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http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/icelands-penis-museum/20171

This game got started by GM Jim from my college gaming club. 
Some sort of invasion is happening.  Monsters, Zombies, whatever (non-important), are barging into the communal relaxing, gaming, bullshitting room.

What would happen next?
Who would do what?

Rules are simple. 
1. Nobody survives, each individual's story ends with their own death.
2.  You can't write your own, but yo can write other people's.

Examples:
Ryan, the short tempered martial artist:  "Ryan would get that silly 'I'ma fight now' grin and jump into the fray.  He'd take out several opponents, then accidentally knock out a retaining wall.  The roof would fall, killing everyone."

Bear, the fastidious maintainer of order: "Bear would fight to the death to protect the bookshelf.  More accurately, his own."

Have at!

[Forms of the Verb "To be" in 21st century Northeastern United States Linguistics.]

My manager requested this as a joke, I decided to deliver:

Forms of the Verb "To be" in 21st century Northeastern United States Linguistics.
The verb "To be" is a vital part of any language, as it allows succinct statements to be made about the condition of any person place or thing.  This verb, while not denoting a gross action, such as verbs to run, to drink, to fall, etc, instead is implying a basic state later to be clarified by adjectives later in the statement being made.  "My socks are wet.", "Your car was towed", or "His house will be painted blue", for example.  Additionally, even without modifier, the statement "I am", may be the only true one any person can make, according to the philosophical works of Renee Descartes, as part of the implications of his Dualistic theory. 

Used in common parleyance, the verb can take many forms, depending on the tense and the object being referred to.  "I am", "I was", "I will be", "I am fixing to be", are common (translated) examples from Latin, Romance Languages, and Romance influenced Languages.

Speaking without use of this verb is a crucial part of the system of speech known as E-Prime.  E Prime seeks to avoid making statements based on incorrect observations or gross personal assertions be excluding use of "To be".  As an example, the statement "The system is down." in E Prime would read, "The system seems to be down."  Stated as such, the possibility of incorrect observation or personal bias towards condition (of the aforementioned "system", in our example) is avoided, and only the condition the speaker has observed and reports on is asserted, not the actual state.  While perhaps ultimately correct (Again with respect to Cartesian Dualism), the uncertainty and inexact nature inherent in these statements makes them appear lacking in confidence, and are ineffective for human interactions in which relaying directness and confidence in a statement may trump specific veracity or semantics.

Get Serious Asswipes!

Are you looking for a good time?  A one way trip to insanity, weekend excursion to hit bottom, workshop on horror, a vacation care package GUARANTEED to damage you with native ceremonies and hook ups (literally)?

This is the part where the Deacon tells you to go fuck yourself.  The Insanity is not for the passer by or the consumer.  Insanity is also one letter away from Inanity for a reason.  There are no pedestrian trips into the dark side of the force.  You can't just hit into it, weekend warrior style, and flounce back into the office all a - glow Monday morning like you're just done a fucking cancer walk.

This isn't the sort of cesspool you can skim a discerning finger over, cheekily sample the stink, and connoisseur about the aspects of it.  Cock out, Pants OFF, strut up to the edge and teabag the shit.  If you still have something RESSEMBLING genitals when you pull out, you drop your whole ass IN.

No one is going to bring you the horror.  You cannot summon the finest and most fabulous of the court faggots, hire a coterie of shit magnets, bestow upon them booze and drugs and expect it to happen.  This is a participatory sport.  Like the Australian told me, "Suppose you're standing there, and in front of you you're looking at this set of buttocks.  Huge, hairy, and reeking.  Would you GO IN?  Not to get your rocks off.  To see just HOW bad God's own beastly arsehole could REALLY be."  Get off of the lounge chair worldly fashionable ennui attitude and find something worth screaming about.  I'm off to stab something.

My Bastard espresso machine finally bit it last night.

Well, considering it "Dead" may be an exageration, but the years of untold abuse have finally wrecked it to minimal functionality.  I got the damn things back when I used to work at a residence program for troubled teens.  Stress, hostile staff, and client varying from affable to homicidal were daily companions.  I wouldn't eat for days on end, and was likely down the road to that functional alchoholism affected by all those who do that sort of work, and is echoed in Federal Judges, Private Dicks, and gloveless wasp masturbators. 

Then I realized what made my day go better.  Espresso.  As many shots of it as could be crammed into a cup and hosed down my throat.  Real coffee too, no overdone espresso roast.  This buffered brain and animated my despairing flesh into rigorous action.  I was among the madness, of the madness, yet somehow above it.  Indeed, a No Life King.

I bought the device out of cynicism, barely able to squeeze the $20 out of my budget.  "Professional Reinvestment", and it fueled me.  When I left that shitty line of work, I brought it along.  Office work was, and still is a breeeze by comparison, and becomes downright hillarious when I imbibe enought high powered coffee to provoke extreme paranoia.  My co workers too, benefitted, and a tide of enlightening, panicked brown sludge flowed sacrementally among the living.  Even when an idiot in the west office set a cube on fire with a space heater, I rsiked my work to use it, running it bootleg out of the bottom drawer. 

Recently, it began to break down.  The cheap glass pot exploded.  The tip of the steam foamer broke off.  The gaskets leaked, but cackling as the steam spewed it only made me appreciate the damned monstrosity more.  Then in a fit of cleaning, the handle came off the portafilter.  My roomate brought it before me in shame, knowng what he had just seen die.

Still technically functional, I consign it to mad science.  STEAM!

It's horrible now.  I'm staring at the parts of a conglomeration of brass, steel and bone that MUST be done for tomorrow, I havepower tools enough to emascualte a raging mecha mastadon at my disposal, and the safety equipment to go along with them.  I also ahve a horrible head full of overpowered caffeine. 

You catch the blame for this.

Ok, I lie.  I did this to me.  You are facilitator though.  Iw as in the hometown today, over the border where they will still inpsect and certify that my car is a "Safe vehicle", not some halcyon death carrier that ought to be drug off the roads.  Being in the hometown for this, and my family all being occupied, I decided to drop around a few spots to shop.  Frank's Used Sex Toy and Tool store was closed.  The ratfucker decided he doesn't have to open until 1PM, so a gratifying armload of secondhand silicon and scrap metal was out of the picture.  Remembering you tale of $10 french pres travel mugs, I went to Targhetto.  The city has two "Target" stores, you see.  One down on Lincoln, almost to the GBV projects, another off in the south, at the bright shiny retail parks where only the best things are sold.  (This better one is "Tar-jhay", with a hint of Parissian acccent).

