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Well, some people hate, and some people have scrapbooks full of hate.

Hunter is one.  Another one may be Roger, although his scrapbooks probably don't have girly pink lace around the edges.

[One idea to expand:]

I've been mulling over this for a while - my Ego Sickness and Is It Time for a Jailbreak threads are pointing in the following direction---

One idea to expand:

The current BIP pamphlet is "book one" - identifying the Black Iron Prison

Book Two would be an escape guide. On each page we identify one or two bars in our own Black Iron Prisons and give advice on how to slip past them.

They can be broad ideas like
*Politics
*Entertainment
*Routine
*Identity
*language

Or more specific ideas like
*using the phone
*taking an alternate route to work
*watching the Colbert Report every night at 11:30
*cooking
*traffic laws

i disagree with the point about Stephen Colbert

this is a sacred ritual and certainly not any kind of prison bar.

Yes, but you get special attention.

Your shitty taste in music.
How you probably cry when you "make love".
Your overall poor decisions in life.
You didn't fuck a dwarf.
You're constantly strung out on drugs, and probably drool.

Man, I hate bumping an ASS thread, but this is fun.

You're just taking random qualities of humans in general and acting like they make Lys unique.

Nothing makes Lys unique except the tag with is initials his mom puts on his underwear.

thing about the 50 post rule is, if you're still waiting for the flames to start when you hit 50, they're probably not coming.

ITT, I fail at predicting the future

i disagree on the grounds that was spontaneously generated, which as every good christian knows, is not the way good ideas come about.

to be fair, arguing when they'er told it isn't half funny has at least in the past lead to a couple of 3rd rate chuckles.

i prefer them not posting the unfunny shit in the first place, tbh

Aw...great pic.  We do jail our children into their beds, don't we?

what!? his bed? maybe you jail your kid in his bed, you monster.

in that pic, my kid is being imprisoned behind a fence that keeps him in the living room.

I could be wrong about this, but I think maybe there was a time when ideals could turn into true action.  Maybe the Machine has always been around, but I don't think humanity has always been as poisoned as it is today.  It's always been poisoned in some sense to some degree, but it seems to me that at least where I am, people are so full of shit they don't even know what they're actually feeling, let alone thinking.

When the US was conceived, I'm sure a lot of it was as empty and pointless as some of the more cynical people around here say -- and maybe I'm just nostalgic for a time that never was -- but some of it had to be real.  The people behind that revolution were often the people on the front lines of the fighting, too.  That was before the days of "send the troops in and, win or lose, I'll be at my desk if you need me," at least for the revolutionaries here.  The King of England was in that position, but the American leaders were in physical danger most of the time.

I don't mean to get all "let's bring back the Revolution" on you.  But what is different about Americans now -- with illegal wiretapping, near-total surveillance, and innumerable other injustices -- from Americans 250 years ago, who threw a revolution for what amounted to fewer transgressions against them by their government?

We've lost something.  Is it the Machine slowly dissolving the Individual?  Is it the easy life we're used to now that blocks our desire for justice?  What do you think it is?

this isn't a threadjack!

this is Cow Ass using this thread as a first-hand demonstration of what Wisdom really is!

I KNOW THIS IS TL/DR MATERIAL, but if you're bored have at it. I might submit it to some publication with ridiculously low circulation numbers or something.
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In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln described a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the ideal that all men are created equal.  He said the soldiers who gave their lives on that battlefield during the Civil War* died to protect Freedom,Ñ¢, so that government of/by/for the People wouldn't "perish from the Earth."

160 years later, we should recognize that kind of rhetoric - it's the same language used, however ineffectually and incompetently, by the current Republican President.  And it was used then, as it is now, to mask the motives of tyranny with poetic soundbytes and newspaper-friendly sloganeering.

Nowhere in his speech did Mr. Lincoln allude to actual facts.  He didn't mention that the South had seceded by democratic process, or that the "nation conceived in Liberty" had never been described as such until his own war against self-determination in the South.  He didn't bring up his political prisoners or that he sent federal agents to shut down newspapers guilty of the most undemocratic practice of actually questioning his judgment or sincerity.

I say we should recognize that kind of rhetoric, but we don't, do we?  We have immortalized Abraham Lincoln: almost two centuries after he pulled the biggest swindle on democracy in American history, he is tantamount to a god in our textbooks.  And maybe that is as it should be, since the America we live in today, with its culture of federal hegemony inside our borders and its concept of a single nation divided into provinces rather than a band of separate nations unified by common interests, is more a product of Lincoln's federal aggression than of the Declaration of Independence or even the Constitution.

Just as Lincoln exported his own adulterated brand of Freedom and Liberty to the South by force of arms, the modern state of America breathes Empire and distributes it globally, wrapped in empty rhetoric and billed in broken promises.

America only ever existed in the minds of its citizens: Freedom was the goal, and the Constitution was supposed to have been the vehicle to get us there.  The Founding Fathers never attempted or expected to create an immortal system of government.  They were concerned not with the status of their federal government but with the status of the people who signed on to the Revolution, however imperfect and flawed their original vision may have been.

Today, the concept of America, as a place where people can be free, takes second place in the public's mind to the concept of America,Ñ¢, the brand-name.  We are more concerned with defending the Map and forgetting the Territory.  We export America,Ñ¢ throughout the world, regardless of how soiled and infected the real America becomes because of it.  We are Americans first, and Free People second (if at all).

Because a free society can only exist so long as its people are fully aware that their government is only a necessary evil, and because Americans seem to have instead chosen to believe that their government is some kind of Messiah, America is dead and has been for at least 100 years.  So stop trying to save America,Ñ¢ - the brand, like your favorite toothpaste, now exists in name only and is produced by people who were, to begin with, its most formidable enemies.

HEY!

Quit violating CowAss's right to live vicariously through your antics and then go somewhere else and claim credit for what YOU did.

I,Äôll say right now that I,Äôm having some trouble correlating my thoughts into anything compelling, so I bring my ideas here unfinished.  What I,Äôm thinking about is the way we all seem to more or less live our beliefs and do so in a way that is intelligent and seemingly heroic compared to the normative way of people,Äôs self-conduct.  It,Äôs principle and extremism, it,Äôs ego and slack, it,Äôs bravery, it,Äôs putting your beliefs into actions, but it seems somehow more than all of that and boiling it all down into a more compelling arrangement is proving difficult.

We stand up and shout our guts up, bringing the thunder no matter what people want to hear.  We know our minds and we are not easily fooled.  I,Äôm willing to sacrifice some cool points by even mentioning it, in order to figure out what it all is.

It,Äôs like title of honor, being an asshat-yeti-mutant.  Anyone worthy of the title is immensely proud to be called so, yet aware that it is not a status that maintains itself- it is based upon performance.  New boot versus old guard constantly, because it,Äôs about who,Äôs best.  It,Äôs not peaceful, because the entire attitude cannot exist tranquilly.  It,Äôs about Mastery, Perception, Bravery, and Respect. 

What am I talking about?

The Sacred Wango and Tango

link

heh

Sudan threatens the US with stopping exports of gum arabic (key ingredient in soft drinks) because the US called what it's doing in Darfur a 'genocide.'

i'd link you, but i can't find it now.  but its troof!