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If you think it's appropriate to die or kill for your beliefs then, as far as I'm concerned, the universe would be better off without you. Better to see your atoms and molecules put toward something productive. A shot of medicine, some food, hell, even a Britney Spears CD ... anything, other than the slavering pile of flesh that sits there, in the corner, talking to it's imaginary friend and ticking, like some kind of retarded fucking timebomb.

You are pointless! And worse than that, you're a pain in the fucking arse. So now some fucking complete idiot, who has seen what your kind of disconnection from reality can lead to but, ironically, doesn't make the connection between your delusion and his, has set fire to some paper, and you think the appropriate response is to kill people? No! If you were even slightly worthy of using up the precious oxygen you do, you'd be laughing at him, like the rest of us - there's a fucking tube who really believes there's a giant invisible fuckhead, casting spells on us from somehwere in the sky and judging our perfomance against some kinda cosmic scorecard.

Your burning book? Is it a "religion of peace"? That whole concept is irrelevant. It's a religion. It's a means to control fucking idiots like you. If I want you to live in peace and be nice to each other then, as your priest, that's what I'll order you to do. If, however, I want to see you cutting the heads off infidels in the name of the wee baby whatever the fuck, then you'll be knee deep in righteous carnage before you can say a hail Gandalf.

It's a drug. It's your disconnect from reality, right? Admit it. it's mostly harmless because, like every other drug, the majority don't get hooked on it. Your average punter might go out, on a weekend, and shoot some alcohol or some X or some Charlie, right? They don't got a problem with it. Just like talking to giant people who aren't really there. Most people just pop on down to the Lord and Zombie, once a week and sing and dance and forget about the real world, right?

Then there's your junkie. The one who spends more time listening to the voices inside his head than the ones outside. This guy's binges have cost him his wife, his family, his friends, his job... This dude is strung out on this shit and he'll rob and kill to support his habit. This guy needs locked up and cured. Or, if he really belives in dying for his creator, maybe he ought to be granted his dream. Can't say I've got a problem with that. "Would you die for your god?", "Yes", "Bang"...

"How then to enforce peace? Not by reason, certaintly, nor by education. If a man could not look at the fact of peace and the fact of war and choose the former in preference to the latter, what additional argument could persuade him? What could be more eloquent as a condemnation of war than war itself? What tremendous feat of dialectic could carry with it a tenth the power of a single gutted ship and it's ghastly cargo.

So then, to end the misuse of force, only one solution was left, force itself."

-- Isaac Asimov


Here comes the war. Same as it ever came. Same as it always will. Here's why it like that and here's why it'll never change - violence is the only way to get shit done. Sure you can have committees and sure you can ratify and object and campaign and demonstrate peacfully. You can do all that shit and it'll work out just fine for you. Right up until the opposition pulls a gun.

War trumps democracy - Election results unsatisfactory? Military coup ahoy. War trumps capitalism - We don't like your prices, we're taking your country. Hell, war even trumps religion, that other great control mechanism. The power of god kneels before overwhelming firepower.

But isn't it wrong to fight? Didn't we all learn that violence is no way to sove a problem? Those nice people told us that, the ones who won the last war, by stamping on the heads of anyone who disagreed until the blood of dissent was washed away by the rain. Yes they told us that. They fucking had to. If we found out the truth we'd destroy them in a heartbeat. But we wont find out the truth. We're too fucking stupid to see it even when they wave it in our faces daily.

We killed Saddam and took his country. We're setting up a no-fly zone in Libya. Whenever there's a problem that isn't solvable by any of the "legitimate" means of problem resolution, they send in guys with huge fucking guns to employ the method that "solves nothing". I smell a rat. And if I can get enough firepower together I'll kill it. Til then I'll look over my shoulder and I'll watch my back, for smart, intelligent bipeds, who know the best way to earn an honest dollar is to prize it from my cold dead hands.

Your current avatar. Badwrong. Cease and desist, damnit! 

If one were inclined to do so I believe it would be possible, using this newfangled mathematics I've heard so much about, to calculate the surface area of a sphere with the same radius as the average distance from the earth to the sun (149 million kilometers) and express that as a factor of the surface area of the earth itself (5.1 × 108 km2)

Unfortunately I don't math or I'd know how to work it out myself. Maybe someone here can help? I'd like a serious answer to help with a project I'm currently working on but, in lieu of that, piss-take answers will suffice.

Come on math boffins - impress me!

I just had the kind of weekend that begs like suicidal masochist for some uncontrolled violence. Some people are asleep in their bed tonight who deserve to be awoken by the sound of their front door embedding itself in the far wall and my face staring down at them as they scream and bleed and beg for the horror to be over but, unfortunately, my hands are tied. Anything I do may be given in evidence. It might harm the case of someone very close to me. Someone who wouldn't last ten minutes in barlinnie. Rant to follow as soon as I can persuade every muscle in my body to stand down. War is the last resort here, not the first.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html

http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/vulnerabilities/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227300318&cid=nl_tw_security_2010-09-08_h

Norwegian computer scientists have perfected a laser-based attack against quantum cryptography systems that allows them to eavesdrop on communications without revealing their presence.

So I aint been around much lately. Here's what I've been up to..


Rubber and String


French Restaurant Retirement Plan


Bella Bela


The Hermit


Snap Happy


Did I make you hard?


Nobody here but us streetlights


The Shawshank Exorcism


Circumstantial Evidence


Preservation

since I been away the usual has happened - everybody's changed their nicks but, for some reason their postcounts have also changed to incomprehensible shite so I have no fucking idea who you are now and to top it all most of the members are now fuckheads ... treehugging-assholes ... gardnerian-evangelical-christians ... what's the polite word ... Pagans. Yeah, that's the one.

WTF????? 

also what else did I miss? Answers in one word or less pls.

Hello and welcome to the 21st century. We're almost a decade into this shit but, just in case anybody hadn't noticed yet, allow me to spell it out for you - the future is here and it's time to get with the program.

Let's begin by getting rid of some shit you won't be needing anymore...