Targhetto obliged.  Apparently they are trying to rid themselves of these rickety contraptions, since they were unlabeled and one of the two left was already broken.  I absconded, brought home and tested. 

How much coffee do you put in one of these?  Fuck intructions, I am a professional.

My blood hums now.

Gary never knew when to leave well enough alone, especially when it came to his older brother.  Maybe that's just how brothers are, sometimes.  It certainly could explain it, but the way it went down, and what happened afterwards, we all could never really excuse OR blame Gary or Willis.  Maybe we should have seen it all coming.

No matter who else is in your family, the eldest brother is often like the front bumper of life.  Some things you just have to learn by default, and they're often the ones to do it.  Like Willis's little stint with the "Tarantulas".  Now to be fair they weren't much of a street gang.  They'd get shit just for trying to buy a dime bag, and were walking on eggshells with the rest of Harlem whenever they tagged anything.  They were never quite annoying enough to get put down though.  Not that the bottom of the pond had much in the way of surface tension, but they never got around to breaking it.  God knows they were never big enough to make waves, and never dropped 187 on anything more serious than a stack of waffles.

When Willis had to see the Judge about his escapades with them though, it had an effect.  His time in jail before that left one too.  You wouldn't see it all the time, but now and them he'd just stare, and mutter.  Never know what it was about.  Maybe he was just FINE in that jail cell, and it stemmed back to his brief stint in temporary state residences before Mr. Drummond could get the adoption finalized.  Whichever did it, you could say he was a good, happy kid at heart, but he was never totally ALL RIGHT. 

Oh yeah, there was his time in the military too.  Said he wanted to take after his uncle.  His uncle the Green Beret in Vietnam.  His uncle who he worshipped like a hero, never mind the times he slipped snakes under his pillow while muttering in Vietnamese, or barged into the bathroom with a knife only wearing war paint.  His uncle was the reason Willis joined the military.  His uncle, indirectly, was why he got that oddball posting on the Balkan islands when all that shit happened.  (Fuckign Reagan)  Willis didn't come back the same.

On the day it all happened, Gary was hanging around like always.  Just being himself, you know?  Which is to say he was being affable with a double side order of "little shithead".  He was talking to Willis, and Willis started to have one of his moments.  Gary didn't clue in, and kept asking him.  Over and over.  Then there was the little R+B "Whaaaaaaaatchuuuuuuu Talllkin' 'bout.....Willis?" number. 

However it happened, it was too much.  Willis spun around, and threw a hand out, pinned Gary to the wall he'd been staring at.  A look in his eyes like a wild animal, Willis leaned in, close.  Got right up to Gary's ear.  As Gary stood there, petrified, Willis told him EXACTLY what he had been "talkin' 'bout".

Exactly when Gary died, or of what, is still open to debate.  We found Willis there, still talking, low and frantic to the corpse he was basically holding up. The smell clued us that he wasn't OK, he'd let go in his pants, but Willis didn't seem to notice. When we finally talked him into letting his gnarled fingers out of Gary's shoulder, he stopped talking.  He hasn't spoken since. 

We called a hospital, but we all knew it was too late.  When they both were taken off, that was the only time I've ever seen Mr. D cry.  Gary's death certificate said a lot of different things, in the end, but it was fright, plain and simple.

Willis is still alive, if you want to call it that.  Persistent catatonia, they say.  Not from any disorder they can pin down, though.  Once he finally said whatever he said to Gary, it left him.  He was emptied, hollowed, done.  Whatever it was, it was too much for the life of Gary Coleman 

One thing though, if you ever go to see him, on the ward it's always "Client 583".  Never go on the unit asking for Willis.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKPBcFkkAXE&feature=player_embedded&has_verified=1#!


THROWDOWN?

Call it as you see it.  GO!

On Shakers.  I haven't been able to get salt or pepper to fall out of any of them. 

The street is never "Street", it just is.  Never the fictional hostile road on the bad part of town, just another road that connects, eventually to home.
A lady, dissheveled, pleading open face, forward body posture, is begging.  She's going to die she say, she needs $5.  Jonesing bad for a hit.
Dark circles around her eyes, almost palpable needles floating around her.  Her partly un tucked dirty t shirt drifts around a form that should be full, but she seems hollowed.  Hulled spirit that even anorexic slimness cannot hide.

This is one of the city's darling streets.  Here the crime is organized almost to a second law, the restaurants are doing well.  It's the darling gem the city wants to show off.  She'll ride the lightning away from here soon enough, tasers all the way, for the crime of not knowing where not to make a scene.

DAGGER + TAZER

Would Enzo let us do it? 

Ok, before the obvious "Richter, you are not allowed.", let's think about this. 

- It will add the powers of classical conditioning to infighting practice. 
- It will give you a REASON to work your feet fast.
- It will amuse everyone else.
- Ever seen a Tazer hit chainmail?  SCIENCE!
- Youtube GOLD. 

Big Trouble in Little China
Logan's Run
Ice Pirates
Zardoz

It happened sometime while I was out this weekend.  Some fucker decided to take "laying down pipe" literally and fucked a water main.  This spewed venereal diseases we don't even have NAMES for yet into the water, and rather than acknowledge the horrific, virus empowered gentialia that would result as an act of one slap - happy god, the've instead pointed out that there are too many mundane diseases in the water now to make it potable without boiling. 

This is Boston.  I'm only a commuter to this metrosprawlitan area, but I'd still take a sip just to see if empowering my loins with tube worms and yammering sores was a good time.  I am hyperape, and I need more opposable members, even if I do have to smack them with a belaying pin now and again to keep them in line.  I already took a swig of the Charles for fucksake.  (Which was disapoint.  I expected at least heartburn or forbidden knowledge from the long brewed mumia of crooks and revolutionaries.)

So, anyways, we have to bol the water today.  Paul the Mad Vietnamese frycook is SOL for the day.  Likely the same with AL Capone's good ol' greasy italian food.  (Assuredly the high end chains will be runnign though.  There are PRIORITIES after all.)

