Topics

1

Apple Talk / ATTN TUCSONSPAGS: HALP

« on: July 02, 2010, 03:03:16 pm »

Stranded homeless in Pittsburgh with nowhere to go, a stolen wallet and a breaking backpack. I will soon be homeless, clothesless and hopeless. BUT THERE IS YET HOPE FOR ME! (There probably won't be tomorrow.)

Cassidy Cate needs his family in Tucson to call up the Pittsburgh Greyhound station and tell them they exist. It's THAT bad, really. An address for them would also be appreciated, so they know where they're sending me. Traveler's Aid said they may yet be able to pay for me, but if they can't then well I guess I'll jump off the really big yellow bridge here or something, since hitchhiking is actually illegal. I'm really screwed if you spags don't pull through for me, and I'm not just saying that to get stuff out of you guys.

I spent the last 9 days in Clarion Psychiatric Center for losing my shit when I had been kept awake for a week straight and kicked someone once. I was dropped off in the middle of an enormous city I had never been to. I spent the night in my second homeless shelter. I'm 20 years old and my legal record is clean, with no drug and alcohol addiction. I got SCREWED, hardcore. I'm counting on some of the best people on Earth to help me out.

Cass, out.

2

Or Kill Me / No Hate Left

« on: May 15, 2010, 09:17:07 pm »

I just don't care anymore. I don't mean that in the usual sense of "don't care", poorly using it to hide the depth of my care. No, I just don't give a shit. I bitch out of a sense of duty, not out of any real issue with my life.

Broke my finger? Yeah, okay. Got holed up with a cult for a month? Wake me up tomorrow. My family hates me? Old news. You could probably tell me I was being hunted down by a hitman and I'd either half-heartedly try to run and hide before getting bored 15 minutes later, or I'd hit you in the face for interrupting me while I'm sleeping or eating or doing something else relatively unimportant.

I got contacted by a former girlfriend today, asking me to be accomplice to a murder. I acted outraged on IRC but it was really just all "whatever" and "oh okay" and maybe even "that's nice". Turns out she was lying, she just wanted a place to stay. Can't help you there, young lady. Byebye. After some arguing with myself about it engendered by a sense of moral obligation to help, of course.

I've been trying to write a rant, but I can't get the hate flowing anymore. When I get "pissed" it's closer to "I am irritated and I want you to know I'm irritated, but it's really all okay because I don't care a whole lot." Any attempt to write a rant on my life since going to jail would read drier than the ashes of sawdust. No laughs, no mittens. Not even any rantiness. It'd just explain what happened, in the sort of voice reserved for a thesis.

I posted this here, too, out of a sense of duty. I felt sort of bad about promising a rant and then not delivering, so this is it. I don't know if the juices will ever flow again, but I sure hope. The WOMPs are still forthcoming, however, I assure you that much.

That is all.

3

Techmology and Scientism / ATTN: PHYSICS SPAGS

« on: January 01, 2010, 04:58:48 pm »

I'm curious as to whether or not there is a name for electromagnetic frequencies below the ELF radio range, if such things are even physically possible. (Note, this is for a friend who specifically stated that it should be assumed that the hypothetical beings using these frequencies have the means to turn entire solar systems into antennas.)

I'm thinking sub-Hertz (if that's even a technically correct term?) frequencies, like decihertz and below.

If there isn't, could someone offer a plausible name for such?

Thanks!

4

Or Kill Me / Reply to Emo Thread

« on: December 17, 2009, 12:35:44 pm »

This can be considered a response to Emo: The Symptom of our Decay started by JohNyx. If you haven't read it, go do so. It's a good read, IMO, and it's pretty much the entire thing that started my writing this.

I think it's important, first off, that I make it clear where I'm coming from. If you asked anyone who knew me IRL or had seen me on my cam before it broke horribly, the first word out of their mouths you'd get is "scene". Scene is an offshoot of emo that's less about discontent in general and more about giant egos* (if you go by JohNyx's philosophical interpretation of emo, which, as I'll get to soon, I don't really believe is a very good interpretation to begin with) and "having fun". Sort of subverting emo, in its own way. So I am kind of biased and I think that's important to keep in mind.

Why do I disagree with JohNyx's interpretation, though, aside from the obvious bias? Maybe it's because I speak from something of an inside stance.

