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MysticWicks endorsement: "Spoiled brats of the pagan world, I thought. I really don't have a lot of respect for Discordians. They just strike me as spiritually lazy."

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Messages - The Wizard

#46
She speaks painful, ugly Truth at people. So I'll give her a fair bit of slack before I write her off. Such people are far too rare.
#47
Quotebump because I want to see more damnit!

Definitely.
#48
This woman is amazing! I mean, deleting NET's post is an asshole move, but it doesn't nullify  how kickass this is.

#49
QuoteYeah, I'll riff on it tomorrow.

Fair enough. Can't wait to read it.  :D
#50
QuoteYes, but "thread" should read "threat", I think.

FIXED. Thanks for pointing that out.

QuoteAlso, America IS in the process of eating itself like that Ouroboros thingie.  Edit:  Never mind.  That's the whole OP.

:lulz: That's what I'm going for, at least.

Thanks for the tips, by the way. I can't wait to see this project completed, and now I've got something to built it around.

Anything you can get out of this?
#51
Quote
It comes driving a mobility scooter called the USS Nimitz, straight from the 21st century, right into your town.

Heh, I like that. I added another paragraph based on your suggestion. See if that works better.

#52
QuoteNeeds a little more exposition, though.  Maybe something about how it beats the mortal shit out of anything it doesn't understand, etc.  Or maybe emphasize the size of the creature.  Made up of 301,000,000 angry, unworthy little monsters, etc.

Don't get me wrong, it's awesome...But it's better now that I'm sure of what you're talking about.

Hmm. Yeah I can do that. I like that first suggestion. I can do that. Maybe something involving laziness (when it comes to anything not related to dominating/hurting its creator)?

#53
QuoteAh.  I was thinking along the lines of peoples' self-images or whatnot.

Yeah, I could see how you could interpret it that way. I came up with this early this morning. I was thinking that I needed a kind of central idea to hold my project together, something like the BIP without being the BIP with different wording. And Frankenstein was the first thing that occurred to me.
#54
QuoteI like this, but I'm not entirely certain I get the point.

Well, it's kind of how I feel about America these days. An ugly, paranoid, Monster that seems to hate everything it used to stand for. This was my attempt to try and get that out. I'm not especially good with metaphors though, so I was kind of wondering whether the idea would be clear or not.
#55
Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / The Monster
April 05, 2011, 02:43:33 AM
       It's out there. The Monster's out there right now watching you. Peeping through your windows with its mad, yellow eyes, and waiting. It's huge, bigger than any man, stronger than anything made by God. It has grayish skin that feels like paper but that stretches over its misshapen muscle like tight leather. Most terrible of all are its hands, the long, powerful fingers built for choking murder. It's out there right now, watching and waiting for its chance. You created it, and for that it hates you and wants to hurt you.

   It all started out innocently enough. You and your friends, all intellectuals, all politically active young radicals. You just read books and talked about how to make things better, how to make change. You started reading up on John Locke and some other political writers of the Enlightenment, and you thought, why not try them out? So you and you bodies got together and started working. Tom supplied a lot of the ideas, as did Ben and John. They took some old dead ideas, threw in some of their own, stitched them together, and then brought the whole thing to life with something even better than lightning.

   The creature came to life, staggering off of the surgical table with all the clumsiness and fear of a newborn. It wasn't a pretty thing by any means, in fact it was quite ugly, but it was innocent, well meaning, and passionate. And for that you all loved it. The creature did great things, inspired others with its ideals. It had the potential to change the world.

   But time passed, and your creation began to change. Some of the changes were necessary, such as the alterations done when it was twelve years old. But as time passed, it began to get violent and controlling. It turned away from the idealism and fire of its youth, devolving into a twisted, power obsessed monstrosity.

   It took whatever it wanted, its hideous strength making it easy to intimidate others or when it needed to, use force to get what it desired. The creature became paranoid and controlling, suspecting everyone and imposing its rules on everyone. The greed, the violence, the paranoia, and the power hollowed it out, killing the beautiful spirit it was born with. It came to hate the ideas that gave birth to it, and to seek vengeance against the optimists who had helped create it. It became a Monster in both mind and body.

       It has only gotten worse since then. Its paranoia drives it to attack anything different, anything that it is unfamiliar with. The Monster has pushed away all of its old friends and allies, those who looked up to it. None of them trust it, and many of them hate it now. In its madness it does not care whether one was friend or foe. The only difference it understands anymore is between a threat and a victim.