It's raining like a bitch too.  I've been in the woods all week, and I have yet to deign to unpack.  I am prepared for this.  Soaked?  I'll take the clothes off.  No water?  Cool I have some.  I have a vessel I can boil in, or iodine tabs if I'm rEALLY desperate.  The iodine may purge my gut though.  I'll pull up different symptoms later and see if whatever's in the water would be worse than bleaching my bowels.  The world will fall out my ass one way or another, so I may as well be an informed expeller.

I'm hoping LMNO will confirm if my suspicions are true.  He shocked some kale with this strange new draught, I heard.  If not, and I hear of masterful dishes and obscene perversion being done by a Chef Best Not Described In Public or the Presence of Children, then I will make pilgrimage and see what sort of lovecraftian beast I myself may become.   

So, we've all been wondering.  Where's Scrid?

Loosing the Bar and then teh Bodega must've sucked.  Haven't raised him by phone in months, and the letters have stopped coming.  There was a brief mention about studying Japanese massage, but I can't see him falling in with a good crowd through that...  Just a hunch.

Anyways, if you know of or see the dude, please let us know.  I get worried about that cephalopod.

Can't define it but KNOW it when you see it? 
Tell us about it!

What practices, behaviors, concepts or ideas annoy you to the degree that you'd call down enough righteous furry to glass a planet in order to get rid of them. 

Rat out neighbors, friends, or people on Facebook who you don't remember WHY you friended.

There are those laws.  Petty, small, micromanaging laws.  Don't drive like this here, don't buy this until your and age or on the right date.  Walk here, don't walk there.  THOU SHALT NOT!  Enforced, unenforced, under enforced, or excuses tagged on to make sure they GET you for something.

There's the media.  Alarmist, coddling, self righteous, indignant. 

There are the people.  Where to start with them?  Obese, demanding, entitled, making noise, yet somehow utterly impotent when it comes to IMPORTANT things.

It's trendy.  It's an easy out.  Say you hate it give up on it.  Cramming your head into the distaste is as easy and effective as cramming your head into the sand.

        .PWN THYSELF. 
   CAPS ARE MADATORY!

Here goes:

I AM ACUTELY UNCOMFORTABLE URINATING WITH SOMEONE STANDING NEAR ME AND POTENTIALLY ASSESING MY STANCE / BODY LANGUAGE / JUNK!



Go!
 

..and DNT Yul Brynner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpVfNGWK3ko&feature=grec

Pick one.  Succumb to the emotional turmoil, and slide off the edge into compulsive expression of internal conflict.  It'll feel GOOD.

The others, they might not like you so much after that. Not that they should judge, they weren't inside YOUR head, experiencing what YOU did.  They only saw, heard, or felt the horrible fire blowing out of your head.  Your eyes blowing out like the windows of a 3 decker house, spewing upward tongues of flame into a cold night.  The smoke billowing out of your ears in horrible streams, elevating a malignant signal to the heavens that your head had TOO MUCH.  They never saw the spark, of course.

To their view, you've become scary.  You've exemplified extreme, turbulent emotion.  They can't handle that.  Some maybe have never FELT like that, some maybe shamed away by their own inability to do anything about it, to help you STOP.  It's easy to stigmatize, to exclude.  So they do.  Like you have before without even realizing it.  They couldn't cut it, they couldn't deal, they couldn't bottle, box it away, or otherwise CONTAIN. 

The valves have only have certain capacity.  The roof can only hold so much snow.  Human contact of any kind has an LD 50.  The madness buffers the brain; the expiration point buffers those who can't cut it.  Lucky fuckers.

Bit of a workplace dilemma recently that I wanted to run out for consideration.

My department has everyone take breaks in sequence, so we have folks around in case lots of calls start coming in.  If you're going to start your break late, you're supposed to let everyone know.  In practice, this doesn't happen, and it's a no – no to duck out anyways if someone is still out, even if they didn't notify you. (We can monitor who is on line and who is not)

Jolly fucking draconian good.

One co worker, the one with lunch usually before mine, is horrible at letting folks know if they'll be late.  Not just the occasional lapse for getting busy or loosing track of time, this is a daily occurrence.   They could just be forgetful, but fundamental attribution error and paranoia kicks in and I see it as disrespect of more or less intent.  They're otherwise two - faced and conniving, so I feel no need to be honorable or charitable to them.  This person is also on thin ice for other reasons.  I've mentioned this separately, and management has only been able to mention it generally or make more rules to try to keep things. 

Solution; I take my lunch at the time I usually do regardless.  Most of the time this goes unnoticed, but eventually it WILL be picked up on.  It will look badly for both of us, but it will bring more pressure on the other person to keep track of the fucking time.

Yeah, inherently petty, and spiteful, my lunch is not so high – and – fucking – mighty important, and I'm only pissed off at the principle and the implied thoughtlessness behind it all.  Gamesmanship and academically speaking though, it's achieving my goal both ways (either I get my lunch when I want, or and possibly it gets brought to their attention).  This also, in case of the minimal personal loss of face, encourages proper working and behavior in our group (by my standards)

Correct Xanatos Gambit practice, or waste of time?
Comments?  Advice?   

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/03/11/california.whale.meat.charge/index.html?hpt=T2

hxxp://www.engadget.com/2010/03/10/martin-jetpack-priced-at-86-000-mere-mortals-will-soon-be-able/

Get yours before the FAA has kittens.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sons_of_Tucson

Yup.  "Sons of Tucson"

"What is this shit?", I asked myself.  "Can all the high weirdness of the high desert be captured and displayed to the rest of the USA?"
"Will the TV catpure anny of the antics those folks really get up to?"

HELL NO.

There are things no network will ever tell them, especially Fox.  (Fox, point in fact, will deliver the weather with a SMILE while refusing to acknowledge the canibal horserapist hordes that people might actually NEED to know about.)  I won't say it's a biblical sign, or anythign so gradoise or alarmist.  It's liek a cyst, an abscess, a pimple, pushed to the surface in a funny lookin' package for all to see.  Catharsis for the guilt of what we are sliding into.  (These folks would express a sac, and nt realize it's their soul, keep the white man's medicine away from me.)  America has seen the churning festering WEIRD, and have descided to try to package it up with "safe" humor, as if to make it a vaccine.