Before I became "scene" (ironically, after dropping out of high school) I always hung out with the emo crowd even though I was a better fit for the metalheads (considering music tastes and fashion choices).The first thing I noticed was they were all friendly. Aside from being a little bit wary of speaking about their music around people outside of the clique they seemed generally like just introverted people with some shared interests. They were very loyal friends to each other (not really me, though that's my fault, I always seem to be an observer in any social situation and never even tried to remedy that in this case) and often helped each other out. Stereotypes I immediately noticed were wrong both previously had applied to goths. Hmmm. I saw very little poetry writing, in fact very little interest in artistic endeavours of any sort. None of them seemed particularly depressed and while there were two cutters in the bunch of ~30 or so people, I was assured that there were far more cutters among the nerdy kids.

Of the stereotypical fashion traits that JohNyx stated in his post, I noticed only 4 and except hoodies, they never applied to more than half the people (and it's worth noting that everyone outside of the emo clique wore hoodies too). The other three were black clothes, tight pants and black nails. Stars never even appeared once. I don't know if that's maybe a Mexico-only thing, though? There was also a more often-cited trait that most of them shared, the weird hair. But considering that JohNyx didn't mention that himself, I'll just let that go.

The music tastes were most surprising to me. There was the expected pseudo-punk and alt-rock, along with a lot of slightly unexpected but not completely out there pieces of punk awesomeness, like old AFI and etc. But some of the other common music choices were just odd. I found 8 kids without God Module on their MP3 players, and only 1 who wasn't a huge thrash metal fan.

I can't really speak on the topic of MySpace regarding emo kids, because (surprisingly) none of the ones I met had one. I actually never really had a reason to get a MySpace until I went "scene". From what I've seen of MySpace after I got one, the emo kid flying-camera picture has spread to all sorts. I won't deny it started there, though, the girls of the group were exactly the type I'd expect to do that shit. As for the girls wearing tutus and shit.. Uh, I never EVER saw anything like that on MySpace or IRL. I dunno why I haven't found it on MySpace because that's exactly the shit I'd expect to find there, but the girls IRL were all super-serious tomboys with egos the size of world superpowers. They weren't really the type who would act stupid and post it on the internet, all things considered. (The boys, on the other hand, couldn't be serious if you put a gun to their head and told them that you just got done murdering their entire family. They even made lame jokes while bitching.)

Now to move to the philosophical part. I mentioned that they were all relatively friendly people, with the obvious caveat of "so long as you don't approach them like a complete douchebag". I feel it's also necessary to mention that none of them really seemed to express the variety of "discontent" JohNyx paints them with. I never heard much railing against the system, or idealistic passions or the like. I most clearly remember, in fact, asking one of them when I was 15 (they were about the same) "Why would you want to become an engineer when you grow up?"

The only real thing attitude-wise that they all shared was the dreaded Special Snowflake syndrome, where they were all, if not the most important people in the world, at least entitled to whatever the hell they wanted. They never really flipped out or anything if they didn't get their way, but they sure bitched about it a lot. It was the main reason I didn't become a part of that group fully. I got the feeling that they were EXPECTED to bitch regularly, and I don't know WTF would have happened to me when it came my turn to bitch and I could only give a half-hearted "everything's sort of okay, except maybe I'm a little tired and stuff."

The big difference here is that when I read "discontent" I think Problems With Big Things. Bitching about the state of the world, the government, laws, or even just rules set by your parents. The complaining and bitching that took place here was below the level of the most minor of the First World Problems thread entries. "Can you believe it, my mom wouldn't get my the new iPod. She's terrible." Seriously.

I guess if that's the problem JohNyx has with them, that's great because no one likes a whiner. But I got the impression that his worst problem with them was that instead of doing something about what bothered them, they just sort of bitched about it and kept living. Considering the things being bitched about, I'm personally happy that they just kept living their lives. I can't imagine any good coming from an indignant 15 year old trying to show his mom what's what for not getting him an iPod.

To conclude, JohNyx fucked up by (from what I gathered) trying to view emo through the same lens as punk and goth: as a counterculture. And it just isn't a counterculture, it doesn't even try to look like one. It's a bunch of teenagers who want to look cool while swinging their egos around, and that's really it. (Regarding the music choices, I think what happened with the non-obvious stuff was people in that local circle already had those interests and they just spread them. In one of the other towns there was a huge country fandom among the emos, for example.)

