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The Audio Book of the Dead, Chapter 1 SUBMISSIONS

Started by The Good Reverend Roger, February 01, 2010, 04:43:04 PM

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LMNO

The revolution will probably be televised.



The revolution will be born in some stoner,Äôs basement.  The revolution will be an ongoing prank in History class.  The revolution will not be defined.  The revolution will be acknowledged with a quiet nod.  The revolution will gain momentum.

The revolution will be identified by recent college grads with Graphic Design and Marketing degrees burning holes in their pockets.  The revolution will be pitched to CEOs of multinational corporations.  The revolution will be analyzed, autopsied, sliced, diced, and stuck to corkboards with pushpins.  The revolution will be cleaned up, polished, waxed, packaged, and tied in a nice bow.

The revolution will be leaked to the media.  The revolution will show up on the catwalks of Paris, Italy, and Japan.  The revolution will have its own burger.  The revolution will have its theme song in heavy rotation on MTV.  The revolution will be on Leno, Letterman, Conan, and The Daily Show.  The revolution will turn down an appearance on Carson Daly.

The revolution will be sold at Hot Topic.

The revolution will be identified as a ,Äútrend,Äù by CNN.  The revolution will be reported on by self-proclaimed Experts In The Field.  The revolution will be blamed for teen pregnancy.  The revolution will be synonymous with the ,ÄúTwinkie defense,Äù in courts of law.

The revolution will host a concert series to help the homeless.  The revolution will be managed by financial advisors, lawyers, ad agencies, and media planners.  The revolution will be publicly traded in the stock market.  The revolution will be remixed by P. Diddy and released exclusively on iTunes.

The revolution will have sub-genres.  The revolution will suffer an anti-revolution backlash.  The revolution will appear on an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger.  The revolution will generate buzzwords that will be used by your parents trying to sound hip.  The revolution will be in a Cadillac commercial.  The revolution will be adopted by pre-pubescent girls trying to act ,Äúgrown up,Äù.

The revolution will be derided by Bill Mahr, Rush Limbaugh, & Al Franken.  The revolution will be mocked by Jon Stewart, Steve Colbert, and Tina Fey.  The revolution will appear on Best Week Ever.  The revolution will become an automatic punchline.  The revolution will be relegated to a question in the next edition of Trivial Pursuit.

The revolution will be televised.  After all, there's market share to consider.

LMNO

Jack felt his knees pop as he knelt by the window. He figured he could jimmy the lock from the outside and they could make their way to the inner sections through the net of underground connections connecting the buildings together.  As he eased the wire picks into the mechanism, he wondered if it were this easy to pick into someone's brain.

It could be easy.  All you needed was to find a weak or fragile frame, and then just apply the right pressure in just the right place.  Now that doesn't mean you can just shove it in; that's a direct way to a brain collapse; plus, if there's any kind of security, they'll come running in quick, and then you're fucked.  No, what you wanted was a subtle slip, a knife's edge into the space.  Something simple.  Something they'll agree with.  That's how you do it.  Then, once you get inside, you can start to move around.  Find other agreeable things.  But the magic was, you didn't even have to find things they agreed with.  Once you were inside, no one ever noticed the damage you could do.

It was like people had this heavy security wall that only looked out.  They were incredibly skeptical about what was on the outside; that was part of the inertia; it just kept on going, blasting down the outside ideas.  Criticizing and shooting them down for any number of reasons, real or imagined.  But if something got in, then it was like they had a backstage pass at the Republican National Convention: Never questioned, never accused, never doubted.  You were home free.  So, first thing, get in.  From there, you can start spreading, like some horrifically welcomed cancer.  And oh, the things you can do.

See, most people aren't aware of how fragile their own ideas really are.  They flit about inside the compound, only bumping into their own kind, agreeing with themselves constantly, and when this goes on long enough, they think they're strong, and assured, and righteous.  But what happens when someone gets inside without their noticing?  Yeah.  Those pretty butterflies of ideas can get clipped so easily. Just... turn them a little.  One dark idea can be like a reverse lamp, all the pretty flitting things don't get drawn to it, they turn away, they turn themselves, they turn into, they begin to become like that dark idea.  They reflect.  Once the dark idea is in there, they start to push a little.  And all the flitting ideas agree with each other, so somehow, they have to agree with the dark idea, no? 

