Topics

http://digitallife.today.com/_news/2011/07/14/7082873-lady-gaga-is-banned-from-youtube

If you're in the mood to watch some Lady Gaga music videos right now, you'll have to search around a bit because the singer's official YouTube account has been suspended. The reason? Multiple or severe violations of the video-sharing site's copyright policy.

There aren't any details about exactly what Lady Gaga did to violate these copyright policies, but Time Out Tokyo suggests that it may be related to footage from a live performance:

She posted footage from her recent appearance on the Fuji TV show SMAP x SMAP. The ten-minute performance featured a medley of songs from her new album, Born This Way, laced with Japan-themed ad libs that we're pretty much certain Shingo Katori didn't understand.

I love this shit.  She doesn't have the rights to post 10 minutes of her own material.   

Another possibility is that she was making fun of Betty Ford's hair, while they're in the middle of burying the old bat.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/12/ron-paul-retiring-in-2012_n_895704.html

Millions of Ron Paul fans commit suicide.  More at 11.   

http://www.kodachrome.org/branson/

Look at this page.  By the bottom, you'll wish you'd been born in Sierra Leone or some other, more civilized place.  Seriously.  This is kitsch hell.  I mean, who the FUCK takes pictures of the tour bus driver?  And why does everyone look like they're trying not to scream?

Hell, the lead off pic is bad enough.

Holy shit, I hate humanity, even when they're not being outright assholes.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/RIP-Isayah-Muller/174194959309785

Oddly enough, it's very similar to 1940s America.

Not a shoop (yet, that will change).  Zoom in on Michelle Bachmann's face. 



THERE'S NO EYEBALLS!  JUST BLACK HOLES!

(NOW, I'm gonna shoop it.)

Thank you, Japan!   

http://doorknobgirl.tumblr.com/archive

In some places, this MIGHT be considered NSFW.  Not because it's - kind of - pron, but because it's BATSHIT INSANE.

In a city full of asses,
Meth pipes, cigarette butts
and empty whiskey glasses
How shall I find my right boot?

I had it this just this morning
and despite "do nevers",
and the odd final warning
I left it in somebody's ass.

A good engineer boot it was
I had it for a while
but it's long gone now because
some dumb Opie stepped to me.

So if you hear me clumping by
do please check up your ass
Because I'm a sad, footsore guy
And the workday's just begun

Whether you happen to like it or not, everyone¹ is wrong now and again.  Even I, the brilliant & horrible Doktor Howl, have been known to spout a truism now and again.  The question, of course, is how you REACT to being wrong.

The general instinct of primates is to dig your heels in and start screeching.  There's a reason for this...In most primate societies, admitting that you were wrong is interpreted as beta behavior, at least on a subconscious level, and thus leads to a perceived threat to your chances to mate.  That sounds silly, but it's how it works.

However, by virtue of you reading this, you are not in one of those societies...Discordians tend to value The Truth™, by which I mean "The way the universe IS, not how I WANT it to be.".  This almost always comes up in threads about "magick", libertarianism, goldbuggery, Ayn Rand, "real" discordianism", the free market™, and drugs, but is by no means limited to these topics.

So when you start the chest pounding, teeth-on-display , screaming that your pet theory or "fact" is right, in the face of valid contradictory information², there are three perceptions of your behavior:

You (forebrain):  "I'm going to show these guys that they're not so hot, and that I know what the fuck is up".

You (hindbrain):  "If I can make my case, I will get laid with the women here."

What we hear you saying:  "Please Mistress Nigel, hammer that yam straight up into my guts!"

This may seem straightforward, but it's going to bother you on the level at which you are wired...Your primate/pack animal drives.  If you can't overcome those drives, you are probably in the wrong place, and should instead find a board that agrees with your worldview.

The next problem a lot of people run into is knowing something is incorrect, but arguing for it anyway, on account of the fact that the universe SHOULD be that way.  It isn't.  Shut up, or kill me, because I don't want to hear it, and nobody else does, either.  This sort of shit falls under religion, and we are men and women of SCIENCE.

Then, there's the trap of being neither right nor wrong.  If you have made a post in which no actual idea - no matter how simple - is conveyed, then, while you are not wrong, you aren't right either, because there's nothing to be right about.  Anyone who's ever watched a sitcom knows what I'm talking about...As does anyone who has been subjected to "word salad"/dadaism, also known as "chaotic gibberish" or "stream of conscious zaniness."  If you MUST post this sort of garbage, please limit it to one thread, so the rest of us can give it all the attention it merits.  Your timeless prose is not improved by being posted on every thread on the forum.

So, to recap:  If you can't prove your case, but your opponent can, you should probably at least try to look at it from another point of view.  If your post is just intentional gibberish with no idea embedded, do it in private and for God's sake wash your hands afterward.

Okay for now,
Dok




¹  Everyone except the Dark Empress Nigel.  When she seems to be wrong, it's because the universe has made a mistake, and is giving you bad observational data.  She's right, the universe is wrong.  Do not question it.  I am a Doktor.

²  Of course, if YOU have actual evidence and your opposite number can't produce evidence to refute it, you are perfectly free to tell that person to piss up a rope.  The trick here is telling the difference, which requires critical thinking.  I can't teach you that, and neither can anyone else.

I'm getting a little sick and fucking tired of getting a dozen PMs a day and constant fucking hectoring therein, and to a lesser extent, the worried-sounding posts in other threads, here you fucking go:

I'm not here to fight, but I'm not going to turn down free lulz from the craft masters, especially since she apparently wasn't fifteen to begin with.  

Nothing like having a towering, self-righteous display of wrathful trolling cut off at the knees.  

If it's any consolation Howl, it wouldn't have mattered.  Like I said, I don't take joy or pride in bashing people's nuts with a hammer, it just has to be done sometimes, whether they are 15 or 155.  The older sibling should have warned her better about interacting with me or not brought her here if she wasn't prepared to deal with spoofed links to 2girls1cup.

Okay, for everyone who is seriously srsly worried about AKK's banning - either because he was such a character and you miss him, or because you feel that this is simply the first step in the admins frogmarching you all into concentration camps, there you are.

I warned him not to do this later in the thread, so he PM'd me asking if I could spell out the rules PRECISELY, so that he could have a little fun working the margins.

Bear in mind that ninja linking to pron is a FEDERAL CRIME if it is in a place where minors could reasonably be expected to see it (and he has stated his willingness to do so intentionally), and we have a rule about getting Faust and ECH tossed in jail or hit with civil issues.

If this is still a serious concern, if this is such a huge fucking sign of the Goddamn apocalypse, I will unban him, and then I'll go find somewhere else to hang out.  I suspect I won't be the only one doing so.  I'm not going to fucking stand by while this place turns into Camp Idiot or SA.

Dok,
Your fucking resident Kim Jung Il.

I guess I got what I deserved, way down here at the bottom of the top.  Someone told me there was a top of the bottom, but I don't see how that works, given my arse is planted on coliche.  Nothing under that but the MIGHTY Arizona Cockroach, and he brooks no competition, down there where things whimper & ask for mommy, right?  Only mommy can't help you down there, no.

It's like we told the new guy, you know, don't sweat it.  Lots of guys shit themselves the first time out.  It ain't the fear, I'm told, it's the moving with all that gear on and then *CRACK* past your head and you fart...But it isn't a fart, no.

Or maybe it's like that last angry word with your girl, twenty five years ago now.  When your mouth opened up, all you had to do was say you loved her, right?  Not so hard.  But when you did, all the butthurt and need to be RIGHT came out, and you could feel the sudden chill, and then you saw her years later, and everyone was friendly, but it still felt like a great big Goddamn portcullis was between you.  And it aint made out of iron, not this gate.  It's made out of choices and years and your own foolishness.  You can't move that, no.

Or maybe it's like when you're distracted when you're driving, and you sail right through a red light.  2 blocks later, you're on the side of the road, trying to get your breathing under control...Only somewhen else, you're trapped in the wreckage, looking across at what's left of the family in the other car.  Some people say that other universes occur whenever a choice is made, and who am I to tell them they're wrong?  I am not a professional in that field, no.

You can't really say, just like you can't explain to people that we're Doomed.  I mean, you could, but WHY?  All they do is move to the other end of the bus, right?  Let them have their illusions about daylight and food on the table next week and, hell, maybe in THEIR world, these things exist.  But not in mine, no.

