the Oral and Written Law (Torah, Talmud, lots o' Midrash) you have no business studying Kabbalah. First, it's Jewish mysticism. Not to seem territorial, but my religion and culture aren't for you. They're for me. If you want in, join the club. You'll have lot's of fun learning Hebrew and dealing with Rabbis telling you to go away. Second, Kabbala makes almost no sense taken out of its context. It's a deep study of Halacha (Jewish Law). As stated above, it means nothing if you don't have a real grip on the basics.

Finally, one of the big rules of Kabbalah is intensive study. How can you look yourself in the mirror and say that you "study Kabbalah" and yet not bother with learning the very fundamentals and philosophy it utilizes? Lazy and Kabbalah don't seem to mix.
#9
Or Kill Me / Contest entry: Rant #2
October 25, 2005, 04:20:43 PM
One of my friends blogged about how upset he was that there were things like "black pride" and "Hispanic History Month", but if anyone tried to do "white pride" or "Anglo History Month" it'd be decried as racist.  The following 681 words are my rant entry, and an expansion of what I told him:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Welcome to the world of memes, dude. And by this I mean real memes, not the stupid "What-cartoon-character-are-you?" things that propagate across LiveJournals like so many spores of mold. I'm talking about those thought patterns that live deep inside your mind and fill your world with the colour of bullshit even as you try to rise above and be the better human being.  Depending on the nature of the meme, Discordians might refer to such things as the curse of Greyface, though I think it's a rare one who will actively seek to destroy *all* memes in his/her brain - I suspect even the best of us tend to pick and choose which ones to fight and which ones to leave alone because we arbitrarily declare them harmless or beneficial to us.

I work at a State University, and our former president was always *so* very proud about how ethnically diverse the campus was - not just in terms of students, but faculty and staff as well. So I'm around "minorities" all the time, and deal with many of them as the individual human beings they are. But absolutely none of that matters when I'm walking through a parking lot to my car at night, and I have to come within ten feet of a strange black male on the way. That's when the lizard brain decides to remind me that "all blacks are strong and muscular and angry with white people and would not hesitate to grab you and snap your pretty neck - or worse".  I've never been physically attacked, or even picked on, by any non-whites of any colour, and yet somehow and somewhere I've picked up a gut-level fear that means not even Verthaine could wave hello to me on the street without causing me to tense up and start figuring out the best direction to move in order to escape if I have to.  And in reflex to that mind-poison, I'm probably assuming a stance and/or demeanour that might cause him to write off me as being a stuck-up ofay bitch who thinks she's too good for him because he's black and she's white.

I usually think of public opinion in terms of a five-ton pendulum, but I think in this case it might actually be more like a Newton's Cradle with five one-ton pendula, because usually what sparks one movement is a backlash against a movement by another group.  For example:

Whites: "The damned wetbacks keep coming over and taking our jobs."

Hispanics: "The damned whites want to keep us down and doing their shit-jobs for them."

In both cases, it's gonna take a damned long time for the ball to stop swinging - and a lot of people who *do* want to stop (or at least slow) the ball are afraid to do anything because they know there's a really good chance their hands will be ripped off or crushed. There's a thin line between martyrdom and pointless suffering, and quite honestly that line is the person's certainty that his/her "side" is going to "win" in the end.

I bring all this up because I think meme-destruction was supposed to be one of the points of Operation Mindfuck.  That by doing little things to make people stop and go "WTF?!", we would be able to wedge a crowbar into peoples' brains and open them up to the idea that perhaps their ugly hate- and fear-filled world was not the only reality out there, and they could leave it behind if they chose.  But I think somewhere in there we either got distracted by hippie lettuce or an intense game of Sink, because I see and hear tales of a lot of the making people go "WTF?!", and I don't see or hear a whole lot about people wielding brain-crowbars.  (I bear as much blame for this as anyone else, mind you; this is just an observation.) It's like we're sitting around throwing the right jab and not following it up with the left hook.