And here's where the dark rationalization comes in.  The immense power of those damn frontal lobes can turn piss into wine.  Anything can become anything else, if you just give it a little time and a push.  That little idea, that tiny, fragile thing, it so wants to be included in the greater picture, it wants to be part of the whole. But it sees that strong, dark thought and idea, and that idea is nudging.  Why not? Why not become part of a larger idea?  There's some sense in what they're saying, after all, no reason you shouldn't go along with it. 

And all the while, the perimeter guards stand silent.  After all, their job is to fight off outside concepts.  All the difficult "mental" stuff happens on the inside, their job is just to keep stuff out.  There's not upper level thinking going on here.  They can't tell the difference between an idea that they started with and one that was snuck in.  So when all the beautiful Moon Moth thoughts become flopping vultures, they start giving orders.  To the guards.  Of course, the guards don't question anything coming from the inside, they only question what's on the outside, yeah?  So, slowly but surely, the guards start guarding against what used to be on the inside, and they keep safe what they used to repel.  And that's all there is to it.  The outside comes in.

But that doesn't account for the subversion through immersion that happens so often.  You take a person who thinks one thing, and then you put them in an environment where every other person they talk to thinks the opposite.  All day long, they're inundated with the same message; but not confrontational.  A confrontation sets those guards up, and protects the flitting thoughts.  No, the conversion by immersion happens when it's not even discussed.  The constant opinion without rebuttal.  It just lives in the environment.  The guards, ordered to keep watch over differing opinions, eventually just accept it as part of the background noise.  It becomes accepted as normal, and then it gets inside.  And without even knowing it, you've become something other than you ever thought you could be.

So, with all of this, all of this mechanical, insidious, unthinking, unfeeling process, where so called "free thinking" people are forced to obey decades old rules they didn't even know they were signing up for, and don't even know how to change it, how the hell do you compete with something like that?  By turning the guards around, and by pointing them inside your own head.

Instead of questioning every outside thought that you encountered, you need to question every thought you've ever had.  Become a butterfly collector.  Nail those fuckers to a board and study them.  Where did your thoughts come from?  What did you experience that caused you to think like that?  And lastly, do you really agree with it, or after breaking it down, does it just not add up?  When you start thinking like this, that what you are is a combination of your environment and the feedback loop you have with your environment.

Dimocritus

This is my favorite peice I've posted here. It didn't make it into intermittens but I'd like it to go somewhere, and I think this might actually be a better place for it. It needs a home! Let me know what you think

Quote from: dimo
The Jar Was Empty
By Dimo, TTLC

They set you up, you know. The Big Man in Charge, he couldn't cut it, so he made you a scapegoat. Sure, it was presented as a gift, but who gives gifts like this without an ulterior motive?

"Don't press the shiny, alluring red button, Lil' miss." Yeah, we all know how that always ends up. Yes, they set you up, threw you right under the bus. Someone needed to take the fall, and you better believe it wasn't going to be the Big Man in Charge. He needed to stick around. Who else was qualified for the continuous distribution of Hellfire and Damnation? I mean really qualified.

So you pressed the big red button. You opened the jar. Now, they say you released these terrible things to plague humanity. They took advantage of your natural inquisitiveness, made not only a scape goat of Woman, but of all of us that share that same natural curiosity. "What makes this work?" "Why does this happen?" Don't ask now. The Big Man in Charge won't answer. Not only does he not want you to know, but he's not all that sure himself.

There's good news to be had here, however. I'll let you in on a little secret.

The jar was empty.

Those terrible, terrible plagues that you, supposedly, let loose on mankind were already there. They were never in the jar in the first place. They just wanted you to believe that, so you would take responsibility for what they have done.

No, the jar was empty. (except for maybe a couple of those springy snake things that hide in a can of peanuts on occasion). Completely empty. Not only were all those baddies not in there, but hope itself was absent as well. Don't worry, though. Hope was never what The Big Man in Charge chalked it  up to be. Hope is what keeps people from actually doing something about it. "I hope, someday, to achieve" can now change to "I will achieve." "We must keep hope alive for a better future" changes to "We can create a better future." Hope is a nice, warm pillow that can only help you while you're lying down and defensless. But it's OK now, because now we know that the jar was empty.