I gotta go for a minute.  I checked my cigars, and they seem to be okay.  I'm gonna smoke one, you know, maybe have a little chai tea, and watch the sun go down on all of this, again.

Okay for now,
Dok

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoLhLn9hVkE&feature=player_embedded#at=129

I'm adding you all to a 911 Truther facebook group.

You can thank Nigel for this shit.

[The Fabric Softener Sheet]

A few types for your consideration:

The Fabric Softener Sheet  She clings.  Hauling her off makes a horrible crackling noise, and then you melt the damn doorknob with the static charge on the way out the door.

The Princess  She is convinced that she is worthy of being served on, hand and foot.  There is almost never any basis for this belief, other than her insistence that it is so.  This loses its charm in approximately yesterday.

The Friend Every guy has met one of these.  She hangs out, she talks to you (believe it or not, many of us value that), she listens.  What she won't do is date you, and acts surprised when you bring it up, despite the fact that you've walked around with your dick nailed to your forehead for the last 3 months.  Then women wonder why we go straight for the action.  It's usually the only working strategy.

The Emotional Rollercoaster  If you don't like the mood she's in, wait 10 minutes.  When she's manic, EVERYTHING is funny, but when she's down, NOTHING YOU DO can be right.  Then, when you finally tire of it and walk out the door, you're the fucking anti-Christ.

The Fatal Attraction  She called this morning, she calls every morning, just to say hello and tell you she loves you.  Trouble is, you broke up with her in 2003.

The Hyper-Liberated Woman  She uses you the way you use women.  Oh, the whore!  She said I was the one!

The Sucker  Guys talk, she listens.  She also, unfortunately, believes them.

The Idiot  Birth control?  What's that?  Oh, you had a vasectomy?  Okay!

The Doormat  She accommodates in all ways, puts her man ahead of her in all things, and then wonders why he leaves (PROTIP:  Either he is a shit who was gonna leave anyway, or he's wondering where the girl he met went.).

The Drunk  Baaaaahaaaaaa hurp hab anodder shawt!  Haaa heeeee cough puke fuck got vomit in ma hair hey where ya goin?

The Perfect Woman  No drama, a sense of humor, a sense of what the other person in the relationship wants (without being a doormat), doesn't put the man on a pedastle, and has stopped looking for the coolest kid in school (hopefully by age 30 or so), isn't already married.  Guys, if you haven't met her yet, you will when you're 35.

More later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAaE7sJahiw&feature=feedu

http://www.dickipedia.org/dick.php?title=Main_Page

[HERE]

Listen, being from Boston does NOT give you a license to run around being Irish all day, you baked-bean eating, low-rent congenital terrorist.  Put down the fucking corned beef and get back to work, jackass. 

I'VE HAD IT UP TO HERE WITH YOU PEOPLE!

Knock that shit off.  What the HELL is wrong with you?

The guilty parties know who they are:

1.  No, I don't fucking want enlightenment.  If I did, I'd be a fucking Buddhist.  Go pester someone else, you fucking dingbat.  It's people like you that killed Merle Haggard.

2.  Sorry, we don't ban people for being dicks.  Nor do we erase accounts.  Ergo, I have to refuse both of your "demands".  Just who the fuck do you think you are?  The Goddamn Weathermen?

3.   Please direct all threats of IRL revenge to my alternate account, "East Coast Hustle".

4.  Yes, I am a bad Discordian.  I am ruining it for everyone.  Someone really should do something.  Please take a stand against my terrible behavior.  Start a board crusade against me.  That'd be new.


5.  I happen to know you DIDN'T sleep with my mother, on account of you wouldn't be alive to send me boring-ass PMs.  My mother has had to take steroids for the last 30 years for medical reasons, and is now built like Refridgerator Perry from the 1986 Chicago Bears, and she has the temper and personality of an injured wolverine.  So I'm not sure whose mother you grudge-fucked.  I hope it wasn't my mother's neighbor, as she has scabies and you seem like a nice young man.

6.  Letters are sent to people in the following order:  Those who bought an MSY1, those who wrote me back last time, those I have never written, and then those who I wrote that have never written me back.  These guidelines can be changed "whenever I feel like it", and you just landed on the bottom of the list.  It's bad enough when asswipes like Yatto complain about their letter, but you are complaining before I've even written it.  Fuck off and die.  Seriously.  It's people like you that keep anything fun from happening, because you're a cunt that can't leave well enough alone.

7.  No sweat, I will use the name you want on the envelope, and will even refrain from drawing dicks all over it, no matter how disappointed this will make the mailman.

8.  Not clicking that.  You think I was fucking born yesterday?  Send it to Tripzip, he'll click anything.  Also, we already have a GIGGLES.  Think up your own act.

9.  Because I have crabs the size of Volkswagon Beetles, that's why.  They drive me barking fucking mad, and I want to share my misery with you, the users of PD.   Also because you make me want to puke, you sanctimonious git.  You voted for fucking Thatcher, didn't you?  If you didn't, it's because you were still a nasty thought in your father's syphlitic mind.  Go shit in your hat.  I never liked you.

10.  No, bagpipes are not acceptable at a funeral.  The poor bastard is already dead, so you can't torture him, no matter how loud the digusting haggis-eater plays.  I suggest instead a rebel yell, which is far more respectful.

Remington was a low-down, dirty-rotten cad, and his drinking & gambling & womanizing finally caught up to him.  Even in the fleshpots of Calgary, he took things too far...Until even the corrupt officials of his iron curtain nation could no longer be bought off.

It was only a matter of time.  How long could ANY people tolerate him rolling boulders down onto Regina?  How long were they expected to put up with Remington dispensing pre-roofied Canadian Mist with a Supersoaker?

No, it had to end.  So the lumpenproletariat of Roger's Pass threw him over the side.  He froze on the way down and shattered into a million pieces on impact, which were promptly stolen by souvenir hunters, local politicians, and whores.

I shall miss Remington, as he was a true 21st Century man and - despite his perversions and his national handicap - a man of SCIENCE.  Parties North of the border just won't be the same.

Goodnight, Mr Funnyface.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/124551874.html





Dok,
Approves of this outright hooliganism in the courtroom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR6iYWJxHqs

"There is one new member awaiting admin approval."

These noobs shouldn't feel like they need my approval.  What the hell is wrong with people, these days?

World's going to hell.

THERE REALLY ISN'T MUCH YOU CAN DO IF I MAKE AN ANATOMICALLY CORRECT SNOWMAN OUT OF SAND.

LOOK WHAT I LEARNED IN SEX-ED TODAY.

OWNED!

FOUR HOURS ISN'T A WASTE OF TIME, ITS A COMMITMENT TO EXCELLENCE.

OH, IS IT TO HOT FOR THEM TO COME OUT AND CHALLENGE ME? IS THAT WHY THEY CALLED THE PO-PO TO CRUISE THE BLOCK? BETA-MALE OPIEZ.

MAYBE YOU SHOULD INVEST IN SOME MOONBOOTS, MITTENS CONNECTED AROUND THE SHOULDER WITH A STRING (LOSING MITTENS IS NOT AN OPTION), JAPANESE KAMIKAZE SKULL CAP AND A KNEE LENGTH HOT PINK COLUMBIA JACKET (YES IT IS REVERSIBLE, NO YOU CAN NOT AFFORD).

STEP TO ME WHEN YOU ARE READY, ME AND FROSTY WILL BE HERE ON THE COLICHE, SHARING AN 8 MASHMELLOW HOT CHOCOLATE, 3 OTTER POPS AND A MONEYBELT FULL OF LICORICE LAUGHING AT THE WOMANISH MAN GLARING AT US FROM BEHIND THE CURTAINS.

DOK,
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT OF SNOWMEN

John Law Hume (9 August 1890 – 15 April 1912) was an Scottish violinist on the RMS Titanic on its maiden voyage. He died in the disaster

<snip>

Hume and the other members of Wallace Hartley's orchestra were all members of the Amalgamated British Musicians Union and were employed by a Liverpool music agency, C.W. and F.N. Black, which supplied musicians for Cunard and the White Star Line On 30 April 1912 John Hume's father, Andrew, received the following note from the agency:

Dear Sir:

We shall be obliged if you will remit us the sum of 5s. 4d., which is owing to us as per enclosed statement.
We shall also be obliged if you will settle the enclosed uniform account.

