Hey, LMNO...

[Phox]

There's that sound again. That low thrumming sound. Something is spinning. As it draws near, those who hear it cover their ears in pain, and hide themselves in the darkness it brings. The sweet, dreamless darkness. Then, when they are fully wrapped in the bliss of the dark web, the Spider moves on to the next one.

I don't know when I first became aware of the sound. I don't remember what it was like to go through life without the fear that the Spider would be coming or me next. And it has come for me.  I never intended to try to fight it. I just didn't want to get lost in that darkness, no matter how inviting it seemed. But running and fighting are the same. You can't run away forever, but there's nothing wrong with getting a good head start. You can't fight alone, but it will find you more quickly if you gather together.

Sometimes, you have to go towards the sound. That awful, awful sound. You don't want to, but if you don't, it will know you hear it. And then you will have to start running again. I'm so tired of running. The little strands of web that are still stuck in my hair are so warm, so inviting. But I remember the promises the darkness made, and I remember my friends who listened and are now nothing more than lifeless cocoons, dancing to the will of the Spider.

But maybe it's not so bad. Maybe everything is easier in the web. No worries, no cares. Just all the latest celebrity gossip, beamed directly to your brain. Isn't that what I want?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The Spider isn't a bad guy, he's just doing what WE paid him to do.  The public demanded shitty sitcoms, lethal fast food, crappy booze, porn, and those Goddamn Pills™, and The Spider merely delivered on the contract.  

That's the part Curly never understood, you see...If people didn't want these things, they wouldn't PAY for them.

And just what IS The Spider, anyway?  The corporate wizkids that analyze what we buy (My guess is they're doped up even worse than we are.)?  The factory stooge that actually makes the products?  The truck driver who delivers them?  YOU, THAT FUCKING PAYS FOR THEM?

When you want to know why things are so fucked up, why everyone spends all their time drooling into their laps while they watch "America's Got Talent" while they shovel McNuggets™ into their feeding tubes, don't bother The Spider, he's just holding up his end.  Instead, go into the bathroom and talk to the guy in the fucking mirror....He's just as responsible as anyone else.

And forget Curly.  He had all the wrong values, and he got what was coming to him.  The cunt.

Or Kill Me.

[Eater of Clowns]

I can't laugh from the nestled little spots in the web, can't mock and scream at their failure.  I loved that chittering rage they'd have when they saw they'd captured my body but hadn't broken my resistance, that time wears even their diamond strong strands.  Unthinking animals, being of malice but beings of instinct and no plans.  Instinct can be tricked.

That was until the day at the bar.  The table was littered with empty cups and the music played and the crowd roared in challenge and appreciation of it and this was my world.  Everyone always huddles at one end of the bar it seems, packing in shoulder to shoulder for their own medicines, their precious golden liquid pills.  I go to the far end, the one in the corner where there's that bartender who doesn't look at me funny when I order a bourbon neat and she's real damn sorry they're all out of glasses because she knows plastic is for the scum drinks.  Well, the other scum drinks.

It's darker there and somehow quieter, the far end.  I'm half way there and I see a fuzzy shape with its arms on the bar top and its other arms on the bar top and its eyes looking every direction of the compass and then two more.  Or I think I see it, knock back the bourbon, order another.  Then it's not staring everywhere it's looking over at me, casually leaning as though to engage me but waiting for my move.  Instinct, again, let the fly struggle its way deeper in as it fearfully throws about vainly stupidly desperately panicking.  I stare to its eyes to laugh, then, like I've been laughing since I knew it had me but it still wouldn't ever have me have me.

There's this pretty nurse I see walking into work a few days a week.  She's tall and she's blonde and, well, I don't know anything else about her.  Place like this beauty stands out though, goes a long way when all the walls are drab and all the people are prison people.  Prison people on both sides in different uniforms and me in my uniform just outside its walls and her in her scrub uniform.  A fresh face stands out and yeah, I'd notice her walking by as we both rushed in on our daily late schedules.  That's what I see in the Spider's eyes at the bar, at first, I see that nurse.  I'm still laughing and I'm still drinking to prove to the big bastard that I'm in control, not the booze and not the crowd that's stopped and keeps glancing at our little stare down.

