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Research: Playing FPS video games improves eyesight

When I want your opinion, I'll beat it out of you.

TGRR,
Getting used to the New America,Ñ¢.

I rather like what the writer for Achewood said:

"When I want your opinion I will cut out your brain and eat it and crap your opinion back into your skull."

And mud can also be used for wrestling!

http://somethingpositive.net/sp12102002.shtml

I was never under the impression that it was possible to completely liberate myself.  What I can do is take some control over the size of my cell - knock down a few walls, use the rubble to build new ones that are more to my liking.  That kind of thing.

rgyD, I was like you once.  Then I realized that if I did care what people thought about me, it gave me the power to change what they thought about me.  Which can be leveraged into the power to change what they think about other things.

You're cheating yourself of a very useful tool.  You may wish to reconsider your absolute disdain.

Lysergic, have you ever heard of Dion Fortune?  D.M. Kraig refers to her as someone who claims that magic(k) works by altering your own consciousness, which then prompts to possibly take courses of action you wouldn't otherwise (even minor ones like driving home by a different route) and manifests the desired goal that way.

Ah yeah, GSP thread curious.

Also, that site mentioned...
it's discordians trying to "take down" discordia, so I don't think it needs to be taken too seriously in the first place.

Very few things do.  On the other hand, it's not a bad idea to have someone occasionally taking us to task like we do others.  It may be that they're missing the point because they're too heavily invested in another worldview to even begin to understand what we're doing/saying, but it may also be that we're getting too far into the habit of ... preaching to the choir isn't the best metaphor, but when we write stuff to post here, we know that most of them already have certain understandings, grok our acronyms and our..."culturally unique" metaphors, so we forget to try writing with an eye toward the "lay person".

Very Far Away from Anywhere Else, Ursula K. LeGuin

War for the Oaks, Emma Bull (squee@fizz!)

Illusions, Richard Bach

The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

...um, I guess fill spaces 5-10 with any of Frank Miller's "Sin City" graphic novels.  They don't really count as books to most people, but I'd never be able to list ten favorite books without resorting to "What did I read and enjoy recently?", so hey.

Oh good.  I was feeling a little guilty about bogarting more than my share of the gonads.

Next topic: I am a camera

"I'm a camera!"
The policeman sighs; one more
Crazy peeping Tom.

NT: boogers

Oddball thing is, *NONE* of your dialogue I remember actually hearing.  I know that you said it, but I did not perceive it as actual speech.

All of Roger's lines, though, I actually heard someone speaking.

Just bizarre.

Oh hell no!  We need to be MUCH more confrontational!

"...and if your first thought is 'Oh, more of that PKD stuff', then just set this down right now.  This magazine is for the grown-ups."

I don't expect this to make sense, even though I'm pretty sure I added/changed stuff upon waking so that it might.  But I only rarely remember my dreams, and have never before remembered a dream that included folks from this forum, so I take that as a sign this is supposed to be shared.  I don't know the why of this, either, and I'm sure they wouldn't tell me. 
--------------------------------
I don't know where this happened, though apparently in this dream I live here.  It was somewhere right next to an ocean, in a town/city setting.
--
I walk up the street, the ocean pounding rocks just to my left.  LMNO's car is parked where I remember it, and I tap on the passenger window.  He slowly blinks awake from his nap, looks, recognizes me, and pushes a button to undo the lock on the passenger door.

As I open the door and say hi to him, his car phone rings.  And I mean "car phone" - it is a full-sized handset built into the front seat center console.  Seeing that LMNO is in the middle of a full yawn and stretch, and that he is waving his fingers toward the phone, I take that as my cue to answer it for him.

"Red," the voice on the line says.  I recognize the voice, and the tone of it, and my gut lurches.

"Rog?"

"I got nothin' to say to you, Red."

"I know."  I don't know why, actually, but those are the words that come out of my mouth anyway, and I don't know why to that either.  I hand the phone over to LMNO.  "I'm walking away now."  And I do.  I walk around the car and lean against the back bumper, the crashing ocean wiping out any possible chance I might overhear.

Roger's upset with me.  That was obvious from his first word.  But how would he know?  And the only thing I might possibly have done was - but surely that couldn't be it?  Surely they hadn't stuck their tentacles down THAT far....

I'm suddenly aware that LMNO is standing behind my right shoulder.  I turn.  His face doesn't show any anger, but he's very obviously concerned about something.  Whether it's about me personally, or just the situation I appear to have caused, or possibly both or neither, I can't tell.  He speaks.

"You voted?"

I nod, and feel my face betraying my confusion and no small amount of defensiveness.  "But it was just City Council shit!  Why would they trace little shit in a little-shit town like this?"

His expression doesn't change.  "Give me your phone."

"But I left it in the truck when -"

"It doesn't matter." LMNO's voice leaves no room for argument, and were he in a better mood, I would make a joke about not wanting to argue with something that sexy.  He promptly turns and walks over to the hood of his car, kneeling down.