I also think this could be used if it got tightened up a little.

Quote from: dimoWhen I was young, chronologically speaking, I used to consider myself a catholic. My parents were catholics, as was most of the rest of my family (not to mention that those of my family that were not catholics were talked about unfavoably while they weren't around) and, so far as I knew, so was the rest of the world. It seemed to make sense. At the time. However, fact and history painted a much different picture, so, as far as I could deduce, there was only one logical step to take. And, while I still had things similar to faith and spirituality within me, I left the church.

For a time, I considered myself a punker, and by extention, a musician, a real rebel's rebel. Over time, I started more than a few bands, and proceeded to turn my school into a zoo of howling lunatics. While punk asked a lot of questions, it offered little in the way of answers. Punk, itself, is paradoxical, it exists through non-existence, and furthermore, was treated as a pop-culture fashion, and was stripped of most, if not all, validity. So, while I may retain a rebellious streak and play in a punk-style band, I left the scene.

For another moment in time, I considered myself smart. Could you blame me with so many cabbages walking about disguised as people? It's an easy thing to do when you deny that there are some truly intelligent people on this planet, which I did. But, considering myself smart, I had no other options but to recognize and accept my own sheer average-ness. Now, still concerned with seeking knowledge, I left that false comfort behind.

At other times, I had considered myself either "single" or "taken," choosing to be either in a relationship or not. Only to come to realize that I am not alone, and I do not belong to anyone. So, while I cherish and enjoy the relationships I have with friends, I could no longer be bothered by the "status" of said relationships.

Just recently, I considered myself a Discordian. A "really real" Discordian. The humor, the subversivity, the pseudo-religious attributes harmonized with many things from my past. It got me off of my ass and taught me how to be active in what I beleive. It taught me that new ideas and technology were not things to be shunned. But, just like my first delusion, if it's taken too seriously, it starts to become things that it was never intended to be. So, while I still love a good posterGASM, (un)friendly debate and the introduction of new ideas, I cannot truly say that that is what I am, the whole of my being.

So, here I am, emptying my head. And it could be said that I'm not really, fully, anything anymore.

And I like it.
HOUSE OF GABCab ~ "caecus plumbum caecus"

Cainad (dec.)

I shall now commence polluting this project with my awful scribblings:

QuoteThe Iconoclast's Manifesto

   We reserve the right to hold heretical viewpoints that you find abominable. We hold true that anyone who feels justified in attacking an individual because they have an unpopular opinion can fuck off and die.

   We identify ourselves by our willingness to challenge the accepted dogma, theory, doctrine, or paradigm regardless of the consequences to our social status. We acknowledge that the positions we take may result in our being subjected to more intolerance than conventional wisdom would suggest is wise, but we find ourselves refuting conventional wisdom remarkably often.

   While we generally try to take positions that are based on reasoned arguments, empirical evidence, historical precedents, or any combination thereof, we reserve the right to play devil's advocate just to piss you off and destroy any notion you might have that your ideas are universally applicable.

   We acknowledge that the original use of the term iconoclast specifically refers to the destruction of religious icons, but we may choose to attack cherished beliefs relating to anything, including but not limited to politics, art, religion, philosophy, and identity.

   We reserve the right to change or violate the terms of this manifesto as the individual iconoclast deems fit.

   We reserve rights, period.

Quote from: http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=17054.msg556425#msg556425
BIP in unrhymed verse

Do you know where you are?
These four walls, this ceiling, this floor?
This is your life. This is your cell.
Welcome to your Black Iron Prison.

Don't panic, you're not here to be punished.
You were born here.
This is your cell. This is your life. This is all you know.

Beneath you, you can see the floor made by your parents and teachers.
To your left and right, society, media, and your peers make two walls.
Above you, there is a ceiling just barely too high to touch: these are your dreams.
Behind you, the darkest shadows are cast on the third wall, the wall made by your fears.
The light shines through the bars in front of you, through the fourth wall.
But this wall is not a wall. The bars are different, somehow.