"Oh that wacky corner of Arizona.", the salary dads and soccer moms will be able to smile, and go back to complaining about how a house  2 miles away might have lead paint.  If they really knew what was going on, if they knew half of your stories, they'd fall on their shite picket fences.  Their blood would paint barber poles down the immaculate plastic.  Their last thoughts would blissfully dwell on how GREEN their lawn is, trying to think on the sanity obliterating, world eating perverts out there. 

Are we ready to see that?  Traumatized suburbanites overhand slamming their babes onto the lance points of their iconic, yet impotent hedge against all the land that isn't their's?  Dying in droves to spare themselves the "IF" of the perverts riding in?  Maybe they wouldn't be so hasty, maybe they'll just cower.  Maybe some will remember what REAL problems are like, and realize their stocks, jobs, and incentives are REALLY small things.  Someone should tell them beforehand, you're the Good Guys. 

You're note like the others, you wouldn't hurt them.  Unless they got out of line.  Or it looked fun.

Dok won't make their trains run on time (Oh wait, mass transit is for the proles, not them.), but he will keep every poorly trained dog in their yards.

Quirks go with genius, this has been established. 
Like everyone is guilty of something, anyone can be diagnosed with something, and, if it pelase their faith in their Sicknes^TM, do a penance of many pills.  (swallowing one bead off the rosary at a time.  When it's God you swallow.  Ave Maria, rinse and repeat. )

These quirks, with IQ or enthusiasm, get downright OCD, ADHD, and assburgery.  Such are the perils of mad science.

You want to build IT.  You get started, and no tools match your needs.  So you make them. 

No techniques work for what you're doing, so you develop them

The goddamn workbench is rattling too much, so you redesign it, and add in some details specific to your needs. 

Will IT ever be finished?  It doesn't matter.  I will show them all eventually, and they can goddamn wait for it to be done.  I'm having FUN with every step along the way.     

Death Coffee is by no means defunct or passe, but Science! demands we look ever forward and onwards.  Reviewing qualities of various teas from my own imbibing through the years, I'm trying to work up a blend which will seriously kick things up a notch.  Tea in general will never have the kick to ass nature of coffee.  Lower caffeine in the best of times, it's effect is a more subtle wake up over a longer time, and no associated crash.  Here's what I've started with:


Pu-erh tea - Suu dubbed it "Butthash tea" rightly, it tastes like ASS.   There's a mix with strawberry that nixes this flavor enough for anyone (with out the "refined" taste for it) to enjoy.  It works decently at kicking your metabolism up a notch, so they say.

Yerba Mate - The quasi caffeine substitute.  Some sources say it's a caffine analog, some say it's just a different type of caffeine.  Anyways, it works.  Last time I gave up coffee, it was only with a constant supply of this crap. 

Ginseng - Brain booster?  Chinese medicine?  Libido enchancer?  Studies varry, but I've always been OK with the stuff.

The Mad Science goal is to become an energized, high metabolism, high libidioed monstrosity.  Pulsating with veiny lividity at brain and crotch. 

The regular goal = a good energizing cup of tea.

Test Runs

#1:  Mixed three ingredients, brewed, and drank.  Tasted better than many teas, but muddled flavor. Collapsed and napped for many hours, likely due to recent moving / rebuilding a couch and going to an Indian buffet.  Woke up and was sharp into the wee hours of the morning.

#2: Omitted the yerba mate.  Got a much fruitier tea, decent wakeup.

Further trials:
-STRONGER extraction.  I may grind and pack it into the espresso machine.  I may use some of our incredible supply of OLD imported chinese ginseng extract (and risk heavy metal poisoning). 

-Humoring using white rum or strong vodka to make a tincture.  Both takes on the tea came out with a discenable sheen, so there may be an oil worth trying to extract.

- Unmixed ingredient.  These were made to be enjoyable teas, not metabolism / intellect boost.  They've made good tea, but we need EFFECT!


 

The stuff is GREAT.  Light enough to add body, but enough grip to hold the ends together!

Thank you!

It's depressing, most of the time, you just watch them fail; horribly, and not even have the mood to say "I told you so."

If there's one refinement Mad Science can offer us, it's professional detachment.  Sure, you may have missed the moon and only carved your name in the skulls of 20 VERY surprised orphans, but in the name of science, and the greater achievement and advancement of all, you carry on.  As they say, we are professionals and all.  Can't let little setbacks get us down.

This detachment works too.  I'm sure I told you about that time on the train.  For those who I haven't, the commuter train from Boston to my old, old digs in Worcester is NOT a quick, straight line affair.  After a work day, followed by an hour and a half on this train, the LAST thing you want is to slow down. 

So this one afternoon I'm waiting out the last few stops, winding through suburbia, when the worst thing happens.  Three boys, excited by prospect of a trip into the (not so big) city, bouncing around talking and giggling, get on the fucking train two stops before mine.  These are the kind that don't laugh as much as they pre-pubescent squeak in glee.  Turning up the music does nothing, so I abandon my seat and go to wait by the door.  I prop myself up in one of the seats there, and wait. 

Well, the DUMB rarely lets us rest in peace.  These three decide to join me in the vestibule, giving voice to how they're JUST going by their friend's house, and ought to jump out to get there faster.  They line up at the door like the fucking Jamaican junior bobsled team, and start heaving back and forth, gathering momentum for the jump. 

I'm about to watch this happen. 
They make splatter!  Rah Rah St. Darwin!

They'll stop the train though, when it happens, and despite the nothing to be done, we'll be stuck there until the meat wagon arrives to collect the fresh ground teenburger.  Fuck.  Guess I have to do something.

Mad Psychology, Suu.  Youth HATES authority.  Train conductors or "You better not do that." is going to be useless here.

I pull out one ear bud, and turning to them as little as possible, "I'll feel bad later if I don't tell you; this speed is enough to kill you."

"SEE! SEE! I TOOLD YOU!", as the hindmost thinks better and sits down.  Given pause, but soon resuming their momentum, the other two still seem keen on jumping.  They start their bobsled routine again.  Always problems...

"We'll be at the station in five minutes.  It's not worth your ass." I tell them.

Number two sits down.

If we follow Vinnie Jones's theory, our head dick is now robbed of his two balls.  No longer backed up, he sits down.  The train ride finishes in peace, and they go off on there way.  Can't say if anything has happened to them since.  They went a block and met Goddot for all I know.  Walk on extras in my life, back into the ether. 