Yours faithfully,
C.W. & F.N. Black

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Law_Hume

#1 OZYCRAPULOUS

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered toilet lies, whose commode
And blasted lid, and veneer of cold and crusted poop
Tell that its sculptor well those movements read
Which yet survive, sloppped on these lifeless things,
The hand that wiped them and the anus that bled.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Doktor Howl, King of Tucson:
Look on my poop, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The loose and level turds stretch far away.

Hi there.

<tick, tock>

See that?  I've used that device before.  It's a way of communicating an impending event, or the passage of irretrievable time.  Or maybe a countdown.  It's a meme used for decades to as a stressor, a way to attract attention and urge irrational action based on a perceived deadline.

<tick, tock>

I've told you about the incredible problems facing your species, and the utter inability of that species to even face those problems, let alone attempt to solve them.  I think I've given a fairly credible outline of what seems to be an irreversible slide to a new dark ages, if not the actual extinction of our species, based on population requirements, and the effects of population on information, and thus on the mental health of that population.  I think I've conveyed the seriousness of the situation, and the apparent lack of any viable solution whatsoever.

<tick...

Okay, stop.  Relax.  The end's not here yet, and it won't be for at least a few years.  Let's just pretend for a moment that we have stopped time, that no payments are due, no deadlines are to be met, until we agree that it's time to start the clock again.

Now I want you to think for a second.

We've been threatened with doom before.  The fall of Western civilization in the 5th century.  The dire and accurate - given the technology of the time - predictions of Malthus.  More recently, we created a situation that could have very easily led to a guaranteed extinction event (the cold war). 

And do you know what?

We made it through all of these, although the price of survival was often rather steep (For example, 1000 years of darkness after the fall of the Western Roman empire.).  We didn't, however, do it by posting amusing stories on an internet forum.  We did it by means that ranged from wading through blood and plague in the middle ages, to increased technology, to the calm certainty of one single Soviet officer¹, who arguably saved our entire species by not losing his cool.

Now what we have to do is not lose our cool.  We aren't going to save anything by pretending to be Clint Eastwood, or by screeching dire warnings at the top of our lungs.  We will not convince anyone through sound intellectual arguments...No, things are beyond that now, and they have been ever since the "Great Communicator"² got elected in 1980, and turned America - and nationalists everywhere - away from the path of rationality.

No, humans in the 21st century can only communicate in emotional terms.  If we are to have any effect whatsoever, we need to learn to transmit emotion-driven concepts, without ourselves being ruled by them.

You've heard me talk about this before, of course, and I'm hardly the first person to discuss the subject.  I referred to it as Memetic False Consciousness.  The concept of most humans operating most of the time on a reflexive mental level, one that can be manipulated, though not nearly as easy as it at first seemed.  My first attempt got shouted down (politicalforums), because my attempt was still designed to appeal to intellect.  My second attempt got banned at the first excuse (Conservativecave), because my attempt was clumsy and ham-handed.  My most recent attempt has been successful, though on a fairly small scale, and with a group that wanted to hear what they thought my message was (the Pottersville forum).  What they thought they were getting and what they were actually getting were two very different things.

I've been a little busy in my recent (relative) absence from PD.

A few things I've learned, the cornerstones of Applied Horrorology, follow:

1.  See things the way they really are, not the way you want them to be.  This isn't easy, and I personally have by no means mastered it.  I'm not talking that "Maya, all is illusion" hippie bullshit, here.  I'm talking about spending an enormous amount of time training yourself out of filtering information to fit your own personal ideas of how things SHOULD be.  This process will make you angry every day for a very long time.  If you can't handle getting pissed off at yourself on a fairly regular basis, Horrorology really isn't for you.  There is no Zen here, no enlightenment at the end of years of meditation or any of that crap.  There is only the idea of processing data without putting your own spin on it, at least within the confines of your own head.

2.  Ignore irrelevant details.  First you decide what's important (that freight train moving along), then its relevance to you (are you on the tracks?), then discard irrelevant information (what color is the train?).  This is not unlike troubleshooting an electrical problem, or debugging a program.  Hundreds of wires (or lines of code)...Looking at them all gets you nowhere, but if you can isolate the troubled circuit (or subroutine), you've basically solved the problem, simply by removing the parts of the picture that don't apply.

3.  The argument you make is not necessarily related to the idea you wish to distribute.  In fact, the vector should not be related to the meme at all.  Deflection is the key to successfully delivering the idea you wish to implant.  Do not grind their noses in your answer, let them believe that they've themselves had a profound thought.  Remember, the idea here is spreading ideas, not being some cheap 1970s guru.

4.  Associate the meme with something they already believe.  For example, big government is bad in many peoples' minds, so leading them to the idea that big government and big corporations are actually the same thing isn't so hard.  They are both big, and the people you are talking to feel very small.  Please note that this is an example, not an instruction (see below).

5.  Reinforce, reinforce, reinforce.  If you tell them three times, they'll believe you, no matter how much they continue to argue.  Advertisers have known this for years (800 numbers are always repeated three times in radio ads, you may have noticed).

6.  Use the pack mentality to your advantage.  Outnumber your target, if you can.  Primates will follow the pack, whether they want to or not.

Now, you'll notice that at no point have I advanced any particular agenda.  I don't pretend to have all the answers to the world's problems, and you should probably shoot anyone that claims to (especially "Bob").  No, I'm going to do a very un-primate-like thing and trust your judgement.  You decide which memes you want to propagate in an attempt to break the spiral in which we are locked.  Think big, for our problems are not small.  This generation is the one that will succeed or fail.  Children being born today will reach the stars or freeze to death in the ruins, based on how the next 10-20 years play out. 

...Tock>

Okay. Clock's running.  Move your ass.

Okay for now,
Dok









¹ Stanislav Petrov.  Google him, and be grateful.  He's why you're here to read this.

² Ronald Reagan, for you youngsters.

I think it's fairly obvious that this species isn't going anywhere. 

At the moment, you have Western civilization essentially dominating the rest of the world, at least in terms of standards of living.  Any other species that had managed to rope in damn near the entire resource and production capacity of the planet would probably be reaching the stars right about now.  But that's not what we've done, is it?

No, we have merely eaten it. 

We have cheap electronic gizmos, all the fattening food we can choke on, and - this is significant - "mobility assistance devices" are now a booming market.  There is a lot of money to be made helping the morbidly obese get to WalMart for more munchies.

Think of resources as investment capital.  There's a finite amount, and the sane thing to do, from a species-survival point of view, is to use a good fraction of those resources to gain more resources.  The solar system is stuffed full of metals, trace elements, hydrocarbons, and living space.  Sanity dictates that we go after them while we still can.  Our sense of entitlement says we sit here and stuff our faces, frittering away our investment capital until there's nothing left.

Then, of course, the lights go out and the fun stops.

I don't think I have to explain the world-wide catastrophe that looms before us, as this collapse gets closer and closer.  Anyone who thinks that this collapse would be an improvement is either a brain-dead hippie, a right wing survivalist nutcase, or an utter misanthrope (Me, for example).  This will not mean a return to "rugged individualism".  This will mean cannibalism.

I expect that in a few thousand years, once we climb back out of the tribal stage, we'll do it all over again.  Anyone who thinks the tribal stage is ideal has granola poisoning, and should probably go stand over a settling pond and inhale deeply, just to get a notion of how things will be for a few centuries.

There is no way to avoid this fate, incidentally.  Crazy Eddie - or rather, a whole raft of them - is on the case, and any attempts to actually make constructive changes will be torn down by Crazy Eddie and his followers.  In this particular case, Crazy Eddie is primarily the guy who supports the very people who have brought us to this pass...The idiots who say that the problem with our banking system, for example, is too much regulation.

There are other examples, but you get my point.  So enjoy your descent into the dark ages, and try not to get eaten.  Time is broken, and we're going to go from the 21st century to the paleolithic era in a startlingly short amount of time. 

And you wouldn't have it any other way.

Okay for now,
Dok

[Wake up.]

Having been unable to sleep last night, I decided to spend the night in The City.  At the Hotel Congress, I met again with a detective I have mentioned previously, who was about two steps from crying into his drink.

It seems that many of our finest have become rather depressed, or even driven to the brink of madness, by the staff reductions that have eliminated all the good work they have done over the last 5 years.

"This town has been a cesspool since day one", he said, "And we'd made so much progress.  Now we're right back where we started...Worse, even.  It's all falling apart."

This got me thinking...And I'm still thinking about it, 6 hours later, with the clarity of mind that comes with no sleep and loads and loads of coffee...A brittle sort of intelligence that sees too much, and can't adequately explain that which is seen. 