First off - best to lose all sense of belief and conviction, hell, those were getting old by the middle of the 20th but now? 21st century needs those things like a fish needs a bra. Nobody believes anything anymore. Maybe we used to but too many deeply held ones have been shattered, too many times to the point where pretty much everyone is wise to that shit. Idealism grew up into bitterness and hatred. Belief and conviction replaced by scepticism and the attention span of a wasp. Don't believe me? Good, that's a start. You might survive this yet.

Next up you should probably ditch compassion. Caring has absolutely no place in this brave new hell hole. There's too many people being screwed over, too many epic fuck-ups and, due in no small part to the rising popularity of ignorance and apathy as a design for life, these are scheduled to increase in both frequency and horror right up until the bitter end, if and when it ever shows it's face. Trust me, by the time it does you will be on your hands and knees begging for it. Don't believe me? Excellent - you're really getting the hang of this - keep it up!

At some point we're going to have to talk about intelligence. Yes, I know you've been hanging onto it like a wet-wipe in a shit tsunami but it really isn't currency in this day and age. Intelligent people were last century, nowadays the stupid and the insane are the only ones able to deal with life. Intelligence teaches us that there's a solution, that there's some way to fix this clusterfuck, some way to make sense of it all. Forget it - none of this makes sense and, even if you wanted to, it's irreparable but you don't really want to fix it that badly anyway, do you? No because the apathy I mentioned in the last paragraph has taken root in your soul. You don't believe me? Hahahaha - you're doing great - you'll have your eyes shut and your hands over your ears, screaming hysterically in no time. You'll fit in just fine.

So good luck and make the most of the 21st century. You'll never see another one like it. In fact, if things keep going the way they're going there won't be another one, like it or otherwise.

Isn't that a relief?

This popped into my head earlier today. And now I hate myself 

I was I liar before I met you
Denied all the things I'd put you through
Swallowing pills that kept me clear
gave me the courage to let you near
and so far away, at least to begin
The joker was hidden deep within
a jack in the box, that used to be mine
winding the spring up a step at a time
A sideways glance and stay out late
Suspicion aroused by tempting fate
and brick by brick, it all came apart
the walls that imprisoned a twisted heart
forsaking the pills that kept it at bay
the voices were calling "Come out and play!"

The look on it's face, I'll never forget
the smell of it's body, ruined and wet
the point where the teardrops ran into the blood
the place where I left it to sink in the mud
A statue of beauty, porcelain skin
free from the curse of the spirit within
I'd been a liar but this was the truth
I captured the transient flash of youth
snuffed out the candle before it grew dim
innocence spared from the glamour of sin
And so in the shadows I bid her farewell
and left my creation, the hollowest shell
The memory pristine, a love that was true
I was I liar before I met you

JUST FUCKING SHOOT ME ALREADY

Fucked if I know where this belongs (if anywhere) but I've fucking written it now and, goddammit, you fucks are going to read it. Or so help me 

The "Infinite Number of Monkeys" thought experiment doesn't even scratch the surface. For one thing it's been proven and we didn't even need an infinite number. All it took was a finite number and a couple of million years. Lo and behold the monkeys evolved and, sure enough, one of them wrote all the works of Shakespeare. His name was even Shakespeare. Spooky huh? The bugger didn't even need a typewriter he scratched it out in ink. With a fucking feather! What's the chances? Well they're not infinite, that's for sure.

You want to know what would happen if you had an infinite number of monkeys? Well, for a kick off, a couple of billion of them would grow perfectly cut diamonds for teeth. They'd feel superior to the couple of billion who only grew rough diamonds for teeth and a war would break out until a couple of billion monkeys who grew Kalashnikovs instead of arms would mobilise a peace-keeping force, eventually forcing all the diamond toothed monkeys into slavery where, guess what? They'd be forced to type out the complete works of William Shakespeare, until their fingers were worn down to bloody stumps

-Yes I really am that bored right now!

Thanks to Hawk - your Life of Nobody Series has inspired me to put some of my own memories down for posterity. Dunno if I'll have enough for a book but what the hey, maybe somebody will find my stupid ass life interesting regardless

No.1: Danny

Danny was a quiet guy. Tall, long hair, looked fed up with life. He wore faded jeans and a teeshirt and spent most of his day wandering around in his bare feet, listening to his walkman. He wasn't very sociable but he wasn't aggressive either. If you tapped him on the shoulder he'd take his headphones off and talk to you.

Now and again we spoke but the conversations were generally fairly one-sided affairs. His response to pretty much any line of enquiry was usually monosyllabic or thereabouts. You'd say hi to him in the morning and you'd get a nod back or maybe the staff would ask you to give him a shout at dinnertime or when the meds trolley was parked up and doing business.

I was really fucked off this one day. Like a lot of the walking damned, I spent a fair percentage of my time trying to figure out how I was going to get out of the fucking place. Today was one of them. Once a week we'd have a review meeting with our shrink. A day or so before these sessions the plans would revolve around trying to think of the perfect thing to say to her to get the section lifted. Other times, like today, the plans would be more desperate - how to create a distraction, how to smash the reinforced windows, which direction to run...

I was patrolling the ward, looking for weak spots, a door left ajar, a loose tile in the false ceiling, a fire alarm button that the staff couldn't see me setting off, somewhere to hide... The medication didn't help. Shit they had me on right then made it hard enough to walk, let alone run. In all probability that was at least part of the reason they had me on it in the first place. Fuckers were smart and my head was mince. It was a hiding to nowhere but there was fuck all much else to do, aside from chain smoke so there I was.

I saw Danny walking toward me down the main corridor. "I need to get out of here." I told him. Desperately hoping for some input. I was asking Danny, that's how desperate I was.

"I know a way out." He replied.

"show me." I begged.

"Wait in the day room." He instructed.

So there I was, sitting in the day-room, no more than ten minutes later when the panic alarm went off. The buttons were dotted all around the ward and linked to a big board in the nurse station which informed the staff where the backup was required. Half a dozen nursing staff went tanking down the corridor that led to the dormitories, closely followed by most of the patients, eager to see what all the fuss was about.