Maybe it was noble, maybe it was self interest, and maybe I was just seeing if it would work.  Maybe they never would have jumped.  I don't get to know, but for a usually boring stretch of time, it certainly was a worthwhile experiment.     

Clearing a few thigns up for the everyone else.

1. "Mad Science", "Science!", "Mad Scientist", etc. - We're really talking about enthusiastic research, and freelance, if not improvisational engineering.  This point has been made before, likely in XKCD. 

2. "Destroy the world!" - Unless we've got planet crackers, nukes, atmosphere burners, etc., on hand, likely we're not ACTUALLY going too destroy the WHOLE world.  We likely want to change things in a very speedy, and uncertain way.  Before you get all James Bond and decide to charge off and stop us, please consider that no one is celebrated for saving the world.  It's SUPPOSED to be saved.  You'll be thanked once and shuffled off home, at best.  At worst, you'll be living Jack Bauer's recurring serious of REALLY awful days.  Letting things go down and watchign everythign re-settle will be much more worthwhile, we promise. 

It can be supposed, amongst gentles of any proper population, that certain unfpoken rules and guidlinef are to be followed.  Among the oddeft of these are they unspoken upon which howe a gentleman shalle conduct himself about another gentle.

The Ordering of Placement of Onself at the Urinal
Being in their heart of hearts fragile, insecure, and timid creatures, elaborate ruling are to be made amongst gentles making employ of a wall occupied by multiple urinary porcelain basins. 
This is done for to preserve the temper of each, for many will seize forcibly of the bladder should another enter their proximity while they pee.  Also to allay the anxiety and allay the accusation that one gentle may accuse another of being seidman, or be seidman himself.  There is also thee nagging fear that one may desire to gaze upon thee other's cockle and balles.  Needless to say, a wide stance, and used in the fighting warde of the plough, is NOT to be employed at thee urinal.  (Thy toole ist not that big  dumbarse.)

A minimum of one unoccupied urinal is to be maintained between the gentles at all times.  Should there not be sufficient urinals; the lately arrived gentle should make use of the crapper.

For to utilize this unspoken lawe, and the underlying fear against a population, make with thy quill and parchement a declaration from the building management defying this order, and nail such theses upon the privy door.

http://flowingdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Engineers-Guide-to-Drinks11.pdf

If it went away, we'd all go real BAD for awhile.  A panicked couple hours screaming about.  Oil and water shaken up, hundreds of different varieties trying to find each other at the proper level and density.  You'd get a lot of people changing their viscosity just to get along. 

We'd see some weird, if it went away.  People begging and pleading for order and rationality.  Just be calm, line up, and the Red Cross can give a cup of gruel to everyone.  Celebrity performers would be brought along to entertain as placation, and the aid workers would trot the AIDS Quilt or other meaningless talismans of the old charitable order before them like it was the Ark or John the Baptist's Hand.  "No one would DARE attack it."  We cannot fathom the levels of strange desperation that will be sunk to.  Pleas and relics will mean nothing the moment one person decides they need more than that one cup, and clubs the guy in front of them to get it.  Too little, too late, too bad.  It's ON now, and the only way you'll get away with it is making sure it stays on.

There'd be casualties.  Wrong place, wrong time, got something, got nothing, look like lunch, sorry buddy, you're gone.  It'd be bad luck, but the people who care about things being "fair" just went away too when it went away.

Begin to organize again.  Or, maybe you carry around for awhile.  Years, decades, roll with the horde, take what you need and roll on.  It keeps you going so it's easy to rationalize.  (As long as US helps you, you stick with the US, when the US doesn't serve ME, then things get tense.)  You keep rolling, you die off, or you try to slow down that crazy horde momentum and be not horde.  (A trick on par with jumping out of a car at highway speeds.)

Maybe you settle, maybe with other people for ease and defense.  Weird, very different now.  "Community" is no longer just a word that gets trotted out when the city cuts the budget and expects volunteers to clean a park up.  Community is everyone else around you who helps you maintain that grip on food, shelter and warmth.  The smaller the community, the more hardscrabble the conditions, the clearer that gets.  Loose one doctor, one weaver, one smith, or one strong back, you're suddenly got a problem.  Getting bigger makes this less likely to happen, but gives more space for a few extra parasites.  Leaches on any system are the first form of conspicuous consumption. 

What went away?  Doesn't matter.  Might be the water, the gasoline, the electricity, the communication system.  Long, fragile, Spider^TM silk threads holding things the way they are out of the pit. 

Curly, the Curly I remember anyways, was a prototypical wandering jerk.  It's a compelling archetype, and makes sense in a lot of ways.  Curly would wander in, the hijinks would ensue, and he would leave.  They were his gift; his wit, his pain, and his response of crazed FUN to the white noise normalcy.  He was giving use his time too, which he could never get back.  He spent that time with us well though, not many other people would even get MENTIONED if anything like THE INCIDENT happened to them.

I recall a few other folks who would do their deed and wander on.  Broson, Clint, Yul, Mifune.  Sure, different settings, but they sort of remind me of Curly sometimes.  The idea was the same though.  Walk in, things are bleh.  Make them not bleh.  Walk out.  It makes sense; you can't really hang around, the village's pet hero after you do something like that.  They'll either grow to resent you, or realize you were just a human after all.  It's a gracious exit, a favor to themselves, and a sign of a forgotten form of stoicism to just walk on.  

Grandad and his buddies left too.  What do you expect people to say to a deed like that anyways?  "Thanks for putting the facist beast away, stay here so we can fellate you all for ever and ever."?  No, you do what needs doing because it needs, not because of there reward.  As long as I am here for my people, as long as I am their Deacon, it's not a bad spirit to work in, or example to follow.


Edit: Misspelling

     Ever get the sense it's not a world for the self sufficient human anymore?  You can go from place, one resource dump to the next, and be hard pressed to cull out any useful things from the masses of distracting crap they have.  If you want to do for yourself, without leaning down and paying for someone else to do for you, you need to visit the temples devoted to the various areas of the household, and view their proselytization on HOW THOU SHOULD before being allowed to gather what you want and leave.  This is the pitch, the hook, the way that fair and retail alike curry converts from the crawling consumer. 