Isn't the Tucson PD a metaphor for what's happening to our civilization in general?  Any other species, having climbed as high as we did, would have colonies in the asteroid belt, and would be starting to reach for the stars.

But not monkeys.  No, primates are wired for self-sabotage, it seems.  And just like the Tucson city government, we wussed out.  We settled for gizmos and gadgets, when we could have been gods.  We settled for low-rent tyranny, because freedom is scary when everybody does it.  Instead of fixing problems, we look for someone to blame.

In short, we stopped improving ourselves, so we began to slide.

<tick tock>

The funniest part is, the future keeps coming, whether or not we want it...And, without the adrenaline that comes from pushing new frontiers, we are exposed to the constant future shock that comes with the increase in technology that is driven by "innovations" in communication (After all, almost all of our new technologies deal with information in one way or another).

With no excitement to filter that future shock, we are forced to bludgeon ourselves into a chemically-induced stupor to cope with daily life.  That might be meds, or booze, or illegal drugs, or the fun brain chemicals you can treat yourself to via weird group beliefs.

Or, like the conspiracy theorists, you leave that stuff alone and just go crazy instead.

So we now have a choice between dulling our brains with substances, or the obsessive madness that comes with forcing yourself to believe in shit like chemtrails and reptoids.

<tick tock>

Another interesting note:  London's population exceeded 1 million people in 1800.  By 1837, reputable people were reporting sitings of "Spring-Heeled Jack", a figure described in various manners (dressed in oilskin and breathing blue fire, or wearing an egg-shaped helmet, or wearing a bear suit).  Either the crowding was inducing group hysteria, or you have to accept a guy that could jump onto rooftops from the street.  Decide.

This sort of crowd-induced insanity can also be found in China, where people just knife total strangers, and can't afterward explain why.  Japan has suicide & death cults.  America has the Tea Party, an organization dedicated to bringing about their own serfdom. 

So, no, it's not just you.  The world really IS going crazy...At least the people not rendered stupid by mood-altering drugs.  You may have noticed that people here in the future are a little...Off.

<tick tock>

As I mentioned in the beginning of this essay, the usual outlet for the crazies was the frontier...Nobody wanted them, and they wanted to go (Yeah, it sucked for the people who lived on this "open" frontier, but that's another subject entirely).  Now there's only one frontier, and it scared us so much that we went running home and nailed all the doors shut.

Wake up.

Don't you remember?  We built this City.  But, Jefferson Starship's jabbering notwithstanding, we built it on bones.  A good, thick layer of bones.  Native American bones, African bones, Chinese bones, and anyone else that we could force or trick into the hopper.

And now we live in this City, and we try to avoid the crunching noises under our feet.  We try to pretend that we are basically a good people, that things are trending for the better, that our setbacks are temporary.  We try to believe that things are, in the end, going to be okay, even if we have stopped our furious advance into the future, in an effort to hide in the past from the consequences of our deeds that we have written right into the operating code...We try to believe that things will turn out for the best.

They won't.

Okay for now.

 It's summer in Tucson again, and the rot has set in.  The City is turning baby-shit brown with dust, just another layer of filth that is slowly but surely fossilizing us all.  There's no escaping it...This is, after all, Tucson; the City where dreams come to die.

But don't you worry about me.  I am so raged-filled & stressed out that the lassitude cannot touch me.  My heels itch and my fists spontaneously ball up every time I slow down, and my lungs have become accustomed to not having enough air to breathe.

Even Knuckles says I'm an ornery bastard these days, but what of it?  The constant drag of my profession - the daily horror of being Doktor Howl - has turned my nerves to glass and my skin to pure iron.  If I exhaled hard enough, I could be used as a vacuum tube in one of those old radios.

But what Knuckles doesn't understand is that this is the perfect condition to be in, for doing SCIENCE to people.  He'll learn, though, he'll learn.  He has the potential for being the best Igor any Scientist ever had, even if he hasn't got a club foot and a hunchback.  He refuses to lisp, but it's not like I'm paying him, right? 

That's right, Knuckles, you just fetch me the raw material, and I'll do the rest.  If it looks like I'm about to go all Chainsaw Billy, well that's just the coffee and/or bourbon talking.  Coffee and bourbon fuel SCIENCE, and don't let anyone tell you different.  I am, after all, a Doktor, and these are grim days.

I don't think I need to once again go over the litany of problems from the past, present, and future that plague us...Nor do I have anything but mocking laughter for the people who demanded a police state, and are now angry & scared about it.  Learn to love the backscatter pervert machines at the airports, peasants.  Learn to love the casual beatings dished out for dancing in public, "demonstrating" at the Jefferson Memorial, and just having the wrong skin color in the wrong state.  YOU fucking howled for this shit, YOU made this bed, now YOU lie in it.  I spit on you all.

Oh, yes...You have flung yourselves back into the past, back into the days of kings (even if you call them "elected leaders", the practical difference is nil), back into the days of the "Captains of Industry" (sometimes called "robber barons"), you have lowered your pants and shat all over every man & woman that slaved and died over the last century to give you a better life, and now you're getting what you deserve.  Muhaha!

And you've brought yourself a bit of the future too, haven't you?  Mighty strange weather this year...The same patterns that have given us such a nice mild spring have locked you all in a frozen hell turned sodden and storm-wracked.  SCIENCE warned you, but you preferred to listen to tame prostitutes with degrees - funded by big industry - who told you that everything was just fine.  SCIENCE warned you that species diversification is necessary, but that we're losing species at an alarming rate, but you chose to listen to appeal to ridicule arguments by paid whores on AM radio.  YOU made this hell, now YOU freeze in it.

Worst of all, you have allowed yourselves to be taught that SCIENCE cannot be trusted, that you have to "think with your gut" (as one comedian once said, from the White House podium), that centuries of study can be replaced by wink from some bimbo from Alaska.

Time's broken, and you bastards broke it.  I'm just going to spend the next few years documenting the results...Not that there'll be anyone to read it, necessarily, but because SCIENCE demands it.  It also demands the hilarity, the laugh-until-your-guts-bleed fun that I have planned over the next few months. 

It's just my little way of helping you enjoy all the things you pleaded for, demanded, and then finally received.

I hope you choke on it.

Okay for now.

Well, it's the 1970s again.  The nuclear plant in Japan - built in 1971 - is having a 3 Mile Island moment (1972), and once again, piss-poor engineering is to blame.  I mean, who puts the generators on the ground, when those generators are designed to handle the only thing that could make them necessary (A tsunami)?

I see this sort of shit every day...Not as extreme, of course, but just as stupid.  Putting a generator in a small unventilated room with no AC (Hello!  Ever heard of "high-temp shutdown, you bastards?), for example, or dismissing the actual structural components of a high-vibration piece of machinery, just because it's 2 feet thick and made of steel (I'd like to introduce you to my friend, Mister Stress Fracture). 

Engineers are a prime example of why you shouldn't confuse clever monkeys with smart monkeys.  Generally speaking, the first idea they think of is the only idea they will consider, because everyone around them - in their eyes - is incapable of thinking, period.  Most people never see this, until one day 1972 shoves it's head through your TV screen and yells "HI, HOW YA DOING?  HAVE SOME CESIUM IN YOUR RAIN!".

The Truth is that if you wait long enough, all of our mistakes will eventually show up on the doorstep at 3AM, glowing in the dark, and wondering if you have a cup of boric acid you can spare.

This doesn't mean we should stop doing things, of course.  What it means, though, is that we should think things through, and hire a couple of full-time pessimists to take a gander at the plans, to see if there's anything they can issue awful predictions on.  Then you take the worst case scenario, and you bloody well adjust your  plans to accommodate that scenario.

When I actually say that out loud at work, I am told that I am a "pessimist", which many people seem to confuse with "defeatist".  Look, I know that things CAN succeed, but I also know that you have to plan for failure.

And in the case of Japan (and many of our reactors), you have to put a bit of money into it, to update your technology.  Since most of these reactors are private, you have to mandate this via regulation.  Anyone who thinks that corporations will self-regulate is living in a Goddamn dream world, because of the very nature of corporations.  They exist to maximize profits, and retrofitting reactors is expensive.

The argument goes that the corporations that don't plan ahead will fail, to be replaced with competitors that will.  This can easily be refuted by pointing at British Petroleum or Enron...When the failure happens, you now have a big fucking mess on your hands, and the survival of the corporation that did it isn't terribly relevant anymore, is it?