   It's outlived all of its other creators, all except for you. You were the one who did the most to bring it about, the one who was most responsible for both its birth and its decline. It was your job to keep an eye on it, to make sure that your friend's work was not done in vain. And you failed. So now it haunts your shadow, keeping you caged and afraid. It does not want to kill you, but to control you and make you miserable. The Monster holds you prisoner, never letting you leave the house, never letting you feel safe. You do what you can to try and forget its out there, whether its losing yourself in the routine of work or taking whatever pills will make the fear go away, if only for a while.

   But no matter what happens, the Monster is still out there. It'll keep tormenting you forever, until you finally take that step outside of your safe, comforting prison of a home, and face it. On that day, you and the Monster will come to terms, and only one of you will survive it. But until you're willing to take that gamble, to put it all on the line for your freedom, it'll still be out there. Waiting.
#56
QuoteOh Semaj, you don't have to be in their face to get them pissed. I prefer the little venomous barbs that leave them with a gnawing sort of feeling.

This is hopefully going to be straight up, ranting hate. This article and the project it's part of  is the culmination of a fair bit of thought and work. I want them to get a nice unvarnished view the truth. Can't be subtle.
#57
QuoteI dunno. I think it's just more subtle. I like it.

What I'm trying for here isn't subtle. My aim is to get in the reader's face, to get them good and pissed off. I want the bastards to feel it.
#58
I feel like I lost a little of the Hate in the this one. Need to get the rage back up.

Dr. James Semaj
Off to read Transmetropolitan
#59
        Hopefully most of you know what ignorance is. Ignorance, quite simply, is the state of not knowing something. Its a common thing today, even thought this is supposedly the Information Age. And by itself, Ignorance is not a sin. As long as you are willing to get informed about whatever you don't know, then there's nothing wrong with it.

   But a lot of the time you don't bother to get informed. Maybe you don't have the time, or the interest to research whatever it is you're ignorant about. Maybe you think that knowing about whatever it is is pointless or wrong. That is Willful Ignorance, the next contestant in our tour of humanities failings.

   As with so many of the things that are wrong with people, the best place to showcase Willful Ignorance is in politics. In America, it is a commonly held belief that politicians are liars and bastards. Many Americans will agree with you if you say this to them. But how many of you bother to look up what politicians to say, to actually catch them in the lies? Not many. A lot of Americans neglect to research candidates before election day. No, instead of hitting the internet and seeing where our duly elected representatives stand, you watch them on TV and go off of that. You take their word at face value, these people who are generally assumed to be liars. What's worse, many people don't even bother to watch the news. A lot of you don't even bother with or know anything about politics.

   For example, a poll done in 2010 shows that less than 60 percent of Americans are informed about politics. That may not sound to bad for some of you, since hey ,it's more than 50 percent. But this is a country based upon the people's involvement and knowledge of the political process. For our country to work, citizens have to know about what's going on in politics.

   Along the same lines, a series of studies done in 1996 revealed that 4 in 10 Americans didn't know who the Vice President was. 46 percent didn't know the name of the Speaker of the House. Saddest of all, nearly half weren't aware that the Supreme Court  is responsible for judging whether a law is constitutional or not. With the existence of the Internet, there is no excuse for being ignorant. It just takes a little work.

   But you aren't prepared to put in that time, are you? You just absorb the lies and move on. In a time where information is no farther away than you're cell phone, you can't be bothered. The same holds true with what you're reading right now. Are you going to bother researching anything I've said, are you going to check the examples or the facts I've used to support my ideas? Probably not, because that would require a little bit of work and the use of higher brain functions.
#60
QuoteWillful Ignorance, better than Stupidity.  Some people just plain can't help being stupid, that's not a sin, that's just the brain they were handed in the big lottery, it's the ones who have the capacity to understand, who have been shown, and STILL refuse to see that drive me batfuck crazy.

The reasons why I changed it.

QuoteDeception, better than Gullibility, in concept...  Deviousness, maybe better?  Though repeated gullibility, I suppose, would fall under Willful Ignorance.

I like Deception, but having difficulty decided what to focus on. Media bias and manipulation of the truth work well enough, but internet searches haven't shown any research, studies, or news articles on it. Politicians are too easy, and I want to focus on them for Willful Ignorance. Another thought I had was writing about Self Deception, but that might be too close to Willful Ignorance.