     Each one of these houses to strange gods has its own expected supplicant too.  A wide viewed asshole can see the pornography in power tools, power mixers, and powerful sewing machines just as easily, but that won't do for some of these places.  They were all built, so the people would accept them more easily, on the archetypes of the old gods.  As an exercise, write down Hephaestus, Demeter, (Or any list of major Greek / Norse / Egyptian Gods), and walk through a mall, strip mall, or retail park seeing which might fit what.  It's a simple matching exercise.  Hiding it might confuse people after all.

     Watch people visit these kinds of places and parcel themselves out to the respective places.  A car might discharge people heading with equal vigor towards crafts, hardware and clothing stores.  The family divides to hail their patron deities, to reconvene once they have made their prayers and received their goods.  You may notice the conspicuous absence of Ra, Odin, Zeus, and a few other notable high ups.  The places that sell you how to be the BOSS are a bit more subtle and hard to find.  There's enough to distract the masses though, and they can't have anyone just stumbling in accidentally.

It's not all easy, Bono.  Sure, it would be great if you could get Idi Amin, the Dalai Lama, Kim Jon Il and GWB back stage at one of your shows, and have them sort out everything.  Yeah, it would really be great.  Won't happen though.  These are, no exceptions, men so buried in their power stuggles, in their structures, in their uber phallic alpha positions, that they cannot back down and be reasonable.  You may be no different, you realize.  You sing about stuff, I'm a fan of some of it myself, and it's a nice idea.  Still though, for the position of power you feel on stage, and backstage at your shows, it's just where you're in control, it's where you are god.  Much like the head offices, the executive controls for the nuclear bunkers, or the grand temples discussing dead sages, you're still trying to use where you're strong to affect everyone else.  It's where you can get them to listen.  For a moment anyways.

You know the old stories about wizards?  Some had a "place of power".  Their workshop, a cave, island, glade, or stretch of coast where they had special control or ability over things.  Once out of that place though, no guarantees the effects will stick...

You've tried to do a lot with the backstage, as others have in their places, but jsut good ideas won't change men so set and empowered in their own places, where the masses listen and blue clad attendants felate. 

Music, what you send out, can only do so much too.  Some people may get it and take up your banner.  Have you felt cold when you see some people bobbing their heads, loving every note, but missing the message entirely?  That's what finally drove off Zach D.  He spat a fine message, in his own words and Cypress Hill's.  In the end the kids listened to it, felt angry, felt good about that, wore a t- shirt and thought they were done.  I think it fucked him up a bit.  He had nothing else good to say, and nothing that would get into people, so he quit the band and left for a bit, I figure. 

I think you saw one of Zach's old buddies, a few years back.  He was pissed.  Still pissed about Zach, pissed at you, pissed over the whole mess of things, and so he decided to monkey up a statue on some awards show and make a scene as you were accepting the yearly something becasue you had released soemthing.  You called out to him, reasonable and peaceful, a regular saint.  A saint spared dragging him out the back door and introducing him to mace or tazers. It's easy to be a saint when you never have to get your hands dirty.

If you're watching, since this is in a place to be watchable.
How long has it been since you ran into scum?  I don't mean people on wellfare, or people who live in the wrong areas, or are the wrong color or belief.  None of that really affects much, far as I can figure.  People are still people everywhere.  They can get vicious and bad sometimes, but it takes a lot for people not to be folk. 

Scum are different.  Scum just don't care.  It's kind of like THE DUMB, a force that gets into people's lives and starts to bend things.  Like red shift around a soul too attracted to itself.

It always looks the same.  Things around them won't be cluttered, they'll be neglected.  (Even clutter, whether from hoarding or just general scatterbrainedness, is clean by comparison once you've got the scent of both.)  Forgotten, like a bag of groceries dropped on a table and never eaten.  No one puts them away.  No one cleans up the mess.  By natural law the contents will putrefy, smell, and start withering back into dirt.  Still nothing happens to them. 

Scum isn't letting this happen, scum is not caring it happens.  Scum is letting others or yourself be around that sort of thing.  It's being more than capable of getting or making nice things, but then failing UTTERLY at keeping them nice. 

This is not directed at you, or any one person I know.  It's a common failing I see in myself and everyone else now and then, and dodging things I can see coming seems worthwhile. 

Good evening fuckers.  I am currently sort of messed up on buttered rum concoction courtesy of Nivek's recipe, and have reached a revelation about this season.

I hate the sudden erection of morality.  Like everyone sudden forgets that they don't have to be good for another mythic bogeyman, and turns up the bullshit.

As soon as we hit past the mid December mark and actual OMG CHRISTMAS takes full effect, we seem to be bombarded with other people's sudden need to tell us horrible, depressing stories that insinuate we are not being CHRISTMAS enough.

This is akin to emotional terrorism in my viewpoint.  Your story does NOTHING to make me a better person, except make me regret things I cannot control. 

Here's a touching Christmas story for you.
Some jackass idealist young professional feels bad for the have not underclass, so on his way to family dinner on Christmas day, in the snow, he invites a lonely meth ho in to share a meal with his family.
This does not share the Christmas spirit.  She just steals the silverware, and mortifies our young idealist fuckface's fuckface mother. 
This doesn't bring her a revelation based on charity, it just gets her away from her horrible life for a few hours and horrifies his family in the process.
This doesn't benefit anyone, except Grandpa, who tips her for a blowjob under the table before the fruitcake is served.

Find he morality that makes you happy.  Fuck other opinions.  Just another fuckhead's opinion.

http://gizmodo.com/5426794/im-sorry-but-we-blew-up-your-laptop

Some of you have spent a lot of my precious air venting over how you love or hate the season.  In spite, I am going to blow off the same, and laugh as I exhaust the last precious oxygen before this sinking sub hits crush depth. 

The cold season drives the suck home.  It motors it right to your doorway, and defecates cold, wet and damp right on top of you.  The bills go up as you suddenly need to use the heat and the lights more.  Every lapse, chill, or glare of headlights is a reminder of how the world is suddenly not in its friendly, life warming cycle anymore.  Nature has ripped us right off the teat, and firmly stapled us to the cold, dark side of her pimpled ass for the next few months. 