Then another eye has me.  Me in one eye and that nurse in the other.  I'm sitting in our nice executive office chairs with the horrible lumbar support they provide and I'm me.  I'm me, there with two eyes on the screen and a two hands on the keyboard and always moving about to the other screen or the mouse or the pen.  And I'm moving faster and faster I must be busy, hustling around it must be a Monday when we get all the weekend paperwork because I'm a blur.  My eyes are on paperwork screen then they're on the radio screen and my hands are on the keyboard then they're on the mouse and the nurse is still walking in the other eye but she's walking in shorter strides now even though she's going faster, faster and gracefully and confidently.  My eyes are on the screen and they're on the other screen and they're on the keyboard and there's one on each mouse and there's another two working on papers all at once and does my skin look grey?  I know I'm hairy but not that hairy, and my eyes aren't that dark they aren't black and reflective.  Then there's that nurse in the Spider's other eye but she's straight skittering as she hits the doors, as she gets ready to hand out cups and cups and doses and doses of medications to the inmates, the stuff they crave and sometimes can't live without and sometimes can barely even live with and it's a con because a lot of them have the very same effects as the other stuff, that they're in for, in the syringes or the bottles or the pipes.

It's got four more eyes, the beast at the bar.  I'm not laughing anymore.  I've got this grin, this good trick you bastard but I've got some fight left kind of grin.  It's got four more eyes and I look at one.  There's my executive management track friend and he's putting down a sandwich at his desk to get more done and he's pushing it past big fucking dripping fangs.  I don't stay there long enough to see what's in the sandwich.  There's another eye and it's my claims adjuster friend, one hand on the phone and up by her face and the other five just dead bored by her side.  Two more eyes but it's enough because those images keep switching.  Friends parents strangers the bartendes the dj the guy in the bathroom the group of girls celebrating a friend's 21st and every driver passing by all at once.  Six eyes I can see all at once in my own six eyes.  Some of the images have fucking spider limbs like I saw on myself and on that nurse, but some don't.  I like the ones that don't, not because they're resisting and not because they're innocent and winning but because they look tempting.  They look like meat waiting for my attack, but better than the attack the trap I lay, the game I play in wait.  The feast will come later, and it won't ever end and it'll be just one of a thousand others by the time I die in body even if I can't in truth.  The feast will come later but now it's the chase, the game that I love to play because it's my own damn game and I can't lose it.  And I laughed.

That's when I heard the chittering.

The same chittering I used to hear as I laughed at them in my sticky little corner of the big web; the one that kept me from falling off the world again.

I stopped my chittering.  The Spider at the bar started its.  Turns out it isn't quite rage.

[BadBeast]

I don't remember when I became aware of them. I mean,  I always knew they were there, in a kind of   "Oh, there's a Spider"  way, but aware of them? Of what they are? What they do? The pills must have had something to do with it. But they keep me so 'happy' I find it difficult to focus on things like 'when' and 'why'. I know they watch everyting we do. Not just watch, like we would watch, but watch with eight eyes. They see so much more than we do.
They are watching out for me.
      And the way they wrap us up in threads, to keep us safe from falling, comforts me. But in an uncomfortable way. I feel the web vibrate, and I know the thing at the centre feels my unease. So I take another pill. Soothing vibrations reach me, and it says in that dry, yet somehow sibilant voice, that I've done the right thing. That things will soon be all better again.  But I'm not sure I believe it. "Yet" it says. I feel muted by the depth of love it has for me. The pills are just an expression of this love.
I feel safe, yet I sense danger, loved, yet unfulfilled. Why are there so many contradictions here, in this silky soft embrace? Why is nothing (except the pills, and the silkyness) permanent? Definite?
The things that used to hunt me, have all gone away. The fear, the disgust, all gone. Kept at bay by my protectors. They are jealous protectors, and will not tolerate interlopers. Predators.  That's why I feel so safe. It feels good not to be hunted.  Warm, and safe. Like a dream. But like a dream, I know there must be an awakening. ("The Pills", it says, more urgently)  The awakening will tell me why I no longer feel hunted.  Why I feel so safe. The awakening is what hunts me now. The pills are for my defence, for my safety. So I take another pill. But why do I still feel like Prey?