By the time we got there one of the charge nurses was stood in the door to the men's dorm-room, blocking our entrance. His presence really wasn't required, tho. Nobody was in much of a hurry to get past him, once they'd seen the mess in there. They were strapping big Danny to a gurney. He was leaving in a fucking hurry but what looked like most of his blood was staying for a while, the majority was clinging to the bedsheets or running down onto the floor but some of it had sprayed onto the walls and some had even managed to hit the ceiling. Danny hadn't just opened his wrists, he'd dug a hole in his neck as well. Fucker meant business.

The staff looked more like abattoir workers by the time they wheeled him past us and away to the infirmary. He was back a few hours later wearing three sets of bandages and the vacant expression of the heavily medicated but he didn't bed down in the main dorm for a while. Danny was on suicide watch, in his own private room for what turned out to be the third time that year.

I've often wondered just how much was my fault but I reckon I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I'm pretty sure Danny was headed down that corridor to do just what he did, with or without my interruption. I'm also pretty sure he'd eventually have managed to off himself. That wasn't one of those cry for help little scratches. He showed me the scars a week or so later, the fresh ones all but lost against countless older wounds. Danny was getting out, no doubt about that. It was just a matter of time.

There were times afterwards, when the depressions were tearing my fucking soul apart that I envied his resolve, When I resented with all my heart the fact that I was too much of a pussy to do what he found so easy and I wished more than anything for the courage to just hack away at my veins or swallow a bottle of pills or anything to escape the fucking pain but it wasn't to be.

Most of the time, tho, I'm glad about that.

...also I refuse to suffer alone 

You climbed up in my lap and started singing
"When love was gone"
You were just a baby
but you understood better than me

You walked past in the shopping mall
holding onto your mum's hand
she was holding onto another guy
and you looked straight at me
your little face lit up
happy to see your daddy
and I looked away and kept walking

I came back
and you were happy to see me
We laughed and played
I was finally ready to be your father
and I would have been good at it
then my mind caved in

I was stopped in traffic
you crossed the road right in front of me
you looked so beautiful
and strong
like a panther
I was afraid of you

He walked out the room to get coffee
I looked on the table
I saw a photograph of you
then he came back in
and I turned away
rubbing the evidence from my eyes

Lemme tell you a little bit about bipolar. You swing up. If you can stay off the radar and ride it long enough, you can make it right up to god in heaven. Nothing a normal person will ever experience could hold a candle to mania. Talk about ecstasy, talk about cocaine, talk about falling in love or winning the lottery ... you're boring me. The human experience just doesn't have anything to offer someone who's been over the edge. God knows I've tried.

Then there's the downswing. The price every Icarus has to pay for being so close to the sun. You fall and you fall and you keep fucking falling. Even after you've slammed into the ground you're still falling. It just doesn't stop. I've heard people tell me they're depressed before. I sneered. I wished I could show them, even for a second, the places I've spent whole years at a time. You'd run screaming if you could only lift your head up off the floor. But you can't. You're paralysed with nothing to do but chase hell around in your head and pray for everything to end.

And then there's this place. Somewhere between heaven and hell. Purgatory? It's certainly what it feels like. The highs like tiny little grey lumps in an ocean of flat. Life with the volume turned down. There are days I'd almost choose depression over this pedestrian bullshit because, fuck it, at least you feel depression. I don't feel this. There's nothing to feel. It's empty, bland, monotonous drivel. A never ending procession of talk shows and shoddy imitation. When you've lived the life of a butterfly, going back to caterpillar is a punishment. Stripped of my shiny silken wings. Condemned to crawl around and chew shit forever.

And relentless, inside, the little voice. "You've suffered enough. Let go. Let it slide. Spread your wings and escape."

On days like these the little voice is deafening. Sooner or later I'm going to give in to the siren call. Leave my precious little pile of garbage to go up in smoke and fly into the sun again.

See you in hell.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxUZUnRwH7s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT4IzNQ4aRQ&feature=related

Follow the related links - I think the entire back catalogue is there!

Personally I've never seen the whole collection before and wanted to for a long time. Posted here for anyone else who likes that sort of thing

http://www.hermetics.org/solis/solis.html

I'm an animal
Just a dirty fucking animal
I'm not in control
I don't got no soul
I live in a hole
Full of pop tarts and remote controls

I've broken all my favourite things
I tried to tie them back together with string
but it's useless
I couldn't care less
I just took a shit in my best dress
trying to impress
a female
built like a brick whale
with acne you could read like braille
so I set sail
and chased my tail

I'm just a horny fucking animal

And now I got a choice to make
give or take
love or hate
fix or break
fall asleep or stay awake
screaming at the teevee
pressing the red button to save me
voting for the one I like the best
just the same as all the rest
but it's a test
and I can't fail
I try to catch my tail

I'm just a stupid fucking animal

Barking at my reflection in the mirror
The more I back off the more it gets nearer
and it's becoming clearer
even in the fog behind my eyes
they tried to sell me alibis
a pack of lies
for a buck-o-five
with the option to supersize
wet cut and blow dried
those motherfuckers lied

they're all just dirty fucking animals!

I am a dead weight hanging on a long rope
I am a bitter laugh laughing at an old joke
I drug myself again to take away the pain
of remembering it doesn't always feel this good

And it's a vicious circle that I walk around
chasing myself into a hole in the ground
where I curl up like a child in the womb
or a dead man lying in an open tomb

Where all the broken fear and hurt
can be buried underneath the dirt
where I am free to be myself
because it turns me into someone else

These chemicals tell such sweet sweet lies
and I turn my back on what I despise
and my soul is left to wither and die
I got a new best friend and a clear blue sky

It's about a guy, early forties, going for a walk with his dog and his partner. It's a nice day, sun is shining, bit windy but there's no need to wrap up. They're going up the local woods, taking the dog on it's usual walk. They've been to a party the night before where they both drank way more than the recommended dosage and crawled back home around four AM.

It's a steep hill, through farmland, up to where the woods begin. Good excercise. Really gets the blood pumping, especially on a day like this. So they stop for a rest at a park bench at the top. The guy is glad of the rest because, truth be told, he really aint feeling to clever. There's a tightness in his chest and a throbbing pain in his arm that feels like it's coming from the bone.