Old times, the leaders and wise folks realized this is a bummer.  Living in a leaky thatch lodge without the benefit of a good cloak/ poncho/ duster, or marvelously waterproof wafflemaker boots, I'd agree with them even more.  So they did the uplifting thing, they scheduled regular parties, ceremonies, and whatnot.  Gave the people something to look forward to and work to prepare for. 

We're not as connected into the life of our tribe to notice these days, and love or hate the greater community's established adherence to these rituals for all the pressure, expectation, and commercialism it means. 

Winter ceremony doesn't mean organize to get all the wood, ale, and food prepped any more.  It means you need to spend more money

Winter feast doesn't mean you need to plan your hunting expeditions accordingly so there's a motherfucker of a beast to roast.  It means you need to spend more money.

Winter exchange of stuff with those you appreciate doesn't mean planning and crafting everything out AS MUCH any more. It means you need to spend more money.

So yeah, commercialism and monetary expenditure DOES, by my count, blow the joy out of such festivities like a hollow point coring a pineapple.  Instead of expending homemade materials for other members of the tribe or expending calories and filling up nasty wet days getting ready for what we KNOW will be a hell of a party, we only cynically watch reduction in the ever so removed bit of green paper that we've been hoarding in hopes we can cash them in on ourselves. 

Yeah, bitch about it if you feel like it.  Your money, after all, and it has already started flying out faster to fill the heating oil tank.

I plan to make or acquire items for friends and family that I know they can use or appreciate, because they are decent bastards.  I will drive past the other idiots in the snow, and scream novel and vulgar things out the window at them, pushing the retail fueled holiday rage straight to hilarious.  I will attend what usual and unusual gathering are happening to co opt the basic winter party to drink port and laugh.  It's too easy to feel shitty and depressive, especially right now, to not go for having a good time of it all. 
Seems like the things to do, at least to me.

"Bap"
(a small, round bun.) 
Fucking shit, could you give it a name that DOESN'T sound like a term for some obscure item of personal hygiene?  "Bap" brings to mind an underwear insert specifically designed to capture feces.  (Which should be produced and given away with doses of "Ali")  Like you're going to watch the tapes of St. Carlin, or eat Mexican food, better put a BAP in.
Or maybe you're having one of those not QUITE diarrhea but still rapid fire liquidy shit days when you want a little extra personal security because you doubt your ability to EVER wipe enough without aid of a fire hose and bemused eunuch attendants.  Better pack a pack of baps. 
Baps: for those who can't stand using ass tampons.

"Paradigm"
Businesspeople.  I blame businesspeople.  Words that can be easily understood and overused in attempts to impress people should be kept away from them.  They don't mix.  Kind of like toddlers with tasers, except less of a spectator sport.

"Toys"
Imagine an over stimulated child flying into a retail establishment screaming this over and over in a high pitched voice with a slight lisp while being chased by a harried, chastising parent. 

"Ptosis"
Because it reminds me of stoners, poster children for fetal alcohol syndrome, and Down syndrome, who also frequently suffer from it.

Beyond a "Guess how long I've been logged in?"  or "OFUCK I post how much?", there is the reflection of how much of my time, energy and thought has gone into this joint too.

You all are informative, interesting, annoying, and downright infurriating.  I'm involved too deep to get out alive, and the history books will call me a monster.  I will cackle all the way to the auto d'fe.  Overall a fine heat sink for my sanity, and source of sure fire amusement.

So thanks for being the maid I metaphorically flaggelate.  I am used, and reused, and abused, and amused, and plan to continue.

Fuckers.

-R

Let me paint you a picture of the holidays. 
It's almost nightfall outside the only bulk retail warehouse in a 25 mile area.  As such EVERYONE is there.

The traffic is a molasses like stop and go affair, gaining 3 feet with each heave of motion, almost like an obese person fleeing a house fire.  Good will towards men is expressed with sharp jives to get a few more feet ahead of the other guy, long toots of the horn, and engine revving curses.

Those who negotitate this and park semi legally, make their way, hooded of eye, and avoiding fellow shoppers and cars to the front of the store.  They squish through the slush and water that seeps cold if not wet like a growing mold, and approach the massive edifice.
40% off, ye who enter here.

There's a formerly desititute man out front, with a bell and a kettle, a posterboy for recovery from poverty and drugs.  He boasts a scraggly beard and a voice like 30 cigarette years as he barks out his mantra.

GIN

GALL

BELLS!

GIN

GALL

BELLS!

Each syllable punctuated by the sharp ding of his bell, we'd like to be happy for this fellow, but somehow we realize he's not quite ready for prime time play.  This is what it takes to get people to agree that it would be better to be in a carboard box fucked up on heroin.  Hopefully, before midnight, someone will arrive in a chugging, failing, state sponsored charity van and take him back to someplace warm and dry, where he will honestly cash in his donations and be able rest without fear of being raped or robbed. 
Yeah, you'd like to beleive that.

In the corner by a well picked rack of dying pine members is a much more somber figure.  Huddled near motionless in more thermal clothing than most will ever own, she sits, shepherd of the trees that no one will buy, and tomorrow are mulchbound.

Entry to the retail hell proper is another stygian delight.  Sound, heat, light and crowds overwhelm in a multi pronged tide of "holiday spirit".  The Second degree of retail inquisition.  Bewildered, you stagger forth, but relief and hope fade into yet another hurdle between yourself   The heavy press of cars without is mirrored, fiendishly, in the press of flesh and shopping carriage within.

(more to come)

So Dad and I are having a walk around the boat works last weekend, and we pass the JJ, up on blocks for yearly repairs.

The JJ is a clean, well built and well maintained old wood lobstering boat.  A real working boat, not some useless yacht you can only waste diesel, fuck, and eat lunch on.  It's been around the harbor for years, operated by J, and even in the busiest parts of the summer, is always kept looking sharp.

"You heard he got boarded by the Environmental Police?", Dad says.

"No, what for?"

"Random Inspection.  They asked him if he had his Federal fisheries such and such picture ID.  He asked when he was supposed to have known about even HAVING one."

"So he got a fine?" 

"Nope, they just made him de - band and throw back all the lobster he had just caught."

Here we have a FINE example of the rule - driven, lawful-awful aligned mess we are working ourselves into.  A hardworking, established member of a community, gets a load of shit.  An exemplar of a traditional trade, already being harried by yuppies in motorboats who don't like how chum smells as they drink beer and waste gas, gets his day fucked up.  In the name of protecting the environment.