I don't expect to convert any free market tards with this, of course.  It's a religion with them, and no amount of oil on their beaches or radiation in their air will convince them.  No, this is just a quick glance at another situation in which monkeys will only see what they WANT to see, rather than looking at the world the way it IS.

If the monkeys ever DID start looking around them and dealing with reality, of course, we Doktors would be out of a job.  So I guess it isn't ALL bad.

Okay for now,
Dok

If you focus your eyes just right, and really look, you can see loose time.  It's sort of a weird angle to things...Not that your vision is distorted, but that the universe is.  As the man said, "Mass tells space how to bend, and space tells mass how to move".

An example:  Yesterday, Nurse Freeky and I were driving West on Broadway Street, in the right lane.  In the center lane there was a small 90s-style pseudo-sports car (you remember the type) with low profile tires...In the left lane, there was a 1970s pickup truck, all primer and rust, with 80s-style hydraulics. 

The guy in the sports car was a crew cut kid who looked like he stepped out of 1958, and the guys in the pickup truck looked typical noughties, a bald Black guy, and a White kid with a haircut stolen from the lead singer of Cypress Hill.  They were playing with each other, gunning back and forth, like something out of American Graffiti.  It ended in police reports and vehicular fluids all over the road and a glimpse of the Sausage Creature, but that's a story I shall leave for Nurse Freeky to tell.

What's interesting about this is that there were no affectations on anyone's part.  Everyone involved seemed to be perfectly comfortable with their image and their vehicle (at least until the horrible end of the scene), like they sort of slid in from another decade.

It's gotten to the point where nobody knows what year it is, anymore.  I can't with absolute certainty tell you who the president is, with respect to Tucson.  It might be Obama, but it might just as easily be JFK or Richard Nixon.

Now, the rational part of my brain says that it's 2011, but Tucson doesn't seem to give a damn about what rationality has to say about it.  In the Legal District, it's still 1928.  In Oro Valley, it's 1956.  The whole damn City is like that, and nobody seems to notice.

I'm wondering if this is a localized effect, or if the whole country or even the whole world is like this.  What the hell year are YOU living in?  It's 2011 here, but that could change at any moment, or with a simple 5 mile drive.

I can hear you saying "You've said all this before, Dok."...And you're right.  But the interesting part is, I think the loose time thing may be dependent on the human mind, and I think that the increasing amount of signal we receive in the form of memes may have something to do about that.

Think about it:  Physics dictates that time will move at a given rate on this planet, but our perception of time, and the way people behave, are dictated by how their minds process data...And if there's a wad of bad signal bouncing around in their skulls, their perceptions are going to be totally skewed.  Given that we're creatures of perception, so to speak, for all intents and purposes, time really IS acting funny.

So of course it's not 1972 in the University District...But good luck convincing anyone of that, and good luck functioning there with 2011 behavior.  You'd be beaten by campus cops and dropped into the tunnels for your trouble, and you'd never be heard from again.

Until and unless we can find a way to properly filter all this signal, we - at least here in Tucson - are going to have to get used to the nightmarish reality that everything can slide forward or back without warning.

And I'm not certain that's a bad thing.

Okay for now,
Dok

Lots of things get lost, misplaced or just plain misinterpreted, on account of time being loose.  In addition, the old adage "the victors write the history books" allows those in power to use loose time to deliberately hide, change, or redact the history of actual events to suit them.

Of course, the changes are never seamless, and things sometimes leak through, or get rediscovered.  There's a whole secret history of the world out there, for those who are willing to look.

I don't just mean the obvious things, like the fact that many of our heroes were actually monsters, and many of our villains weren't quite so bad as we made them out to be.  Andrew Jackson, for example, had so much Native American blood on his hands that he forgot what it smelled like.  Zachary Taylor stole half of Mexico in the world's biggest armed robbery, and we were so outraged that we made him president.

On the other hand, Robert E Lee was simply a man of his times, forced to make an impossible decision, and he's been dragged around the history books by the heels because of it.  King George III is made out to be a ruthless tyrant, and the simple fact is that he was mad.  In a sane society, he'd have been treated for severe mental illness...But he was in Britain, so they made him king.

And then there's the people that whose place in history is all...fuzzy.  Franklin Roosevelt turned the depression around, built our national infrastructure, and insisted on unconditional surrender as the only terms that would be acceptable for dealing with the nightmarish regimes of Nazi Germany and Tojo's Japan...But he also shoveled Americans of Japanese descent into concentration camps, and refused to accept the refugees on the St Louis, dooming the Jews on board.  So was he a hero or a monster?  Well, it turns out that you can be both.

It's not just historical figures.  Events and places with weird and interesting histories lie all around us, if we could only be bothered to look.  I know Tucson is stuffed full of ancient horror and seriously bizarre locations and events, and nobody can tell me that a place as old as Boston - to say nothing of London - isn't a warehouse full of strange happenings and lost secrets.

How cool is that?  How many fun, nightmarish things are 3 yards below your feet or 10 feet in front of your face?  Have you got the guts to find out?  Is it - to you - worth it to shut off the TV long enough to go looking for oddball shit that has fallen through the cracks in history?

It's a strange world, people.  Let's find out just HOW strange, shall we?

Okay for now,
Dok

[for now had been divulged that secret of the empire, that emperors could be made elsewhere than at Rome."]

I've talked about the idea of advertisers and politicians attaching their brand to existing memes, or even creating new memes and then later attaching their brand to it.  For example, the republican party associated themselves with John Wayne (with his eager participation), to appear to be the party of the manfully tough he-men...Which they then contrasted with the democratic party's "weak" compassion (think in terms of McGovern, here, not the current dems).

They created some bad signal - compassion bad/sociopathy good - and got people to buy into it.  This is the reason Joe Sixpack votes for them...They're "tough enough" to do the job.  The irony is, of course, that John Wayne, offscreen, was something of a sissy himself.  His real name aside (Marion), he was approached at the republican convention in 1972 by a collection of wounded war veterans, and he couldn't bring himself go out to speak with them.

So, again, the most effective memes are bad signal...They simply aren't true.  It is only important to embed the desired emotion in people.  Show them facts, and they'll use reason.  Present them with emotion, and their brains shut off.

Even when the meme is true, you can wind up with bad signal.  One of the most destructive memes in history was put into words by Tacitus around 110CE, and dealt with the events of "the year of 4 emperors" (69CE)...He said:

"Welcome as the death of Nero had been in the first burst of joy, yet it had not only roused various emotions in Rome, among the Senators, the people, or the soldiery of the capital, it had also excited all the legions and their generals; for now had been divulged that secret of the empire, that emperors could be made elsewhere than at Rome."

This meme is, in my opinion, the root cause of the problems that led to the downfall of Rome.  Rather than the army being a tool of the state, it became an agent of the ruler - or would-be rulers - that was used to gain or maintain power, and thus had to be kept happy with ever-increasing bribes and privileges.

Compare that with the current meme "government = oppression", which in many cases may be true, but - accurate or not - is still used to sell three political groups.  The GOP, the Tea Party, and the Libertarian party all attach themselves to the "big government is bad" meme, in an effort to become the dominant force in that big government.

An interesting effect is what happens when two bad signals are equally propagated and conflict with each other.  For example "all drugs will kill you" and "drugs are beneficial and make you more creative".  Both are largely false, and both are widely believed, sometimes by the same people...So it is possible to graft utterly irreconcilable memes to the same person's mind, and have them both stick.

Is there any mystery as to why people act so irrationally much of the time?  Not only do we receive an excessive amount of signal, but most of it is bad signal, and quite a bit of it is conflicting.  Since this is emotional programming, it's no wonder at all that 80% of the population are complete wrecks.

The most interesting part is, the only way to rid yourself of this is to tirelessly examine each embedded meme as you trip across them, to decide if the signal is bad or not, and condition yourself out of believing it.  Problem is, you're receiving bad signal at a huge and ever-increasing rate...A rate astronomically higher than the rate at which you can possibly divest yourself of any of it.

In fact, some psychologists are beginning to believe that we don't actually have "personalities" so much as we have "memetic false-consciousness"...ie, we are nothing more than a tangled-up web of memes.  Personally, I reject this on account of Papa Hemmingway, but the idea - a pile of bad signal in and of itself - is out there, and presently will be latched onto by no end of new age hippies and other people that are afraid of being alive.