I will admit I'm speaking entirely from personal experience in a very small segment of Western Pennsylvania, and that said experience is probably atypical. But somehow I doubt that emos ANYWHERE are pretending to give a shit about politics or the state of the world or really much of anything. The very name of the subculture (emo, from emotional) implies getting hyped up about just about everything. And all the little slights leave very little emotional energy to give a shit about civilization sliding into the gutter.




*-Actually, scene is an offshoot of emo that's less about big egos and more about flaunting your big ego as flagrantly as possible. If I ever start talking about how much cooler I am than everyone else and how anyone who doesn't agree is just jealous, shoot me.

5

Apple Talk / ATTN PD.COM: I'm losing it

« on: December 08, 2009, 10:13:59 am »

I've not slept in 24 hours. At least. I'm not really sure when I stopped sleeping and just starting staring with blank eyes at my slightly cracked door. And the dimly lit hallway, full of horrific things.

I don't even know what those things are, but I see them and hear them. And at first I thought it was just me, but then my family saw them. And then I thought living with me had drove them mad.

Then the sister's case manager saw them too.

There's several distinct ones. A faceless thing in a tuxedo that stands at the top of the stairs, half turned. A similar apparition in a dress that my sister has seen in her room. Something nameless that runs up and down the hallways, rattling the doorknobs only when everyone's doors are closed. A naked thing with nothing above the waist. A presence that exude pure, unadulterated panic downstairs. Black mists all through the halls but only when they're already sort of dark. And sounds all through the walls, all the time.

The one that gives off panic is in my room RIGHT NOW. My room is almost always safe. I can't sleep, I can't even lay down. I'm paralyzed with fear, back up against the wall, scared to turn my head too far to look at the computer screen in case I don't see SOMETHING IN FRONT OF THE DOOR that's only there for a split second. I can't even get up to open the window, even though I'm roasting in a poorly insulated house where the external temperature is approximately "frosty as Santa's balls". And the air here is so heavy I feel like I'm drinking it.

I can't stand this house. I have to sleep in the middle of the day, because when the lights are off and I can't beg someone to escort me around the house because they're all sleeping, I'm too scared to go down the stairs.

I'm frightened that my already tenuous grasp on sanity is slipping, and somehow I'm even hallucinating other people telling me this shit's happening. I don't want to believe in this sort of thing. I want to be coolly detached and say it's a track of the light or an overactive imagination or just the sleep deprivation getting to me. But I see it, and I hear it, and they tell me they see and hear it too. And right now, it's IN MY DAMN ROOM and there's another one rattling my doorknob like it wants in, and I hear yet another one moaning in the empty closet down the hall.

I don't know what to do. I don't even think I should be posting this here, but I'm panicking too much to not do it. I have to try and reach out and talk to living people, so I can imagine that this isn't real, or I really am going to lose my fucking mind.

6

Discordian Recipes / Salsa: the miracle food-product

« on: November 24, 2009, 01:44:29 pm »

Ah, the wonders of salsa. That reddish chip-sludge that so many people have eaten, little do they know of its many uses.

I can put this shit in ANYTHING and it makes it better. For example, try a salsa meatloaf sometimes. No, really. It is bright red all the way through and ridiculously delicious. I'm also well known among my friends and family for my awesome salsa-based hot pasta salad. Something that, though it is physically painful to stir, cannot be fucked up by even the worst cook on earth (i.e., me). I'll probably post a recipe sometime.

Oh, and I also mix this delicious pseudo-Mexican paste into macaroni and cheese. Not the box kind (though that is even made edible by salsa) but the oven kind. Fuck, I bet there's like, maybe 10 commonly-eaten foods that can't be improved with the addition of a half cup of goddamn salsa. And I bet they're all desserts or sandwiches.

Furthermore, there's usually a metric assload of salsa in my fridge at any given time. And if I can't find anything else to eat, you can be damn sure I can make a fucking awesome meal out of pasta and random shit we have in the cupboards.

Tl;dr, fucking salsa kicks ass.