Tightness in the chest and sore left arm is one of those heart attack symptoms he thinks to himself but that's just paranoia. Truth is this motherfucker is bulletproof but still, it's not going away like it's been doing recently. In fact it's getting worse. She laughs at him, thinking he's hung over and feeling like shit. He turns away, clutching his chest where he can feel the tighness and his heart, not pumping like it normally does after a workout but sorta flapping.

Now he's getting nervous but the girl is still laughing and, he doesn't want to spoil it with something as stupid as this. And then he begins to wonder if it really is stupid. If it gets much worse it is going to feel like a heart attack and it is getting worse. The dog, which has been runnning about, doing it's usual exploring this, seems to sense somethings wrong and comes over and starts licking his face and whining a bit.

The girl is still laughing and that's when it crosses his mind. "Holy shit, this might be it" And he still doesn't want to tell her, to make her stop laughing cos, fuck it, if this is the end he wants the last thing he hears to be her laughter. He's spent more than a decade with her, much of the time trying to make her make that noise. It's musical, lights up the room. Lights up his heart.

Speaking of the heart he's still not quite sure if that's what's wrong, surely heart attacks just knock you out, sort of thing. He remembers a video game he used to play years ago. A sort of heart surgery simulator. The first part of the game involved diagnosing the patients. Some of them needed heart surgery and some had gallstones or trapped wind. Trapped wind symptoms in the game were very similar to heart attack as he remembers. Maybe it's just a renegade fart.

The girl is still laughing but now it's getting to the stage where he can't hide it from her anymore. Now he's actually starting to panic. heart rate increasing, chest getting tighter. He forces himself to take shallow breaths, reasoning that hyperventillating will just increase the revs and if the engine is damaged that isn't a good idea. She's noticed now. The laughing stops. Not abruptly but kinda tails off awkwardly. Like "You're fucking with me, right?"

He wishes he was. He even tries to pretend he is but she's not buying his bullshit anymore. He concentrates on relaxing, shallow breaths, let the tension go away. It's beginning to work. So they sit there for another five minutes or so, till he feels like he can stand up and then they turn back and walk the mile and a half back home. He feels himself going into shock but it's very mild. Almost more of an adrenaline comedown really. They talk about it. He's going to get it checked as soon as they make it back home.

But by the time they get home he's talked himself out of getting anything checked. It wasn't a heart attack, otherwise walking home would have killed him, right? It was trapped wind or some other fucking thing. Felt like shit but then he's still half drunk from the night before maybe it was just the mother of all hangovers?

Right?

Just who exactly is this creature
posessed of such a self esteem
Just a figment of his own creation
Hiding out inside this dream

How can he take such satisfaction
in the lies he tells himself
Is there no limit to this fantasy
No holding him down to earth.

When he crawls inside his oyster shell
and pulls the covers up past his head
do his demons really disappear
or are they waiting underneath the bed

Does he even need their intervention
or is he capable on his own
of the act of self destruction
til he's left with only flesh and bone

And if the things that hurt can get buried
so deep he'll never know they're there
Does he ever need to feel again
Is that a cross he'll have to bear

Maybe he can run and just keep running
Maybe he can hide inside the light
Maybe live happy ever after
but does he really think it's worth the price?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=414TmP12WAU 

The blonde one is twenty. She's tall, thin and there's something wistful in her eyes. They're piercing, blue ones. Like really fucking piercing. You could get lost in those eyes and never want to come back. Looking wistful is no problem to someone with eyes like that. There's a bit of hippy about her, you can see that. Not that there's really such a thing these days but if she'd been born back when those kinda people ran about barefoot sticking flowers in things and pretending the grateful dead were actually good, yeah you could imagine her right in the middle of it all, wearing some kinda tie-dyed caftan and a big-brimmed hat.

In some of the photos the wistful is bordering on melancholy. Just beneath the surface there's a glimmer of sadness. Has she been hurt? When she was just a little kid, too young to understand what was happening? In one of those photos, is that little glimmer there because, right at that moment, she was thinking back to that pain? If there's any justice in this life, any god or buddha or thing with an elephant head, and the bastard is paying attention to his fucking job, then it's not. That glimmer is something else. The fact that she's about to say goodbye to a friend that's moving overseas for a while. She's just lost twenty quid in a bet. could be anything, really.

Just not that.

The brunette is two years younger and she looks like trouble. she's got the biggest smile I think I ever seen on a human being. That smile would infect you like fucking hyena-rabies. Every second photo she's mugging the camera with the kind of look in her eye that causes wars to happen for no good reason other than "we were drunk and we thought that country was empty". She has that easy humour in her eyes. Making people laugh is effortless for her. Wistful comes a bit less naturally than it does her sister but she pulls it off in a couple of shots. And, again, that sadness. Not as easy to spot cos even when she's sad her eyes are laughing but yeah, there it is. Peeking out at me. Or is it just my imagination?

I've looked at most of these pictures a hundred times the last couple of days. Trying to digest every detail. Gleaning clues, building a picture in my head of who I think they are. Because the truth is I have no idea who they are. Just fantasies and little scenes and conversations I've built up and played out in my head for the last thirteen and a bit years.

I really don't know them.

These are my daughters and I think that's all about to change.

Fuck you losers - I'm famous now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbEagLSIz90

Roger I've been looking at stupid people again. I know you told me not to cos it makes them uneasy and they might lynch me but sometimes I can't help it. I find myself staring and wondering why they're like that and why I'm not and then I wonder if they know they're stupid and that makes me wonder if I'm stupid and just haven't realised it and that's a fucking stupid thought to be having. And that's when I realised something Roger. Something that scared the living shit out of me.

I'd been going around all this time figuring I was smart and I was surrounded by all these dumb fucks and, annoying as that might be, it was bearable. At least I'm smart, right? But that's when it came to me Roger - people aren't stupid and people aren't smart. No. Stupid is a motherfucking virus! Stupid is like a cough your brain makes when something irritating gets inside it. Even smart people think stupid thoughts occasionally. The difference between stupid and smart people is how much coughing they do. A genius might be analogous to someone occasionally clearing their throat whereas the idiot is the equivalent of someone with bronchitis, unable to think anything smart because his brain is bent over, hacking up the phlegm of a terminal stupid infection.