A conclusion we can draw from this is that being alive and awake takes hard work, care, and attention. This takes more effort than most humans are willing to put out...But not you and I.  We understand that being actual sapient beings is worth any amount of effort.  We will drink and smoke, rant and rage, because we know that this is how things are managed.  It's how we get things done on the mean streets and in the pervert bars and in the very offices and workplaces that we find ourselves.

Truly, we are up for any program, because anything else is unworthy of the memory of generations of sickos and degenerates that preceded us.

Okay for now,
Dok

Just a quick note:  While posting in this sub-forum, I use the moniker "Doktor Howl", rather than "TGRR", because I think differently using the Dok moniker.  This isn't to imply that I have MPS or any such rubbish...It's just that I have developed two somewhat different reality tunnels, that are useful for different things.  

It's a useful way of getting a second opinion on a subject, or looking at something in a different way.  It also requires self-training, of course, as anyone who remembers "Dok's" early history (TGRR in a lab smock)...However, the two reality tunnels grow more distinct over time, without the hassle of turning into Sibyl.

Interesting note:  As TGRR, I don't drink to speak of, and smoke like a fiend.  As Dok Howl, I drink a lot more, and smoke less (when I'm not actually drinking).  As TGRR, I am moodier and less social, and as Dok Howl, I'm typically in a manic state, and very approachable.

But again, let me stress that these aren't two different personalities...Just different filters I use to view the world.  Different lenses, so to speak.

Okay for now,
Dok

One of the most interesting things about loose time is that, while it gives you a good look at the past, it can also give you a few insights about the future.  This isn't anything "psychic", of course...It's merely the capability to observe trends and draw inferences from them.  

Of course, trends aren't laws, as Malthus unwittingly proved.  That being said, barring a catastrophic change, you can make educated guesses between now, and a certain point in the future at which the errors in your data compound to the point at which your guesses become meaningless.  This point is called "the singularity" (Sorry, hippies, that IS the definition of the singularity...No AI Jesus for you.), and - due to the increasing rate of technological development - that point gets closer to the present every day.

So let's talk about this.  

We'll begin with things we know from history that have remained fairly constant.  We can assume that war, greed, lust, and apathy will always be with us, as there has been no change in their frequency in recorded history (In fact, Jerry Pournelle insists that peace is a fallacy that we develop because there are sometimes interludes between wars).  So we assume these things will be just as prevalent in the future.

Next, we identify trends that change society at a slow - but steady - pace.  This is the trickiest part of the equation...For example, many people believe that criminals are getting more violent.  That is of course, rubbish.  Criminals have become less violent over the last few hundred years.  It's just that the general population has become less violent at a faster rate.  Proof of this can be obtained by examining old news and court records.  Example:  While considered awful at the time, people running loose with Thompson submachine guns wasn't considered particularly odd in America between the two world wars.

The Pax Americana (in this case, the peace inside America) has, for the last hundred years or so, caused Americans to become more peaceful, and more docile.  With the lack of a credible outside threat, and extreme prosperity inside the national boundaries, the normal drives for dominance have become subverted into drives for wealth, status, etc.

Another trend that is slowly changing the country is the rising of the average life expectancy.  We live healthier than people did 500 years ago, we have modern medicine, and we have PILLS HERE to blunt the stress levels that - combined with the other mentioned effects - tended to knock people off in their 40s, back in the year dot.

So, life has become longer, healthier (barring obesity), and safer...And, I might add, life in America has FAR more leisure time than any other place or time in history.

The next thing we need to look at is rapid trends.  These are fairly obvious...Technology in all of its aspects is now progressing so fast that people can only keep up in very narrow specialties, and the vast bulk of the population has no idea how their toys and gizmos work...Because when they stop working, they just chuck the doodad in the trash and get a new one.  

The most important impact is in information technology.  People no longer have access to the information they want or need, so much as they are bombarded non-stop with more information - good and bad - than any person is equipped to deal with.  People haven't changed in their ability to process information, but the amount of information they receive each day is several orders of magnitude higher than it was, just 35 years ago.

People can't possibly process that information, so advertisers have come upon the brilliant idea of selling memes first, then simply attaching the memes to the products they wish to sell.  You will then ignore other signals to buy their product, as you feel emotionally attached to it.

Consider, for example, the jingle for Bluebell Ice Cream:

Blue Bell homemade ice cream
it's homemade country style
it's the ice cream on the cake
the cream of the crop
the tip of the top
like having your own ice cream shop
blue bell homemade ice cream
homemade country style
blue bell, made with a country smile

This is sung in such a bland manner as to prevent most people from actually paying attention to it, yet I could remember the lyrics without Googling it, and I haven't heard the ad in a couple of years.  Notice a few things that are included.

First, it references "homemade" multiple times, though it's obviously not homemade.  This is designed to evoke memories of a childhood that most people never had, but desperately want...A stable home where mom makes delicious things from scratch.

Second, it then associates "homemade" with "country", which evokes in most people the (mistaken) impression that country living is simpler, safer, and less stressful.

Third, it associates both of those images with the old ice cream shops of small town America, back in the 50s and 60s, an era most people (again, incorrectly) view as America's golden age.

So you're walking in the store, and you decide to get some ice cream.  There's the store brand, in its bland box, and then there's Bluebell, in a cheerful white & blue box.  Between the appearance, and the memes implanted in your head by a jingle you may not even remember, you'll pay the extra buck and buy Bluebell.

Note that this is different from "subliminals", which I have yet to see any evidence of that  suggests they may work.  This is repetitive conditioning that can run for years.

Most important note:  Using memes to sell things works, and it's cheap.

Similar conditioning has been used to project the "real man" image on the Republican party.  Compassion is for sissies, and may the devil take the hindmost.  And the majority of people they've sold this to are poor (more about this in another paper).

So let's review:

Greed is a human constant.  People live longer, and have more leisure time.  Ad making companies are using very solidly grounded and functional memetic engineering to embed their ideas and/or products in peoples' heads.  This is stacked upon the rest of the barrage of information we aren't equipped to deal with.  More information = more stress.  More stress means more self-imposed filters, usually of the chemical and/or religious kind.

So I bring you the future:  98% just like it is today, but with a brain-smashed population doped to the gills with PILLS HERE and increasingly irrational religious beliefs, who buy and do things they are emotionally programmed to buy or do.

Of course, there's a way to work around this (At least on an individual basis), but that will have to wait for another day.

Okay for now,
Dok

Things have gotten a little rickety, haven't they?  Union members and Tea Party advocates brawling in the streets, a paralyzed government, the entire Middle East in revolt...Not even the Russians seem to know what to make of it.

A confluence of events has led to everyone losing their damn minds at the same time.  In addition, it's a feedback loop.  The more chaos there is, the more people panic or get angry, whatever, and hit the streets.

None of them - at least not in Fat City - are screaming at the people who arranged all this, of course.  The moneyed interests that caused this whole mess have managed, once again, to convince the middle & working classes to fight amongst themselves.

But I think that they'd be doing the same thing, even if the banks hadn't wrecked everything.  You can't point a finger at one thing and say, "If we removed that, the problems would stop.".  No, it's far more complex than that.

The Tea Party thinks they've found a cause (Black president, democrat in the White House, taxation on rich people, unions, etc).  The unions have their cause (Self-preservation), the police in Wisconsin have no vested interest in obeying the governor's orders, the rank and file democrats are mostly disgusted with Obama and the democrats in congress, and who can blame them?  Many Americans feel for some reason that we have to get involved in the Middle Eastern nations' internal squabbles, etc.

Everything is rattling apart at the seams.  Bolts are beginning to sheer, and if you listen carefully, you can hear the groans of the supports buckling.  The funniest part is, there's nothing seriously wrong, other than a lack of maintenance, both in our physical infrastructure and in our society.

Time is loose.  Everything else follows.  One day, you're listening to satellite radio on your Ipod, the next you're caught up in a labor demonstration that slid forward 97 years.  Dams built 80 years ago are screaming for attention.  Literacy levels are falling back to the turn of the last century.  Jim Crow crawled out of his grave and moved to Arizona.  The right is screaming about "communists", a boogie man from the last century.  Thieves and pimps and fixers have scraped all the gilt off of our golden age, and nobody seems to notice.

Our nation is haunted, and the ghosts of its past are lining up at our doorstep, each waiting its turn, each with a ghastly grin and a list of grievances. 