These six sides hold you in, safe within a tiny cell of truth.
Take hold of the bars; feel the cold, Black Iron.
What are these bars? Why are they different from the other five sides?

You made these bars.
The light shines through them, but still they hold you in as surely as a solid wall.
They are your beliefs, your thoughts, your identity.
Every time you tell yourself, "I am this, I am that, I am not these other things," you create
another bar.
The stronger your beliefs, the stronger the bars become.

You can break some of those bars, if you choose.
If you are not afraid.
Or you can build more bars, making them thicker and closer together.
It doesn't matter which beliefs make the bars; they all block the light.

Quote from: Cainad on October 31, 2009, 12:59:45 AM
Missing: One Child Prophet and a Wise Tiger

You know who I miss the most? Calvin. I grew up with Calvin; he was always six years old but he was always older than me. He was a child sage, and I didn't always understand him but we had lots of fun together, Calvin, Hobbes, and I. He knew from the very beginning that school was there to beat his mind into shape, and he rebelled not only by outright refusal to be contained, but by shaping parts of his mind before those parts could be squeezed into public school molds. He knew, like all children know, what it means to have a good time, but he knew it consciously at such a young age. What's more, he laughed in the face of anyone who tried to tell him differently, right before dropping a water balloon on their head. Calvin knew the TV was there to satisfy the sweet tooth of the mind, and he let it work its glittering magic on him every once in a while, but it never really got to him. Partly, this was because he knew what exactly it was doing, and partly because of Hobbes.

I miss Hobbes too. Hobbes knew what fun was just as well as Calvin did; sometimes he knew it better. He was a voice of reason, but never too much reason. Just enough to keep Calvin from riding that wagon over too high of a cliff, just enough to make sure that chucking water balloons and snowballs was always more fun than the TV. Hobbes was there to put a jolt of Life back into Calvin's existence at the end of the daily public school slog.

But Calvin's gone now. I don't know where he went or what he does now, but I think he may have grown up. He probably didn't mean for it to happen; it probably snuck up on him when he wasn't looking. Once he grew up, he stopped really being Calvin, you know? And the worst part is, growing up was the only thing Hobbes couldn't save him from. Without the real Calvin, Hobbes is just a stuffed tiger, and without the real Hobbes, Calvin can't be the real Calvin we all knew. It took both of them to survive in this world, and if we had them here today they'd know how to deal with the ever-growing weirdness and sickness of our society and they'd show us all how it's done.

But one cannot exist without the other, and now they're both gone. Maybe if we could find them they'd tell us how to find Curly.

I sure do miss them.

Quote from: Cainad on November 08, 2009, 08:09:03 PM
The Worms and Their Little Blue Pills

There are worms in my brain. I don't know when exactly they got in there, but they've been there for quite some time now. My thoughts flow through the tunnels the worms have burrowed through my gray matter, and they themselves sometimes carry my thoughts around. But these worms are not very efficient for my purposes, partly because they squirm around randomly and partly because they have no goal in mind towards which to work efficiently.

Of course they have nothing in mind, they're worms, damn it! They are what's in my mind; pay attention to the metaphor!

Anyway, the workings of the worms are not conducive to getting things done. Trying to direct them so that my thoughts flow smoothly and directly towards a certain goal is like, well, it's like trying to herd a bunch of damn worms. They don't pay attention to anything but wriggling and burrowing. But that's what the pills are for, these little blue pills.

The pills do something I've never been able to do: they force the worms to line up in neat little rows and march in time to the tune of whatever goals I set. How worms can be made to march without feet I don't know, but they're marching all right. In spit-shined jackboots, no less. With the pills controlling the worms, I become a machine. A powerful, efficient machine that runs smoothly as a dream on lubricated bearings. The pounding march of the worms makes sure the trains of my thought all run on time, and the jackboots stamp out errant or unwanted thoughts with hardly a sound. For a few hours, everything runs better than ever before, better than it should. For a few hours, I am effective. Then the pills wear off.