7

Bring and Brag / ATTN: spags of all sorts

« on: November 09, 2009, 04:34:33 am »

I'm a game designer, as some of you no doubt know. And my first game's priorities have changed multiple times. I finally brought the expectations of my ally in design and I to a somewhat reasonable level however, and we want to do an iPhone game first.

Problem is that we lack everything we need. We're just designers.

We badly need a coder (ObjC knowledge required -- blame Apple) and an artist (either versed in extremely low-poly 3D or detailed 2D spritework) as well as a couple musicians -- preferably a celtic violinist/fiddler and a breakbeat/DnB producer. No doubt this is going to get a lot of "what do I get out of it", to which I will answer: your name in the credits and a large percentage (probably like 10%-25% per person, depending on the number of people involved) of the money that we get from sales. We're working literally on a zero-dollar budget, so we have nothing to offer until we make our first sale. Sorry.

Interested parties may contact me via PM. Thanks!

8

Or Kill Me / Current mood: APOCALYPSE

« on: August 03, 2009, 09:53:47 pm »

Oh, dear. Today, my anger has hit an all-time high.

I would like to posit that there is a girl who is beautiful, kind, intelligent, talented. But she's always depressed. Her neighbor, a mentally ill hermit, takes a liking to her. Her neighbor comes across a diary one day when she is upset, and reads it.

And this girl has written down her experiences in it. She has been beaten, raped, stolen from, her family beaten, her credit cards and bank accounts stolen and cleaned out, her friends lied to en masse via stolen cell phones, and in her last relationship of three years, was told that her partner never actually cared about her at all. All by people she dated.

And this mentally ill hermit can't help but think that THEY could do better than these so called normal human beings. You know, a great start being BASIC FUCKING RESPECT.

And so we have a mentally ill hermit, friends with this wonderful girl who is scared to death of them because of her past experiences. Scared that this person is another one in a long line of abusive "lovers", possibly worse due to their many psychological woes. Completely oblivious that they read her diary, that they know about her.

And what is the hermit feeling? Wrath of the fucking gods. Back the fuck up, Kali.

What the fuck is wrong with human beings? I used to be an altruist, but this one experience turned me into a complete misanthrope. This girl, if you met her you'd want to hug her. She's so sad, lonely and depressed, but has so many good qualities that it's difficult to understand why, or what thhe fuck possessed these "humans" to try and hurt her. To use TVTropes, kick the dog? These people microwaved the dog by impaling it on their high-powered satellite dish made of live babies.

I want everyone and everything to burn down. Bring me a fucking cosmic Hiroshima. PLEASE.

Or, of course, kill me.

9

Or Kill Me / On the Subject of "Muslim Massacre"

« on: June 15, 2009, 02:01:09 pm »

So today at TIGSource, an independent gaming forum full of developers, I run into a thread by the guy called Sigvatr, who created a controversial game called Muslim Massacre. The game, apparently, was decent enough. Nothing special, but not particularly horrible (from a gameplay standpoint, I personally find the subject matter pretty abhorrent). I haven't played it myself.

Anyway, the thread is entitled "Looking Back on Muslim Massacre". I was reading through, and the creator was such an enormous dickhead. I won't bother to reproduce his excuses here, but they basically boiled down to those "Discordians" that wanted on RFD, saying "nigger" to "remove the greyfaced taint" on the word.

"I'm a free thinker, durhurhur, watch me wave my metaphorical cock around and show off how much of a badass I am," in other words.

Anyway, TIGSource is a pretty nonconfrontational place. And i posted a rant, so I'll probably be banned, or at least suspended for this, but that doesn't particularly bug me. Backstory over: I'm going to link to the thread in question, and then reproduce my rant here.

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=6705.0

"

If people get upset, it's hard not to feel that they somehow deserve to be trolled.

Just like Mipey said: things going on in games are usually horrible. To me it's really scary that people get upset by this game but not by other games (mostly). If people think this is bad, but not other games, does that mean that they think everything going on in other games is A-OK?

I agree with this. Like I said when the game was first released, I found that it said more about videogames than it did about terrorism or racism. Even if Sigvatr rejects that interpretation it's still there.

This Is The Correct Moralcycle.