This is our own fault, of course.  Fat City is and has always been incapable of actually fixing anything, as the general public loses interest when a crisis is over (or becomes old news).  Thus, the problems stack up and stack up, and eventually something has to give...And when it does, everything gives, and the nation turns on itself like a wounded shark.

I suspect that other republics, from the Romans to the Argentineans, could tell us a tale or two about where this leads.

Enter Crazy Eddie.  You see him every time a civilization begins to slip.  He has a well thought-out solution that he is certain will cure the issue.  Flat taxes, commodity-based currency, redefinitions of citizenship, privatization of roads and schools, etc.  Needless to say, the ideas don't work, because they don't address the root cause of any of the problems.  They can't.  But Crazy Eddie insists on trying, and invariably the problems magnify to the point where the society cannot continue, at least in its present form.

You can recognize Crazy Eddie, most of the time.  He's the one screaming that we have to get rid of institutions and practices that worked for a century or more, before they were bollixed up via malfeasance.  He doesn't want to fix the institutions or practices, he wants to replace them.

Crazy Eddie can't fix the problems, but neither can you stop Crazy Eddie from trying.  Yell and scream all you like, he's going to fix the circuit boards with the help of his trusty hammer and chisel.  In fact, Crazy Eddie will do anything in his power to stop anyone from addressing REAL issues, because HE'S RIGHT AND YOU'RE WRONG.  Only his ideas have merit.  Engineers and amateur economists are more likely than anyone else to become Crazy Eddie, but lots of other people do, too (Mostly people asking who this "John Galt" character is.).

Crazy Eddie is unstoppable, both because he is a divinely inspired idiot that takes ineptitude to near omnipotent levels, and because he has something the rest of the population lacks:  Belief.  He honestly believes everything he preaches, and a motivated fool is a force of nature.

Or a force of time, the sort of time that has gotten all stretchy and malleable.  You can't fix that, so you can't stop Crazy Eddie.  You have to try, of course, because being destroyed is always better than being defeated, as one old hypocrite once said, shortly before blowing his own head off in defeat.  But his fate isn't for you or I...No, we are superior mutants, and we're going to ride this contraption down in flames, like rock stars. 

We know where the wall is, and we do not fear it.

Okay for now,
Dok

When you sit down and think about it, a time machine is a pretty useless idea, right now. 

You can visit the past any time you like, usually within a few minutes' walk.  It's all around you.  As for visiting people in the past, why bother?  They're no different than the people you have around you today...And as far as the "interesting" people back in the year dot, there's plenty of interesting people around you right now, if you'd just take a minute to get to know them.

As for living like it's the past, shut off your computer and read a book.  Leave the car in the drive and go for a walk.  It's really just that easy.

And the future, well, the future will be on your doorstep soon enough, all sticky with blood and ashen with fear, all 10+ billion of them wondering where dinner is.  No, the future isn't worth considering, time machine-wise, because you're already going there, at a rate of one minute per minute.

As for living in the future, you're already doing it.  You have amenities and conveniences that were never even imagined back in 1980...Let alone 1900.  It used to take 6 weeks to get a photograph to England...Now I can take a picture with my phone and send it anywhere in the world, total time elapsed being about 30 seconds.

We are all living in a science fiction novel, each and every one of us.  We've managed to avoid all the really dismal predictions, like eating pills instead of real food (Why did anyone ever think food pills were a good idea?), "welfare islands", and robots all over the damn place...Instead, we've managed to build a paradise of information gizmos and conveniences - the fact that it is a fool's paradise notwithstanding - and we have no appreciation for it.  The very fact that you take reading this for granted is all the proof required to demonstrate this.

So instead of yearning for a past that wasn't as cool as we'd like to think, or ignoring what's happening today in favor of what might happen tomorrow (as the "transhumanists" do), perhaps we'd be better off exploring the world that we actually have, and getting to know the people that already surround us.

Okay for now,
Dok

Time's gotten a little...Loose, around here.  What you thought was Tuesday might turn out to be Sunday, and the year varies from place to place.  At work, it's 1975.  At home, 2011.  In the Legal District, it's always been the roaring 20s, and in Central Filth it's some horrible future year that nobody wants to deal with.

Pretty sure I just saw Steve McQueen drive by in a bright red Porshe this morning...But I was offsite, in the Maze, and nobody there wants to know what DAY it is, let alone what decade.

Flipping though my radio dial, I can find music from 500 years ago, or just last week.

Time is loose.

What's more, it's stretchy.  3 hours in the sack with a willing partner goes by in a second.  Waiting in line for 3 hours at the DMV lasts a month.

Time cannot be relied upon.  It doesn't hold to schedules you set.  This is a constant annoyance, and perhaps something should be done about it.  We don't need a time machine to visit the past, we can do that anytime we like.  We don't need that machine to visit the future, because the future is a horrible fucking lie, and I hope it never comes.

No, we need a machine to iron time.  To press out all the wrinkles and make it uniform.  Also, we need batteries to store wasted time, so we can use it when we need it.

Speaking of time, I'm out of it.  I must go do those things I am paid to do.

Okay For Now,
Doktor Howl

Get out of my way, you fuckers, I'm a rock n roll man.  Always have been, always will be, and I have the fucking scars to prove it.  I have stomped with the best of them, shat blood, and pissed out kidney stones the size of marbles.  I KNOW rock n roll, and I know that it DOES include some country, some classical - and most importantly - a shitload of blues.

Music that ONLY makes you want to dance isn't rock n roll...Bill Haley was a hack.  Rock n roll has to have an emotional impact of some kind.  Preferably, that impact should leave you wanting to gnaw someone's face off and wear it as a loincloth, even if - especially if - that someone is yourself.  Any rocker worth his salt can figure out a way to eat his own face, thanks for asking.

Being a rock n roller means many things.  It means never being able to say you're sorry.  It means both never being alone, and being alone in a crowded room.  It means that you aren't afraid of terrorists or governments or criminals or random whackjobs running your country.

Because it isn't just about the music.  It's about losing your shit and doing the sort of thing that got LMNO (Rocker, par excellence) banned from Rhode Island for indecency and "general carrying on".  It's about waking up with your clothes on inside out in another country, and that's just Tuesday.  It's about scaring the straights, without trying.  It's about shaking your fist at the president and God and screaming into the void, just to stay in practice.  If it's about acting your age, then you better run when you see me coming, because I just get angrier every year.  Go to bed mad, wake up madder, and kick 'em IN THE NADS if they don't like it.

So keep your techno™ and your Taylor Swift and your fears and worries and petty partisanship.  Keep all that shit, and get the fuck out of my way, because I've just about had all the bad water I can stand.  LMNO understands this shit, ECH knows precisely what I'm talking about, and Dimo's already puking on his boots when I get to the bar. 

We know this shit.  We understand how things work.  It's how we get things done, you and I.

The Age of No Fun is over, effective immediately.  We WILL rock, and we WILL roll, and we WILL bray our spittle and laughter in Their faces, as they try to understand why we hate America™.

Get off your arses.  There's music playing, and a mosh pit 2462 miles long and 1738 miles wide. 

What the fuck are you waiting for?

Okay Again,
Dok

Dok,
If I have to stay late at work, you can all suffer.






(I can't actually see my own pic here, so if that didn't work, let me know.)

This one isn't a series of related stories, it's one story broken into several parts.  Any resemblance to people living or dead is purely malicious and utterly intentional.

It had been a long journey.  Ah'Lechs and Qi'Lara were exhausted and annoyed when they first entered The City through the Great Gate of Reason, so they were more annoyed when they were accosted by one of the filthy prophets that infest the entrances to The City.

"Oh, ye wretches!", howled the prophet, "Do ye think your ironmongery shall save ye from the wrath of the Gods?  Will your swords hold back the night?"

Ah'Lechs was of a mind to try, and reached for his sword.

"Now?", he asked, hopefully.

"No.", said Qi'Lara, "Remember what happened last time."

Ah'Lechs grumbled, but released the grip on his sword.   Qi'Lara was under a curse that made her right all the time, and Ah'Lechs had learned (rather painfully on occasion) to listen to her.  The prophet continued to screech.

It was one of those days.

After they left the Plaza of the Gods, they were accosted by four seedy looking men that wanted, it seemed, a toll for the use of the street that they were traveling down.  One of them suggested that Qi'Lara could pay in a currency other than gold.

Hand on hilt, Ah'Lechs glanced at Qi'Lara.  "Now?", he asked?

"Yeah, okay, now.", Qi'Lara agreed with a giggle, as she hauled out her sword, catching one thief on the liver with the tip.