When the pills start to wear off, I can't keep the worms in line anymore. But the damning thing is that they keep on marching around in jackboots. With no more rhyme or reason guiding them they stomp all around my brain, trampling everything and my trains of thought go flying off the tracks. I become the machine with half of its bearings taken out, rattling and screeching, performing its tasks with grinding, noisy hesitancy. Everything inside and outside my head becomes a disordered mess and I know that at any moment I might truly begin to laugh and laugh and laugh until I realize I'm screaming.

Finally, the jackbooted feet the worms never had in the first place wear off and they go back to wriggling and burrowing. I am no longer the machine, and I can rest until I need to be effective again.

hooplala

ABOUT THE CRUMBS

This is about insignificant crumbs of nothing.

You are an insignificant crumb of nothing. Your size, when compared with the sheer vastness of our known universe, is roughly that of an atom floating next to the island of Manhattan. We -you, me, everyone you've ever met- are all insignificant crumbs of nothing. If you could get a bird's eye view of our entire universe, the vast collection of billions of interstellar shopping malls, you wouldn't even be able to see our galaxy, the Milky Way. Neither would you see any of our neighboring galaxies, or even the large cluster of galaxies we reside inside; no, we are truly cosmically insignificant.

But, we are conscious. At least, we think so. Possibly, just possibly, the only conscious beings in the entire universe as unlikely as that seems. And each of us; you, me, your mother, that dog down the street, are all composed of atoms created in the Big Bang. We are all the same age, and we are all made up from what was once smaller than the head of a pin. You, your potted fern, and a stapler are all essentially the same.

Think about that.

YoYo, for an insignificant crumb of nothing, certainly took being evicted from his crumb of an apartment quite seriously. He was pissed off as he ran with his tacky turtle-shell suitcase to catch the crumb known locally as the Queen Streetcar.

As he ran to the streetcar, a large red star in a relatively nearby galaxy winked out for the final time, and collapsed upon itself, sucking everything -even rays of light- within millions and millions of miles into the hole it left behind. This star kicking the proverbial bucket would not be visible to people on Earth for six million years.

YoYo had no idea the star even existed.

Three large galaxies on the opposite side of the universe were swallowed up by a gargantuan super-galaxy which was spinning out of control, destroying stars and planets like a child destroying ants.  YoYo was only aware of one other galaxy, our nearest neighbor, Andromeda, which will eventually collide with our galaxy, forming a super galaxy of our own. Perhaps, we too will careen out of control gobbling up star cities for the rest of time. Think of it as something to look forward to.

YoYo knew he had to find a place to stay, and at the same time was vaguely aware the universe was expanding, but had no idea that the more it expanded the faster it traveled.  He had no idea that our 'Big Bang' was, in fact, the fifth big bang.  The universe had been expanding and collapsing on itself for a googol's worth of years.  Or maybe a googol's googol. Or a googolplex. At any rate, it's been a while.  YoYo had no idea this was the fifth try at a universe anymore than he was aware that he'd existed since the very first big bang.  And, so have you.

Happy Birthday.
"Soon all of us will have special names" — Professor Brian O'Blivion

"Now's not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns." — Bob Dylan?

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
— Walt Whitman

Eater of Clowns

Picking Out My Fucking Eyes

I'm sitting at my work station, which I will swear to you is not a cubicle as it only has two sides, every few minutes interrupting my typing or reading for my hands to gravitate to my face and make some minor adjustment.  Maybe it's a piece of skin I can just feel is falling off or an imaginary itch around my eyes, or a real itch born from staring at two screens two feet apart.  Maybe when I start towards my ears it's to reach in and pull out the drums that hammer from listening to four phones, four radio channels, an ancient dot matrix printer that conveniently lets us know whenever a child goes missing or police are after, say a suspect in a 1995 Ford F150, then that lovely satellite television behind me that goes into a hidden expense pocket in our budget so nobody knows just how cushy their dispatchers have it.  My hands gravitate towards my mouth of their own accord, maybe to pry my jaw unclenched so my teeth don't shatter from the pressure I put on them to cease the vibrations coming from everywhere else or to gnaw my fingers to nubs so I can't type as fast and I have an excuse to slow the fuck down.