And if that's the case, Roger, I'm worried I might catch it. I remember, years ago, when I first heard about it, I caught a nasty dose of Quantum Stupidity. It was during the initial stages of the pandemic when there was so much of it about and so little scientific vaccine that even non-stupids were falling in their droves with the implications that if we just thought about reality it would change. I had that fucking infection for months, Roger, and I'm pretty sure my mental immunity took a hit with it. I'm scared that if another really infectious strain of stupid had come along at the same time, in my weakened state, it might have become terminal.

Now that I can see it, Roger, it's everywhere I look. Mutated strains invading otherwise healthy minds and, as more and more immune systems are broken down, more and more people become hosts, carrying hundreds, maybe even thousands of deadly strains, eventually there'll only be a few of us left standing, amid an ocean of stupidity, the last sane minds, wondering if there's anything clever left to think. Is that a stupid thought, Roger? Is my fever already on it's way?

Civilisation is an idea that some really smart monkeys dreamed up.

Unfortunately these monkeys failed to take into consideration how impractical such an idea was, given the fact that the overwhelming majority of monkeys were really dumb.

Kinda makes you wonder just how smart the smart monkeys actually were.

On behalf of the people of Scotland I'd like to bid you a stony "Fuck off". You'll get a warm welcome from some people if you come to Scotland but those people are invariably foreigners and while you're busy fucking off if you could see your way to dragging a couple of those cunts with you we'd appreciate it. Not so's you'd notice or get a thank you or anything but we would.

Tips to staying alive during your visit to Scotland

1. Forget about Braveheart. Seriously. We're not a nation of noble savages we are a nation of ignorant, vicious degenerates who'd give savages a bad name. We couldn't give less of a fuck about freedom or justice. All we want is cheap booze and we'll kill you to get it.

2. Just hand over the money. That little 12 year old kid in the tracksuit? He isn't fucking around and yeah it's broad daylight and yeah he'll get caught if he kills you but you know what? He wants to get caught. If he gets caught he gets sent to a nice warm jail and spends christmas with his family. So give him the fucking cash and pray he misses you with the machete - it's the best you can hope for.

3. These aren't the drinks you're looking for. It might look vaguely like a pint but it tastes like harpy venom and doubles as stain remover. Brewing and distilling is an expensive process and we have free petrochemical effluent backing up in the streets so our local brand of falling down water comes with some wicked side effects which can seriously fuck up your genetic structure if you weren't weaned on the shit. PROTIP: If a local can't afford a pint they'll wait until a tourist is dumb enough to try one then drink their foaming remains.

4. It's not the temperature or the humidity it's the moodswings that make our weather stand out. It's cold here and wet. It's always raining. It's colder in Iceland or Siberia. It's wetter in the rainforest but only Scottish weather comes with built in depression. Our brightest of sunny days will have most people reaching for the nearest bridge. You don't need to pack an umbrella you need prozac and lots of it.

5. Avoid the food. If you're here for any length of time starvation is a much less traumatic way to go. Our national dish is cholesterol with a side order of botulism. Hygiene is something we say to people called Gene. In most restaurants the policy is you can have a refund if your food hasn't been spat in but you have to fight the chef for it and he gets first choice of the kitchen knives.

6. True Scots may or may not be wearing something under their kilt (it largely depends if you catch them before or after they got so drunk they shit their underwear) The main reason for this myth is so that tourists will ask and it's as good an excuse as any to bludgeon them to death and steal their valuables.

7. The cops dont give a fuck what happened to you. They only took the job so the other cops would stop fucking arresting them. If you complain long enough the best you can hope for is they will bludgeon you to death and steal your valuables.

I need organic produce, as opposed to the other method of farming in which the food just fucking spontaneously appears in a cloud of radio active isotopes and asbestos dust. Fuck that shit. I want vegetables with beetles in and I'll pay twice what enyone is asking for it

My teevee aint flat enough and it aint high definition enough. Keep your 720p and 1080p I want a million fucking pixels per micronanometer and a screen so wide I have to cordon off half my street just to read the channel guide.

I want a watch that can resist water forever. Period. Stuff your 75 meters bullshit up your arse. If I fall in the deep, deep briny and end up down one of those fault line trenches and sink to such a depth that my body is crushed so dense it starts affecting the earths crust with it's gravitational pull... goddamnit I want that watch to be still telling me the time in every country in the world. Don't ask me why. I just want it and, what's more, I want it delivered to my door, by a stripper called Candy, wearing nothing but baby oil, no later than 23 seconds after I've placed my online order.

I want mobile broadband that can download the whole internet, in realtime, bundled free with every teevee channel there is for £9.99 per fucking calendar year. I shit you not. I expect a landline, gas and electricity and a blowjob off the guy who comes to install it all.

I want shoes that define me as a person. Hi-tec, cutting edge, performance, sweat resistant, glow in the dark, bluetooth enabled motherfucking shoes. I don't want laces or velcro or any of that bullshit, I wanna whistle and those shoes will come trotting over and climb on my goddamn feet.

I want toothpaste that I can brush on my gums that makes a fucking tooth grow back. It had damn well better keep my breath fresh for the rest of my natural existence and another decade or so underground. If they ever exhume my corpse I want them to be hit by minty freshness that'll make them go "WOW!" Followed by the unmistakable musk of a deoderant that fills attractive women with the uncontrollable urge to rape me in the street.

I need a razor with so many blades it comes with a free block and tackle so I don't dislocate my arm raising the fucking thing up to my face. In fact scratch that. I want an electric motherfucker. That's right. I want micro-filament one atom thick screen and diamond tipped blades that shaves so close you can see my skull poking through.

Or kill me.

Thanks to our resident rain god we now find out if the little bastard can walk on water  

Regard, if you will, figure a. This is a microscopic representation of a section of the human brain. Note the small globular bundles or "soma", connected by spindly wires or "dendrites". These tiny circuits transport and store chemical information in our brains, the emergent property of which is referred to as mind or consciousness or (if you're really superstitious) the immortal soul.

Now have a look at figure b. This is a macroscopic representation of a section of the universe. Note the small globular bundles or "galaxy clusters", connected by spindly wires or "dark matter strands". No one really knows much about how these unimaginably large structures operate and speculation as to any emergent properties is, at best, a flight of purest fancy but the similarity struck me nonetheless.