Later, as they wiped their swords off on the footpads' clothing, Ah'Lechs looked at Qi'Lara.

"Do you really have to giggle like that while we're fighting?  It's a little creepy."

"Fuck you, I'm sick!", she responded, as she tried to get a stubborn piece of spleen off of her sword.  

As Ah'Lechs rifled the deceased's pockets, he noticed that the shadows had grown long for that time of day.  He stood upright, and looked around...Everything looked normal.  He chalked it up to fatigue and straightened up, as he  suggested that they find a tavern first, then an inn.

"Inn FIRST.  THEN a tavern.", She replied.  "We have enough for cheap rooms and a couple of bottles of rotgut.  We're going to have to find a job, or go back to robbing temples."

"Bugger that", said Ah'Lechs, "The priest at the last temple we burgled cursed me.  I still shit crooked."

They walked down the street, not noticing the shadows forming behind them.

Presently, they found and entered The Traveler's Rest.  It was one of those kinds of Inns, which was par for the course for the two heroes.  It had the added advantage of having a taproom, which, as Qi'Lara pointed out, would save them a stagger through the streets later.

"We'll need a room and some booze...", Ah'Lechs began.

"Two rooms and some booze.", his companion finished.  Ah'Lechs shrugged, as if to say, "You can't ding me for trying."

The innkeeper looked them up and down with one rheumy eye.  He didn't have much of a choice, as the other eye and one of his ears was missing.  Added to these subtractions was the appearance that he had but a nodding acquaintance with personal hygiene, and enough teeth to eat oatmeal.

"Lessee the color of your money", he said, "Issa gold piece for each room, and a copper a drink.  A silver iffen ya wants the bottle."

"A gold piece?  In this shithole?  You must be out of your tree.", Qi'Lara retorted, "I expect we'll have to stab a few bedbugs a few times before we sack in."

"Take it 'r leave it", was the response, "Ya wanna sleep out where the dark can gitcha, that's yer own lookout."

"What, we should be afraid of the dark?", laughed Ah'Lechs, "Why, we've slain more men and beasts than any living heroes.  We've even fed the Hurkle Beast and got away clean."

"The Hurkle Beast, eh?", the bartender sneered, looking  skeptical. "Won't help ya none here.  The dark grabs ya and gobbles ya up, and your swords won't help ya.  Even the watch stops patrolling at night.  Issa room at a gold, or yer hides.  You choose, it's all the same ta me."

The pair grumbled, paying for the rooms and the booze.  After stowing their packs in their rooms, they returned to the taproom to rinse the dust from their mouths.  Predictably, the booze was of a grade that would be better used to polish their swords.

"Umf.", Qi'Lara grunted, an hour later, "This dark thing.  That crazy prophet talked about it at the gate.  Wonder what the hell's going on?"

"Street prophets are notorious liars", Ah'Lechs mused, "and, as such, are harmless.  Real prophets, of course, are nothing but trouble, and should be converted into martyrs with big rocks, liberally applied.  Funny how they never see it coming, though."

"Wouldn't that offend the Gods?"

"You'd think so, or at least that they'd utter some final prophecy.  But they don't."

"What do they do?"

"Mostly, they scream a lot.  'Shit, fuck, ouch that hurts!' sorta thing."

"Figures", Qi'Lara mumbled, tossing off the last of her booze, "Is bed time."

To be continued.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39956839/ns/us_news-life/

Stone age bastards, each and every one of you.

May as well hand the fucking country over to the teabaggers, for all the democrats are worth.

Old King Cram was a merry old spag And a merry old spag was he;
He called for his jenkem, and he called for his bowl
And he called for his fappers three.
Every fapper he had a schlong,
And a very fine schlong had he;
Oh there's none so rare, as can compare
With King Cram and his fappers three.

"Those were the good old days", thought King Cram, "Before everything got so...complicated."

King Cramulous I trudged down the hall of his palace, surrounded by a coterie of advisors, sycophants, and hangers-on.  Each and every one of them had a pile of forms to be signed...Death warrants here, pardons there, a million of so edicts that would benefit one special interest group or another, at the expense of the kingdom itself.

These edicts, of course, weren't written in simple terms.  They were titled "A Proclamation to Stop the Stomping-On of Kittens", for example, and one (1) line was dedicated to that noble end, in a 500 page document.  The rest was a gigantic siphon to drain the treasury for the benefit of the coal mine owners.  Yet another, the "Edict Frowning on Toddler Punting" was largely a series of giveaways to the masonry business.

And that was just one series of headaches.  His council had grown from he and his 3 fappers to more than two score jabbering nitwits, and council meetings were now something he dreaded.  

That was, in fact, where he was headed, and he wasn't happy about it in the slightest.

At length, King Cram walked into his council chamber, and was duly announced, to a low chorus of snickers and muttered, nasty comments.

"So, what business have we today?", asked King Cram, with a sigh.

Immediately, everyone started bickering and screaming.  There was the Earl of Distraction, yipping about better programming on the TV, and there was The Duke of Obligation hollering about what the King had to do before he would finally be allowed to sleep tonight.  The Count and Countess of Cram's Extended Family both began listing everywhere he had to be this month, and don't forget to buy a gift for your 2d cousin 3 times removed new baby.  Even Prince Career chimed in, reminding King Cram that it was in fact a work night.

King Cram sunk ever-lower in his council throne, while his privy council screamed across the table at each other about obligations and deadlines and priorities.

"I wonder", he thought, "if King Lear ever had days like this?"

The King began to be annoyed.  

Now, it generally isn't a good thing to annoy a king, and the kind of people that are dumb enough to do so are also dumb enough to not know when to quit.  So when the Marquis of Appropriate Dress for the Occasion chimed in concerning the King's tee shirt, King Cramulous lost his temper.

"GUARDS!", he shouted, "TO ME!"

Sergeants Fun & Friviolity bounded to his side, with a hearty "YES, MY LORD!"

"These 'people' are offensive to our person.", King Cram said, "Make them all have a series of unfortunate accidents with those sharp pointy things you are carrying."

There followed a lot of running around and screaming, accompanied by meaty-sounding 'whack' noises.  Eventually all was quiet again.

Cram looked at the council room.  Oh, this would take some cleaning up, to be sure, but that is the business of the Steward, after all...And it was quiet, blessedly quiet, for the first time that King Cram could remember.

"Nice work, Fun & Friviolity", he remarked, "Now let's go cow-tipping."

And so the King regained his life, the kingdom regained its King, and the world didn't end when the Council of Worry, Regret, and Anxiety came to its abrupt and rather final end.  It is rather a pity that so few kings are as wise and decisive as Old King Cram, because the world - and we ourselves - would be happier if more kings realized that not every concern is worthy of a king's attention.

And everyone lived happily ever after (except the cows).

Okay for Now,
Dok

WHAT THE FUCK?  IF I WANTED A NEW SKIN, I'D HAVE FUCKING SELECTED A NEW SKIN! 

THIS BLOWS!  PUT THE FUCKING THING BACK!  I WILL KILL A MOTHERFUCKER!

(rant, fume).

Seriously, this sucks ass.

Arizona:

Governor - Brewer v Goddard 5:4, with even odds as a sporting proposition.  Note that Goddard is running for multiple offices, and is probably insane.

District 1 - Kirkpatrick v Gosar  3:1  Gosar is GOP, but identifies his political leanings as "dentist".
District 2 - Franks v Thrasher    4:1  Thrasher is a retired music professor runnning in district 2.  He will be beaten like a mule.
District 3 - Quayle v Hulberd     3:1  Dan Quayle's kid owns that shit.
District 4 - Pastor v Contreras   6:1  Silly Contreras, Tea Party is for white people
District 5 - Mitchell v Sweikert   2:3  Mitchell is taking his seat for granted, and the teabagger is going to kick his pasty ass.
District 6 - Flake v Schnieder    5:1  Schnieder is a librarian running in district 6.  Why even bother?
District 7 - Grijalva v McClung  10:1 with a bullet.  If 80%+ of your constituents are Hispanic, don't get on TV and jabber about SB1070.
District 8 - Giffords v Kelly        5:1  Easy money for Giffords.  If your constituents are all retired, don't jabber about killing SSI, Kelly.  Moron.

Senate:  - McCain v Glassman 5:2  McCain owns that seat until they carry him out feet first.

at CI?   

Why are you doing it that way, rather than by the approved method?

Dok,
Giving you a chance to state your case.