I find gamers to be horrible, horrible people who I personally dislike associating with. There's something disturbing about "HAHA I SET THAT GUY ON FIRE LOOK AT HIM RUNNING AND SCREAMING AND FLAILING," fictional character in a computer game or no. As games get more realistic, I begin to think killing people in games will no longer be a viable option for me, even reluctantly. As for those people who find hacking other human beings to bits enjoyable, even in a game... well, they scare me already. I avoid that sort of thing whenever possible and don't play games focused on it very often, exceptions given particularly to stuff too far over the top for anyone to take seriously.

Generally speaking, I guess I just find it more difficult to feel comfortable with a psychopath, whether or not they're only a psychopath in a game. I'm probably in the minority here, though.

Threadjack over.

Never played Muslim Massacre, but it seems like whatever the game is like, the creator has a serious ego problem. The sort of ego that belongs to a person who would, you know, make a game about a sensitive subject, seeing it as little more than a chance to swing his metaphorical dick around and show off how much of a badass free-thinker he is. Oh, and then laugh at the people who he KNEW would get upset about it.

Then; and this is the kicker, folks; rub this in the faces of the few people optimistic enough to assume he's not a terrible human being and had some kind of philosophical reason for making it, as opposed to at least making an ATTEMPT to hide that he made a huge dick-move. I suppose he gets points for honesty, if nothing else. Of course, this hypothetical person doesn't exist, and for this I am glad because I would hate to learn that I am a part of the same species as someone so self-absorbed as to treat other human beings as their own personal punching bags.

Before the "haha you got trolled" responses come in, this has nothing to do with the fact that the game consists of killing muslims. It has to do with the creator's reasons for making the game, which are pretty disgusting, in my honest opinion.

And before I turn my back on this thread forever, I'd like to note that until I ran into this, I thought -I- was an awful human being. I guess I have to start re-examining my spot in the monkey-hierarchy of the world.

That is all."

10

Think for Yourself, Schmuck! / A change of tone

« on: April 21, 2009, 09:34:11 pm »

I hate making new topics. I always feel like I'm going to piss someone off by stepping on their carefully arranged threads and end up with a pair of gardening shears jammed in my trachea, and maybe a spade in my face if the person in question was particularly fond of this patch of topics. But sometimes, risks must be taken, as when I find myself with a good idea and no one to help me with it.

I am not fond of the view that the BIP was too dark. Have you seen where you're living? The BIP was a shiny beam of hope through the black cloudy sky of bad shit followed by worse piss. Attempting to make the BIP more friendly is like attempting to make the PD more batshit bonkers -- it's pointlessly beating a horse that should have been ground to dust long ago, the only difference is in degrees. The world isn't all sunshine and lollipops, folks.

Rather than rant, I want to save my pent up rage and sarcasm for a completely new work. This is not a BIP revamp, in fact it's only tangentially related to that particular work. A short discussion with Cain led me to change my tune that it should be completely dark though. Rather, it should start quite nice, with lots of artificial lights, things that seem comfortingly true, then break the bulbs one by one to show the hideous spectre behind the shininess.

In my short discussion with Cain, I came to the conslusion that this would be best served by using the major arcana of the tarot as metaphors, and Silent Hill's dark/light dichotomy for inspiration on how to handle the reversals.

Problem is, I'm not happy. I can't possibly be happy with this fucked up shithole we live in. I can't SEE the lights everyone else does.

So I need one of you hippies to help me write this.

For the interested: You should expect to write either a full page or a half page for each and every one of the Arcana (one or the other for all of them), emphasizing the "good" qualities of each that discordians and other TFYS groups see. Even if you don't agree with those lights, write them as convincingly as possible. Obviously, I will accept only one person for this position depending on who I feel is most fit for it in terms of viewpoint -- that means cynical assholes may go elsewhere and gleefully await the final product.

For the argumentative: I am not doing this to cater to mooks who prefer to frolick with the fairies in the fields even as the excrement begins to hit the ventilator. My goal here is to present something that dispells illusions, encourages pessimism, and MAKES PEOPLE THINK. Luckily, I doubt this will be addressed to many people -- you lot all seem to encourage creativity, regardless of whether or not you agree with the intent.

Interested parties should have some form of IM client so I can discuss the idea with them while we're working on the thing. IRC works too. Not entirely necessary, but it'd be a big, big help.

Aaand I think that's all. Sorry if I came off as a cunt here, I'm channelling the pure distilled wrath of the gods and that comes with side effects.