My delusional self inflicted wounds
bleed a stream of desperation to an ocean full of tombs
Opened up beneath the water spilling sickness and disease
into a hole that swallows everything and all hopes in between

I may act like I'm a martyr but I aint all that
I'm just a scared little kid wearing grown up hats
Trying to find a little freedom slip the noose and break the chain
shine a light against the darkness that is sucking on my brain

The machine roars like a sickly thunder
rolls across the world
In the end will swallow everything leaving emtyness and cold
and a hollow gnawing feeling that it could have been so different to this

There are places where the thunder hasn't reached yet
and I do my best to find them
Where the roots of the cities haven't pissed out their pollution
where the clocks don't tick and they won't sell you absolution by the dime bag

Cos I feel so much better when I can't smell cars
Where the ground beneath my feet aint a slick of cold tar
and the sunlight screams
like it's delighted it can touch my skin again

Eventually they'll run a fucking freeway through these places
tunnel through the mountains and fill in all the spaces
with cookie cutter picket fenced domestic blissful faces
vacant eyes that never look beyond the rats and races

So I cling to my oasis as the land around me falls
into grey and smokey nightmares that have everyone by the balls
I laugh because I'm one of the few that didn't heed it's call
and I found my sanctuary out beyond the city walls

We shuffle listlessly from the sofa to the door
Nobody talks about desire anymore
Just keep your head down and stay between the lines
Anybody asks you tell them "everything's fine"

The human spirit suffocates in a corporate tomb
The will to live supplanted by the need to consume
Dissent is ring-fenced with meticulous efficiency
An insect crushed beneath the hellish weight of this machinery

In a world where clarity is both a blessing and a curse
Progressively each revelation simply makes it worse
Dig beneath the surface and you end up in a hole
Sooner or later we all miss the surrender of control

We tell ourselves that's just the old addiction trying to drag us back
and all the while seek targets and a foolproof plan for the attack
Clandestine meetings with like minds in the shadows of the fringe
where battle lines are decided on and a strategy bound to win

And how long do we amuse ourselves, distracted from our fate?
by our insubordination and our petty little hate?
And whatever we accomplish the machine will profit best
They'll hang our heads on bloody spikes as a warning to the rest

I fell asleep. I took my eye off the ball. I succumbed, accepting one too many chunks of the token bullshit spewing out the teevee, I managed to convince myself I was happy, life was sweet, everything was great. It didn't last. It never lasts. Sometimes I wish it fucking would. I'm surrounded by people who can sleep through this shit, blissfully oblivious to the fact that the whole planet is slowly sliding off the edge of some intergalactic precipice, into an open sewer of epic proportions.

Not me. I can bury my head in the sand for only so long before I need to come up for air and, when I do, that air smells like bullshit. Oh fuck! I fell asleep again. And the scary thing isn't the impending doom. It's the fact that I'd do anything to be back there. In the land of nod. Addicted to gameshows and believing in politics and browsing the internets to find the lifestyle accessory that will, once and for all, make me truly complete.

Truth is I'm a happy idiot. The fact that the human race seems to be collectively sprinting toward it's own endgame actually appeals to me. It's funny goddamnit! The wars the disease the economic collapses and, above all, the monkeys that contributed to the whole ridiculous fiasco, sitting, neck deep in the shit they made, making stupid monkey faces and blaming everyone but themselves for the smell that's gradually chocking them to death. That's the fucking punchline right there folks. That's all I need.

I just wish I could stay awake long enough to really get my yucks in but I can't help thinking I'm going to be asleep beside everyone else when the hammer comes down. Everybody ends up falling for it. Everybody gets sucked in.

Came across the notion of "overvaccination" the other day. Apparently it's a bad idea to vaccinate your dog annually. Could you do me a favour and check this link and let me know what you think?

I'm particularly interested in finding out if this part is solid science

2. It is the consensus of immunologist that a modified live
virus vaccine must replicate in order to stimulate the immune system,
and antibodies from a previous vaccination will block the replication
of the new vaccinate virus. The immune status of the patient is not
enhanced in any way. There is no benefit to the patient. The client
is paying for something with insignificant or no effect, except that
the patient is being exposed to unnecessary risk of an adverse
reaction.

nod and a wink to Pete Carroll...

Little pieces of me
make up the figment of myself
each one a person in its own right
MPD kept hidden safely out of sight

You think you're talking to the same face
the thin veneer that makes us recognise
define and compartmentalise
our interactions with the world outside
the world inside
where everybody hides
behind a million states of mind
a million personalities
that masquerade as me

Weeburd talked me into getting baby staffie which, I gotta admit, is cute as a motherfucker. I already got him fetching balls and peeing on newspaper and he's only 8 weeks old! Now we need a name which is suitable discordian.

Answers on a postcard...





More pics to follow when the little bastard wakes up.

I don't know chinese/thai very well but I went to this place one time and they are tasty.

What should I order?

Hurray - we order in ten mins!

Edit* phoning for takeway check Takeaway Menu

"Gentlemen, I can do this from one cube. Right now I have backdoor access to six hundred and fifty fully beamed DNS servers. Fully beamed! That means that everything I trip is trusted and mirrored on every lightbox on the hypernet. For a nominal fee I will reroute every transaction of any major credit stream through the logger of your choice. I could provide loggers if you don't have your own but, quite frankly, if you don't have your own loggers you have no fucking business talking to me?"

"I can sandbox any corporate cluster you care to mention and, unlike the competition, I will guarantee downtime anywhere up to five days. That's a whole working week your company has the monopoly on trading. Nowadays there are only a handful of corporations that could survive more than forty eight hours offline."

"Give me three days and I'll set up passive surveillance on your target of choice, cctv feeds, credit transactions, cellular and voip channels. You'll experience more of your marks life than he will."

"So, gentlemen, what's your pleasure?"

The meet had been set up by Southie so I knew these guys were legit or rather illegit which amounted to the same thing from my point of view. They weren't feds, I knew that but they didn't look corporate either. The suits didn't sit right for one thing. Whatever these guys usually wore to work it wasn't tailored by Armani. Military? Idealogues? In my line of work it doesn't matter, I'm quite happy to play either side of any conflict of interests as long as the credits are there and, whether they think they can get away with paying for it or not, the credits are always there.