The point is that I've known this forever, this sick ritual, this preening bird behavior that doesn't stop until the crazed winged demon renders itself clean of all feathers, naked to the elements, shivering and fussing over down that isn't there.  Then this weekend it stopped.  We were in a cabin on the lake with no running water and no toilet.  Now maybe I stopped picking out my eyes because had it followed a trip to the outhouse I would be in a world of discomfort.  My hands were unrecognizably caked with layers of bacon fat, spilled booze, ash, rodent feces, dust, flies, rodent remains, egg, human urine, saliva, and regular ol' dirt until I knew them as some foreign appendage, a gross tentacular amalgamation of the disgusts of the civilized world.  These wonderful horrors didn't grip the wheel of my beat up shitty car and they didn't wrestle with keys in the lock to my place.  They held paddles and stoked flames and the handles of hatchets and kukris.  But they didn't touch my face.

We rode back on a day so beautiful we would all happily have sacrificed the time from our lives to have experienced it even if we had a choice in the matter.  In the fashion of many an outing such as this I lay doubled over in the back seat to avoid the eye contact with a horizon that would inevitably attack a gut bruised by a shade too much liquor.  By the time I got to my own car my phone had turned itself on, a betrayal I'm sure on the part of my hands, which promptly upon its familiar and hated vibration in the right front pocket of my jeans brought my stubborn, wretched fingers to my face.  Something needed adjusting.
Quote from: Pippa Twiddleton on December 22, 2012, 01:06:36 AM
EoC, you are the bane of my existence.

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on March 07, 2014, 01:18:23 AM
EoC doesn't make creepy.

EoC makes creepy worse.

Quote
the afflicted persons get hold of and consume carrots even in socially quite unacceptable situations.

Fredfredly ⊂(◉‿◉)つ

#36
do you accept pictures?


edit: fixt somethin

Rumckle

Regarding Employment and My Student Debt

Quote from: Rumckle on October 27, 2009, 01:00:29 AM
You need to get a good job. You need a good job so you can afford that new TV. The one with the 150" screen, and the surround sound that will make your ears bleed. You need that TV so you can forget how shit your job is. And your job is shit, but you can't quit it, otherwise they might repossess your TV. Then what will distract you from how shit your job is?

I wish I was immune to this cycle but, alas, I am not. Last time I checked I was about ten grand in debt. I've never owned a credit card, never got a mortgage, never bought a car, but I'm still in debt.

Why? Well, I'd like to think it was because I am learning all of this neat stuff, and I am, but that's not the reason. If I just wanted to learn something I could do it for free. No, the reason I am in debt is to get a little piece of paper. A special piece of paper which says that I get to earn a slightly better wage. So I can get a slightly bigger TV, and go somewhere slightly further away on my annual two week vacation.

But once you have that nice piece of paper, and a good job, it''s not over, there are still things to learn. For example, you need to learn to like the taste of arse, because you are going to be kissing a lot of it. You need to kiss arse because if you kiss arse you will get a promotion. And if you get a promotion you can buy an even bigger TV. You'll need that bigger TV to relieve the stress of having to get a promotion.

But that's not all you get, promotions bring other benefits too. If you get a promotion you may get to move up a floor, and you definitely want to move up a floor. Not because the views are nicer (though that is what they will tell you) but because a higher floor means you are further from the ground. It means you have further to fall when you are tired of your job and want to retire.

SPLAT!
It's not trolling, it's just satire.

Doktor Howl

Molon Lube

Richter

#39
Elmo was scared.  Always was.
Jim's idea, bringing him in, was to have an infantile figure, someone the kids in the audience could project or relate too.  Big Bird didn't quite fill the niche, anyone who ever saw him on a rampage would agree, he'd never REALLY empathize with kids, and aside from that he was damned BIG.  Towered over the adults.  (more about that later)  Telly and Harry Monster, same sort of issue, and good luck getting kids to empathize with a Snuffleupagus (human / monster rights connotations aside.)