(MUST WAKE UP!) The feeding tubes suck the  thought away, almost before it registers. Almost. Wave after wave of silky soft love assauge me from every directions. My resolve to awaken fades to nothing as the pills start to kick in.  Reminding me not to worry.  Worry is for the Protectors. That's why they spin their threads, so we don't have to worry. That's why the pills reassure and relax me. That's why the threads cradle me. All safe. All safe again. Lulled back into the dream again, I sleep.

[Richter]

I worry sometimes.  OK, maybe I worry MORE than sometimes, but it keeps me sharp. 

I watch where the freedom^tm we had has been going, and why, and it makes me worry more.  Like BadBeast said, it's all pissed away into those threads.  They tie up folks, and all of a sudden they stop moving or communicating as much. 

"It's OK, I'm Safe^tm now."  is the refrain I hear, they they have to get home to watch CSI or Dexter.  Weird, I never heard people include a "^tm" when tehy used to speak, but I've started hearing it.  They're not safe in the classical meaning either, they're just coddled by legislation and limitation away from some horrible one - in a million shots that might hurt them.  The Mcnuggets, the Coke, and the cigarettes are doing worse to them, but they don't like hearing that.

They try to tell me I can be safe too, jsut shut up and be happy with the threads.  It's not freedom though, and that worries me. 

" 'Sup.", says the Spider, "You don't HAVE to worry you know.  Just ask.  We can help."

But that isn't help, and real freedom doesn't come with shackles, no matter how soft and stretchy it is.  Freedom has one cost, eternal vigilance.  Most people don't seem to want that though.  They want the security, the surrendering of their worries to someone who knows better.  Great.  Fucking GREAT, a whole future full of people bitchign for wellfare, (their personal wellfare, not the program), and expecting someone else to jsut hand it to them, a one size fits all spandex American Dream, made in China, and Sold out of Wal Marts.

I have to skirt and duct now, weaving around threads like it's a fucking jungle, trimming things out with a machete when I don't fit.  Ah crap, even HAVING a machete is a no-no now.  Pretty soon there won't even be room to duck and weave.  Before that happens though I'm certain someone will come around.  They'll decide I'm the wrong type, a malcontent who never wanted help, never wanted to play along.  One who wouldn't plug into the web and be Safe like all the other Good Citizens.  Danger to myself and others.

They won't want to hear that I'm OK accepting that I might endanger myself, that I'm OK beign repsonsible for my own life.  If I come withing 100 yards of one of the Safe ones the wrong way, thet's their excuse to put me down for the greater good.  I cannot be made safe becuase I was not made to be safe, and that Safe life is no life worth having.   Guess I'll be skirting the edges and running the hollows for awhile.  Nothing short of taking down the web is going to change that.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Nothing short of taking down the web is going to change that.

Do that, and you can start counting the megadeaths.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Bump for re-reading tonight, prior to sitting down and listening to the latest updates.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

OoooOOOOOOooooooh . . . 

[LMNO]

It takes a bit of a jump in the late teens. Just letting you know.

[Doktor Howl]

Hard to believe this was posted 2 years ago.

[LMNO]

Hard to belive I haven't finished the audio side of this, given two years.

[Doktor Howl]

Hard to belive I haven't finished the audio side of this, given two years.

How much more is left?

[LMNO]

Well, I've done 18, so... I think I'm slightly more than halfway done.  I need to get cracking.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Hard to believe this was posted 2 years ago.

Oh wow.

Good bump, though. I think I'm going to make a point of re-reading this, the BIP, and maybe some other stuff that's on the Reading List (http://www.principiadiscordia.com/list.html). See if it kindles anything new worth talking about in my head.

[LMNO]

Bump for hunter.