Lesson 1 - never try to rip-off a hacker. It's fucking pointless.

My headset chirped in my ear, told me the three of them were kosher. I'd run retinal, voiceprint and DNA samples through Central Intelligence, National and international police and social security databases, when they'd first walked in the door. Nothing. These guys were ghosts. I relaxed a little. Cloaking a live surveillance warrant triples the price.

"We need someone who can hack Sensenet", the big guy told me.

"Then good luck finding someone," I spat back, "assassination aint my bag."

Sensenet - neural hypernet interface, full immersion surfing as if you were there. Taste, touch, smell... It was the porn channels who pioneered it. Fried a few brains in the early days using reverse engineered military targeting rigs. Found out that with a bit of duplexing they could send signals back into the brainstem, instead of just reading the output.

Of course it was banned, after the first couple of hundred masturbating cabbages returned from their in brain fuck movie, paralysed from the bollocks-up. Didn't make much difference, the porn sites had always operated in and around the edge of the law. There was too much demand to let a little legislation stand in the way of profit. They kept ploughing money into the technology and eventually perfected safe enough kit. Nowadays, with enough credits, you could experience anything you could imagine, firsthand, from a parking lot handjob to gang raping a four year old. From the kid's point of view.

Eventually it went mainstream. There were medical applications, telecoms, entertainment... pretty much anything you could do on the hypernet you could use a sensnet jack to do but the only thing you'd use a hacker for was a hit - overload the wetwall protections and send a garbage dataflood straight into the brainstem. Mark would have a seizure so bad his eyes would explode out his fucking head. I didn't need it. I might be a bastard but even bastards draw the line somewhere. I drew mine a ways short of murder.

"We don't want anybody killed," the woman said. She looked vaguely oriental but it's hard to tell these days. Anyway a smart player would be wearing active collegen - remould the features to whatever the hell you want to look like. I know I was. Doesn't pay to be recognised in my line of work. Being unrecognisable helps immensely. "We want someone stolen."

I was losing my patience with these freaks and almost ready to show them the door but curiosity got the better of me. "You got about ten seconds to explain yourself lady. This had better be fucking good." I was playing it cocky but then what the hell were they going to do? The two guys were packing enough firepower to level the building and the chick had a string laser and some kind of nano acid but, since I'd disabled the powerpacks and my sentry guns were ready to fill them with half a kilo of armour piercing slugs per second if they so much as blinked at me the wrong way I figured I had the upper hand.

"What we require, Mr Cross, is for you to hijack a Sensenet datastream and download the users consciousness to our server."

"Are you out of your fucking mind lady? Did Southie put you up to this? This is a joke right?"

"Mr Cross, this is no joke. We will provide the interface software you will gain access to the ..."

"Look bitch I've listened to about as much of this bullshit as I care to, now I suggest you take your sci-fi story asses the hell out of my building right now before I lose my sense of humour completely and turn the watchdogs on you."

I signalled the miniguns to spin up and acquire targets just to drive the point home. In their favour they never as much as flinched.

"We understand that you may or may not believe that what we are attempting to do is impossible, this is of no import, Mr Cross. What does concern you is fifteen million untraceable credits for getting our payload behind the wetwall."

Fifteen fucking mil? For fifteen mil I'd kill the bastard myself, principles or no fucking principles and she was right. I didn't need to believe what they were doing. What the fuck did I care if their hocus pocus worked or not?

"Untraceable you say?" I turned on the most charming smile I could manage with this face. "Okay. Show me the credit streams"

Iptuous surprised me the other day. "I think that's the first optimistic thing I've seen you post!" he said. Caught me right out of leftfield, I'm optimistic to a fault. So I had a think about  how anyone could possibly draw that conclusion and, of course, the answer was staring me straight in the face - most people don't like strife. It's that simple. I talk about the prospect of society falling apart and devolving into a free-for-all carnage fest and, naturally, to most normal people this would be pessimism.

Not for me. I'm hoping and praying it actually happens and I'm too optimistic to allow myself to entertain the horrible notion that we, as a race, might pull ourselves back from the brink. The truth is that by most rational definitions I'm a very bad person because I like strife. Hell, I fucking worship it. Happy ever after isn't an ending in my book, it's an ideal place to hold a war. I can't look at a pastoral landscape without imagining how much of an improvement it would be if there was a mugging going on.

Without strife in the world I would run out of shit to hate. My middle finger would atrophy from lack of exercise. Don't get me wrong, I like being happy and contented as much as the next guy but only in moderation. Couple of days of peace and quiet is more than enough for me and then I gotta go find something to blow up or someone to set on fire. The human race is primarily composed of ignorant monkeys, who are hell bent on killing each other. I don't see this changing any time soon. In case you missed it, that was me being optimistic.

Srsly!

If we hadn't grown up in jail we wouldn't know what it feels like to kick down the walls.

If we hadn't had to learn to fight for freedom and steal it from right under their noses, to flaunt it in their miserable grey faces, to laugh at their blind obedience to rules, both written and unwritten, dictated to some degree by the state but imposed, much more rigidly, by themselves...

...Why, if that hadn't been the hand we was dealt, I reckon we'd have been bored out our fucking skulls.

Thanks big brother. Thanks for sticking us in a cage and telling us , over and over, to do what we was told. What to think, when to think it, how to act, what to say, what to buy, how to wear it. Thanks for setting guards on all the exits, and traps beyond the fences. Thanks for making sure we was watched as closely as it could be arranged, at all times. Thanks for setting us the challenge, throwing down the gauntlet.

Thanks also for keeping us in the dark about the game and the cost of playing. Thanks for never telling us the prize for cheating. If we'd known about it, the whole act of finding it would have seemed so much less intense. Like the movie where the hero is chasing something that everyone says doesn't exist. We always prefer those movies to the ones where the goal is clear from the outset.

Rumours and myth and legend lay a trail of clues, to the fringes of society. Where secrets and maps and keys and and promises of all kinds of treasure lay in wait.