So Elmo was always small, meek, and polite.  Had some sort of bone condition that kept him laid up for year, so he knew how to get in with people or groups and have fun when the opportunity arose.  Sort of like an army brat.  When he was good to play or run, he'd play and run.  Figured out quick that bitchign about his leg hurting wasn't going to keep things happening.  It made him nervous though, he caught a green stick fracture when he careened into Harry once, and got a sense of just how vulnerable he really was.  Harry felt terrible, but really he was just standing there.  Isn't his fault he's better built than most retaining walls.  

Jim talked it over with Elmo, and got him in better spirits about the whole thing, but it wasn't something the little red guy could forget.  He had plans for Elmo too, growing and developing, building his character up to reflect how he got stronger himself.  Well, when we lost Jim, that all went down the shitter.  Again, the producers trying to keep it all up didn't see an overall plan for Elmo, they just wanted the Elmo effect as long as the Elmo effect would sell.  (It went that way with a lot of things, but they never saw the long view, the changing, developing themes, or variety of abstracts like Jim worked.)  This meant Elmo had to stay like he was.  
Small, weak, nervous.  

They got him this "Dietician" to start.  Some overly energetic new age type, lots of BS about certain eating practices or "Energy Therapy".  Elmo, after all these years should be Harry's size, but that's kind of hard when your diet leaves out calcium or proteins.  The little dude said he was nervous too, so they got him a therapist.  "Therapist", in their vocab, meant a "Nice" person from the same group they hired to work over Cookie Monster.  This pseudo legal shrink never laid a hand (or taser) on Elmo though, and never had too.  He just made sure Elmo stayed scared.  Started with the incident, and played up his vulnerability from there.  Told him he had to stay "Safe".  Then he gave him a bunch of Dickens books with the last chapters cut out, and prison movies.  Then there was the diet, only fish oil every other day, I don't think I need to describe the smell.

Yeah, Elmo was a wreck after that.  He could still get up and act, but after that he'd scuttle off, scared that someone might rape him.  The producers tried to ask Harry to menace him a bit, being the natural one to play off the seat of Elmo's fear.  Terry wouldn't have it though.  He respected Elmo, even though he was never as tough or active, he liked the little red guy's spirit.  No coincidence, this was about when Harry started getting less airtime...

Elmo though, the fans ate up.  It kept going for years.  He was an icon, a star, his own segments, shows, specials....and nothing but a life of craven neurosis out of it all.  Even the "Tickle me Elmo", which made him a mint and a half in royaties, terrifed him.  The idea of being mercilessly tickled just about made him comatose.  He was like a goddamn child emperor, still is maybe, for as long as it lasts him.  I hope it doesn't becasue it's the worst thing that ever happened to him.

Edit: grammar, courtesy of P3nt.
Edit2: Harry Monster's name.
Quote from: Eater of Clowns on May 22, 2015, 03:00:53 AM
Anyone ever think about how Richter inhabits the same reality as you and just scream and scream and scream, but in a good way?   :lulz:

Friendly Neighborhood Mentat

Doktor Howl

Molon Lube

LMNO


Richter

Thanks.  Took me awhile to get all the stuff together.
Quote from: Eater of Clowns on May 22, 2015, 03:00:53 AM
Anyone ever think about how Richter inhabits the same reality as you and just scream and scream and scream, but in a good way?   :lulz:

Friendly Neighborhood Mentat

P3nT4gR4m


I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

Richter

Quote from: Cramulus on April 16, 2010, 04:53:13 AM
From the Om Nom Nomicon

I. The Spagan Text
   Hearken, and Remember!

   In the Name of ST. GULIK, Remember!
   In the Name of CASH MONEY, Remember!
   In the Name of RICHARD NIXON, Remember!
   When on High the Heavens had not been named,
   The Earth had not been named,
   And Naught existed but the Seas of FAIL,
   The Original Gangsta,
   And FAT BLACK WOMAN, the Original Gangsta
   Who bore them all,
   

I just saw this and it cheered up a blah afternoon.  :mittens:
Love the riffing off of the Simon Necronomicon.
Quote from: Eater of Clowns on May 22, 2015, 03:00:53 AM
Anyone ever think about how Richter inhabits the same reality as you and just scream and scream and scream, but in a good way?   :lulz:

Friendly Neighborhood Mentat