But what do I know.  I'm just a fuckin' hippie.
#10
Or Kill Me / Why being different is bad
August 16, 2005, 04:09:40 PM
A while ago, for reasons I'd really rather not discuss, I found myself in an online community populated by adolescents.  Like, physically adolescent, not just purveyors of sophomoric crap (which is absolutely no barometer of age).

I'm sure this is a more widely spread phenomenon, but it was here that I particularly noticed the tendency for people to believe that the idea of "free thinking" or "not being mainstream sheeple" entailed a systematic rejection of everything they heard.

And this, frateres et sorores, is complete and utter merde de vache.

If you systematically reject everything you hear, then you're just as firmly imprisoned by it as if you accepted it unquestioningly - and you're not any more "cool" or "independent" because you're wearing your mental prison inside-out.

The happy medium, the REAL free thinking, which they all seem to be missing, is to *gasp!* actually think about everything you hear (and about everything you think about everything you hear), consider that it might be right, consider that it might be wrong, then decide which of those possibilities is more likely and go from there.

What's wrong with agreeing with something that makes sense to you?  Since when did sharing a paradigm with other humans make you a mindless drone?  There are only a very few people on this planet who don't, and they're what we call insane - totally unable to function around other humans because they experience life as something so vastly different from what we do.

There's nothing inherently wrong with shopping at Hot Topic.  There's nothing inherently wrong with agreeing with a poster here, or with a political candidate, or with whatever message a mainstream alternative band is trying to project through their songs (though you might chuckle a bit at the irony if they're trying to stir anti-establishment feelings).

What goes wrong is when you forget to periodically question why you're thinking the way you're thinking.  But what the hell; that's your problem.
#11
Or Kill Me / Too much noise to appreciate the silence.
August 08, 2005, 08:22:53 PM
The situation which birthed this thought is woefully mundane, but I like the phrase by itself. :)
#12
Or Kill Me / The moral of this story is...
August 05, 2005, 03:46:44 PM
...don't talk to bears in tennis shoes.

That is all.
#13
Or Kill Me / Ah, sweet stripcreator.
June 10, 2005, 06:22:18 PM
You let me say things I can't draw.

http://www.stripcreator.com/comics/Kilbia/229635

Need to get back into this.
#14
Or Kill Me / True Discordians check in...
April 26, 2005, 08:26:09 PM
...BUT THEY DON'T CHECK OUT!

:twisted:  :twisted:  :twisted:  :twisted:  :twisted:
#15
Or Kill Me / So what's the word
March 19, 2005, 03:04:36 PM
for when you don't actually flounce, you just make an utter fool of yourself for a couple of weeks in some vain delusion that you're making a point?
#16
Or Kill Me / Dear Roger,
November 08, 2004, 04:41:39 PM
Can you recommend any non-governmental fields of training or study that would help me deprogram the part of my brain that feels compassion?

In this last election, I voted (knowing full well my state would swing to the other candidate) because I couldn't make myself want to do anything more drastic.  But in these last few days, I've been fantasizing about things like sneaking into places like City Council chambers and Baptist churches to plant remotely-detonated explosives.  And the election results have made me wonder if maybe it's time to do something a little more dramatic than voting to get my points across.

But right now, my brain won't let me.  I keep thinking it'd be really cool and dramatic to blow up City Council right as they're about to vote in some new statute further restricting the sexually-oriented businesses around here, but then I worry about the people who might be there to make arguments against it.  And this hangs me up entirely, because I haven't figured out how to not worry about those people - how to simply write them off as collateral damage / unwitting martyrs.

I know the military is pretty good at training killers, but I'd be afraid that they'd *reprogram* my brain instead of *deprogram* it.  Any other ideas?  Ninjitsu, maybe?

TIA,
DJRubberducky

P.S.  If I am successful in this endeavor, I'll be sure to post the videos when I get close enough to Rick Santorum to drop roofies in his drink and then drag him to a S&M dungeon where he would then be repeatedly sodomized by women wearing strap-on dildoes (which is still perfectly okay because it's between a man and a woman, right?).