The winds that blow through these places whisper "Freedom". Some of us learn what that word means and, every once in a while, we'll cross paths with someone else who scratched the itch and braved the gauntlet and lived to tell the tale. And we'll know, by looking one another in the eye, we earned that shit, paid for it in blood sweat and tears and we wouldn't trade it for the world.

Most especially, big brother, thanks for never quite being able to still these winds.

Srsly!

Nigels fread in Or Kill Me got me thinking - wouldn't it be funny and potentially flamefesty to put our cards on the table and define what we really believe. So I'll set the ball rolling...

"God" to me is a point of view. Verthaine wrote an amazing piece (iirc it made an intermittens) which, essentially boiled down to the fact that human consciousness was an emergent property of the universe. That we, in essence, were the universe looking at itself. That's god to me. God is the point of view you have when you are trully aware of this.

God is what created the ineffable part of my psyche that experiences the whole shooting match from "my" point of view. It's the cumulation of billions of years of big-bang aftermath. Added to that the billions of years of the cumulative effect of the machinery of evolution. Suddenly, and for no good reason, a bunch of self replicating genetic mulch closed it's eyes and marvelled at the sheer awesomeness of it's existence.

God is the staggeringly convoluted and strangled path that led to something, which the law of averages declares is so highly unlikely it's practically impossible, taking place. But it did take place. Ultimately it's one huge big chain of events and, at the point where you join the dots and see yourself in this context, you are face to face with god.

Do I believe in god?

Belief doesn't even enter into it.

and neither does faith.

ROCK HARD!!!!!

So I started watching Loose Change last night and, as expected, it reeked of classic conspiracy theory, right down to the adenoidal voice of the presenter. I've heard Cain slag off the "truther" movement in general and (iirc) this movie in particular. One problem - and from a layman's pov (I've never looked into any of this) a lot of fucking convincing arguments.

If the documents shown were made up? If the experts opinions were not from real experts? If it wasn't for the fact that most of the people refuting these claims are bloody politicians then maybe I would have a harder time believing this shit but, as it stands, I'm seeing no real holes in their story.

Please to poke some before I become a believer. 

Which is which?

rough percentage of each?

How to detect and/or test limits?

Criteria for examination?

... dungeon thread got me wondering.

I have a mate who will pretty much buy into any conspiracy theory you care to mention. I've sold him more than a couple myself. Now he's go a bee in bonnet about something to do with Nikolai Tesla and Overunity. Planning on going "off the grid" with some kind of magnetic induction motor or some shit.

Now (correct me if I'm wrong) the whole idea here seems to be to produce moar power than you're putting in, charging the battery you're powering it with, with the excess power. Impossible right? Smacks of pseudo science. But what I was wondering is - how close to this elusive "perpetual motion" thing have the crackpots got? Because I'm thinking I might have the answer (using non pseudoscience bullshit. Basically what I'm thinking is - if I can get pretty close to the overunity point, using whatever, surely all I have to do is add a couple of wind turbines or solar panels or both in order to beef up the juice.

Anyway I'd appreciate if you could bring me up to speed on this stuff, he's the kind of chap who will spend a bit of money in pursuit of this goal and if I can tag along for the ride and get a working prototype up and running then I save myself a bit of bread on leccy bills.

Came across this little gem this morning...

Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element - direct observation. Do not learn anything about this subject of mine - the French Revolution. Learn instead what I think that Enicharmon thought Urizen thought Gutch thought Ho-Yung thought Chi-Bo-Sing thought LafcadioHearn thought Carlyle thought Mirabeau said about the French Revolution. Through the medium of these ten great minds, the blood that was shed at Paris and the windows that were broken at Versailles will be clarified to an idea which you may employ most profitably in your daily lives. But be sure that the intermediates are many and varied, for in history one authority exists to counteract another. Urizen must counteract the scepticism of Ho-Yung and Enicharmon, I must myself counteract the impetuosity of Gutch. You who listen to me are in a better position to judge about the French Revolution than I am. Your descendants will be even in a better position than you, for they will learn what you think I think, and yet another intermediate will be added to the chain. And in time" - his voice rose - "there will come a generation that had got beyond facts, beyond impressions, a generation absolutely colourless, a generation

seraphically free

From taint of personality,

which will see the French Revolution not as it happened, nor as they would like it to have happened, but as it would have happened, had it taken place in the days of the Machine."

In the dungeon of contentment a trapdoor slams shut under the weight of apocalyptic irony. The burned out firebrands no longer cast a flickering glow on the chained corpses hanging from the walls, held together by the centuries old cobwebs of extinct spiders. The time for action came and went, unnoticed by all but a tiny minority whose voices were swallowed by the tide of nostalgia, bodies frozen stiff by the winters of uncertainty. As the last vestiges of humanity succumbed to apathetic reasoning and the bureaucracy of fate the hinges creaked and the portal covered, never to be opened again.

Somewhere in the damp, musky depths of this eternal monument to the triumph of order over freewill a faint, rhythmical clicking is heard, a single solitary rodent gnaws the bones of a skeleton in search of marrow, long dried up. Less than an hour from now the delicate silk spun structure will collapse, crushing the last glimmer of life in this solemn tomb but for now, in this place, the rat is king.

It was no revolution or bloody conflict that led us here. Hell did not descend on earth, with a fanfare and a clamouring of steel but rather it crept up slowly, over a period of millennia, it's advance so subtly imperceptible to a race who's attention was forever focussed in the wrong places, vigilantly searching for the wrong things. The world did not end in a blinding explosion of fire and brimstone. It ground to a halt like a clockwork machine that didn't realise it had to wind itself up to keep going, comforted all the while by the realisation that everything was much less hectic as the springs unwound and the cogs and flywheels came to rest.

Order was imposed, systematically and with ever increasing efficiency on the very chaos that would had saved our race from the inevitable stagnation of conformity. The piper played a tune which resonated perfectly within us and we followed in a straight unbroken line down the narrow staircase to this place and it's promises of eternal, blissful rest in exchange for absolutely everything. But by then the tune was in our heads and it seemed such a small price to pay. We welcomed the chains' protection and the comforting embrace of oblivion as everything that moved and turned and pulsed and vibrated came to a perfect, orderly standstill.