I clumsily fish my cell phone out of my purse and then follow.  LMNO reaches his hand out to me as I approach, and I place my phone in it.  He plugs it into a cord that's shaped like my charger, but seems hooked up directly to his car battery.  There's a low FZZT! sound, and he unplugs it and hands it back.

"You really should have had us do that a while back," he says as I put my phone back in my purse.

"I didn't believe y'all.  I didn't want to.  I'm still not sure I do."

They'd been right all along, of course.  Last July, in an apparent show of patriotism, T-Mobile had offered plan upgrades to any of its customers who showed a valid voter registration card.  All the other companies, not wanting to be outdone, had immediately followed suit.  A couple of weeks later, Roger had come on the boards warning us all that not only were they using this scheme to collect personal data, but they were hiding transponders in the electronic voting machines that could uniquely identify a cell phone that came within range.  Now somebody somewhere (who?  Fuck knows) was able to track your personal voting habits.

The obvious solutions were to not vote, or to not carry a cell phone, but my current living arrangements made that highly unfeasible if I wanted to stay out of a straitjacket or padded room.  Still, someone had found hope.  Jolting a phone's SIM card with an overdose of electricity caused it to reset to the default sample "John Doe" name and address, and there was nothing the transponders could do about that yet.  I'd been afraid to do that, though - I didn't trust that it wasn't just some elaborate prank to render a few thousand paranoids' phones useless.  Surely between not taking my cell phone in with me and this being elections in a podunk coastal town that nobody except the Chamber of Commerce cared about, I was fine, right?

"Think, Ducky," L says.  "Roger knew you voted.  That means they know too."

"How?"

"I can't tell you now."  His emphasis on 'now' makes my gut lurch again.
--
A short olive-skinned woman in slacks and a long white jacket is walking over to us.  Precisely, to me; I can tell by the eye contact we just made.  About thirty (maybe fifty?  I suck at this) feet away...is that Roger?  Damn - yes, it is.  I can't tell if he's glad of her presence or not, but he is very clearly telegraphing that I am not to mess around with her.  LMNO steps away as she approaches, but she doesn't even seem to notice.

She's carrying a clipboard, and she asks if I want to take a quick poll.  L's behind me now, so I can't see what he thinks, but Roger nods curtly once.  I consent; I know not to mess around with him either.  It's a matter of poking holes in a ballot in answer to some truly strange questions - what year was it 20 years before you were born, things like that.

She is unfailingly pleasant the entire time, and when I hand the paper back to her, she hands me a coupon for a free pound of chocolates at one of the nearby tourist shops, then wanders off to find her next target.  I'm reading the coupon and wondering what the hell "no charge for mounting with additional purchase" means, and I almost don't notice Roger walking up to LMNO's car.

"Congratulations," Roger says, his voice somewhat low.  "You just gave them the potassium they need for their next bomb."

I want to ask how, but I don't bother.  They probably wouldn't tell me that either.  I realize I'm holding the coupon in front of my chest as if somehow it could shield me from their disapproval.

Roger's got a hell of a poker face.  I can't tell if I just redeemed myself to him or alienated him further.  But he looks at the paper, then to LMNO, and jerks his thumb in the direction of the tourist traps.  "Might as well go get your chocolates," he says, almost cheerfully.  "Hey, it's better than some groups pay for terrorism."
--
The chocolate shop is a little bizarre in that the lighting is dim and the walls are dark stained wood, more like a tobacco shop.  Also, there's apparently some sort of lecture or seminar going on to one side, but the lecturer is a very young boy with a thick Irish brogue, and between the difficulty of understanding the brogue itself and the noise generated by the shop patrons, I can't figure out anything of what he says.  I get my chocolates, though.  I don't remember if they're any good.  I do remember that neither L nor Rog wanted to touch them.
--
I'm walking on one of the "piers" in the tourist trap area.  I walk through a store that's pretty to look at but really impractically located; I have no idea why a home decor store would locate in the tourist trap area - most of these people are not here to shop for drapery and chair back covers.  I give everything a once-over and walk out again.  I notice the silhouette of a small figure on the roof, but the sun is in the wrong place for me to see anything more detailed than that.

Two hours later, a bomb explodes on the shop's roof.

Thirty minutes after that, my cell phone rings.  Good to know it really does still work after being fried, I guess.

It's Roger.  They want to try and blame LMNO for the bomb.  I am able to go to the police and describe the small silhouette convincingly enough (honestly, it's more likely that Irish kid from the chocolate shop) that L's no longer a suspect.

I don't remember where the two of them go from there.  But they're definitely gone, and I'm relieved - I was starting to feel like I was stuck in a good cop/bad cop situation, and resenting it.

Now my phone is off the radar.  I'm still not sure I'm happy with this.  I still want to believe it's easier to fuck with Them if they don't suspect you're one of Us.  But I may be wrong.

If I've written anything of use to you, gank it.

Credit "DJRubberducky" on everything except the "black sheep are still sheep" meme-bomb.  That needs to remain anonymous from here on out.  I don't think it's as effective otherwise.