Not the asshole  (remember said yuppies?) who pull his traps when he's not around (NEVER do that, lobstermen will shoot you for it.)
Not some cheapass wreck of a gill netting boat with illegal equipment and a fly by night crew.

We paid for them to do this.

In terror, we all agreed to bring in foods for the day before Thanksgiving.

Under pretensious sham of camraderie and good will, we in fact seek to judge each other's character and fortitude by the dishes we proffer.  Knowing this, we brought only our most horrific, calorie ladden, artery clogging foods.  We have fed, and now we sit, knives drawn, waiting to see whose eyelids close first...

Here was the tally:

Richter:  Funeral Potatoes with Hanburger crust, and chocolate chip cookies
Linder:  Pasta salad (chicpea, whole wheat rotini, olive oil, feta, cucumber) and Buffalo dip w/ cheese and shredded chicken.
LE: Pecan Cranberry Pie
Chris: Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins.
Big Red:  Warmed brie with Cajun seasoning

Really, just follow me on this for a bit.

They lived it, they grew up with it, and as soon as elmer's glue mowhawks and safety pins were forgotten, they were happy to lay down and be normal.  Maybe it was having kids, and wanting to be safe and simple until they could understand the cynical humor, satire, and black comedy behind it all.
Hell, I wouldn't let me listen to "Johnny hit and run Pauline", until I was 18 EITHER.  Some of these Juggalo worthy retards would take it as a SUGGESTION for fucksake.
It was NOT Peter Paul and Mary.  Like the vindaloo that no one else in the house can stand, that made it worthwhile.  Not an entrance exam, more like a litmus test.

Do you see this?
Are you angry too?
Don't you feel like you want to FUCKING STOMP on someone (thing), but still wish to act at least marginally cerebral or intelligent in the process?

Now they'll hand out Good Charlotte like candy, and it'll bear about the same nutritional content. 

LMNO said it, "The Sex Pistols did it better".  I think I'll use it to replace "That's what she said" in my daily use.  It'll be worth it if someone clues in.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8355287.stm

(Factually incorrect, I was jsut having fun with a narrative.  Fuck off.)

Hey buddy.  Wanna buy some heroin?
Got some fine shit here.  Have you gurgling like a baby, passing those stones with hardly a worry. It isn't your bamboo flavored Vietnamese crap, and won't have you muttering Punjabi or farting curry while you're high either.  It's an American product.  Ripped it away from some Afghans fair and square.  Sure, we could burn it, bury it, or make the Indian Ocean the birthplace of dolphin grunge music, but we've got a better idea.  The economy's been down, I'm sure you've heard, and the new man up top has a whole LIST of things he wants funded with junky cash.  It's like another tax, collected by the most motivated employees we've ever had.  Up a fucking snake ladder of fronts and blinds, and it's back in government pockets.  Give the middle class a tax break, just for good PR, we're raking in more now. 

Crime rate you ask?  Prisons?  No worries, just another quick cut of the black budget laundered by the folks who make the laws, and you've got a pittance to keep everyone thinking we CARE about the problem.  (Kick some money into DARE again, school kids convince everybody.)  We will always have criminals, after all, doesn't matter where we park the ones too dumb to use.

Horrible, you think?  Well, we have to put this drug SOMEWHERE.  Can't very well siphon it to other "Civilized" nations; they'd aim jackboots at our balls as quick as we did at Manuel.  We better use it all up at home market.

Why can't we destroy it all over there?  Well, someone would steal it and sell it themselves.  Know how many soldiers turned mini drug lord during Nam?  Everyone's corrupt, and it'd end up the same place, the money in some fucker's pocket, not Uncle Sam's. 

You wouldn't want that would you?  It'd be unpatriotic.  Buy American. 

So, interested in scoring some smack?   

Your baseless assumptions about the 'other guys':

Those people in church?  That's not God they're praying to.  That's just their cover story.

For times when using Internet Explorer is the only option, is there any way to enable auto - spellcheck in it?

So, a while back I started a grapload of Cider - based booze.  One fine fall day I rolled through a local orchard farmstand and bought out a signifigant portion of the cider they'l pressed for the day.  Apparently only local suburbanites normally come through for a half - gallon at a time, so some Scadian brewer  looking for 5 or 6 throws them off. 

Here's what I put down:

Cyser (Cider / honey mix)
2 Gallons Cider
1 gallon water
2 lbs. Local honey
Cinamon.

-Boiled, pitched with champagne yeast, and set to ferment. 
- 3 weeks later it's a very tart, dry headfucker with a note of cinamon.  I want to serve it a bit more spiced, or fortified with honey liquer to sweeten it up a bit.

The Straight Cider Shit
-3 gallons cider, shut in a carboy and left to it's own devices
- 3 weeks later it tastes a lot like the cyser, but a bit sweeter.  I'm serving this at Thanksgiving.  Family members have heard of this, and have suddenly found themselves in Atlanta or Hawaii respectively.  Approximate ABV will be clearly labeled on both this year.

Local spags are encouraged to drop by, or ask about some.  LARP apgs will be inflicted by this brew regardless.
I may start another batch if I can be arsed

Do you use Facebook, fictionpuss?  No I'm not asking you to friend me or anything.  (Nothing personal, just the less my lives overlap, the better)

I'm just wondering if you know of this little aberration known as FARMVILLE.

It's simple enough, like Sim City, but there's something kind of wrong about it.  Every so often, some destitute Aesop's Fable cast out wanders into your farm.  Black sheep, ugly Ducklings, Pink Cows (WTF?!?), and you're supposed to take pity on them and take them in.

Is this where people are driven to keep their self esteem up?  Really, does this make them feel good about themselves, masturbatorially accepting the cast offs of the fake world to assuage their guilt at being horrible otherwise?  People who do this remind me a LOT of these "1 and only 1 good deed a month" Christians we see around.  The kind who hold up a line at a grocery store letting a bluehair in ahead of a line of 10 people.  You know, the ones who nearly get you killed when they decide they're going to let some schmuck into traffic, then act all haughty when you tell them how bad they nearly fucked themselves and everyone else in pursuit of their little ego boost.

Explain this shit, because I'm feeling too sane for it all of a sudden.