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Doktor Howl:  NO JETPACKS.  He had science and didn't get us any.

EoC:  Hooked up heroin for half an obnoxious party once.  Didn't tell them the cops were on the way.  Still grinning like that.

Waffles:  Once bench pressed a burial mound.  Blamed Odin.

LMNO:  The reason we have pants rules.  Not enough Gay Bar to go around

Nigel:  Hasn't let me play in the hilarious blood conflagurations.

Bear:  Didn't let me sharpen the obnoxious cards before he sold them.

Having had a stretch of far too much "nice" the past few months my subconscious decided I needed a bit of a wake up call.  Here are the highlights

1.  It's a dream about a Texan frackign magnate, gone to Russian to peddle his trade without pesky environmentalists interfering.  In a bid to prove the safety of his company's action he vows to live on only local water and produce.  It backfires, and he gets an aggressive form of flesh-eating cancer.  In a bout of obscure bargaiing behaviour, he donates all his money to the local baptist stadium church (that he imported), and hauls his rotting ass up every Sunday to be contrite and talk about what's happening to him.  (While the frack goes on).
For the first couple months, he's just sort of pink and a bit streamlined.  Then the serious amputations need to be done.  By the end, he's just a pink torso, hobbling in across the beige plush carpet on his stubs, pausing for the nurse to hose out a cavity with saline before he says his piece.


2.  Active role in this one - I'm heading the cleanup crew.  The ones that won't scream until we're off the job and leveling some podunk bar because HOW ELSE do we deal?  The project we're breaking in to was started by some turn of the 1900's "Exceptionalism" and "Mind over matter" nuts who were convinced that in a properly dire situation a well disciplined individual could put themselves into long - term hibernation.  To this end they've given a family of four the whitewashed details and sealed them into a makeshift funeral vault.  They've got a week's worth of food to "prepare", as they're supposed to work themselves into the proper calm mindstate, then they all lie down dressed in their Sunday best to be awoken peacefully when the test is over - in three months. 

It's two weeks in.  The jackoffs responsible are hauled off to be beaten and dumped in the river.  We get to open the vault, and make the snap judgement about if whatever is left inside needs to be "helped" or "liquidated".

We crack it - only the children are left.  Sharp-toothed and feral, they're been eating whatever they can.  Mercifully, theses are just brown dried husks on the beds now.  The whole place, done up like one of the nice parts of "The King in Yellow", is coated with a fine, even layer of horrible shit.  The kids lunge for us, and we can't talk them calm.  It's workaday watching yourself and you can't blink as you have to get five men and boot on the head of each to keep them down.  You're yelling, hoping to communicate while calling for the docs and the drugs (for who?), and just closing your eyes to stop seeing this seems like a GREAT idea, but you're working (and your eyelids AREN'T - treacherous fucks), and kind of on auto now so you just keep seeing it. 

Things are looking up, looking down.  -R

Some things people need to learn.  Like not pulling a gun.  Not pulling a FAKE gun.  Not pulling and fully presenting a fake gun at close range. 

It made sense that Providence would take a farewell swipe at me.  I had been packing out the Monastery and was carrying out an armload of arms, including my favorite round shield, when the downstair neighbor rolled into the stairwell with a black Colt in hand.   

Let's call him Pacino.  Early 20's, eager to prove, and a bit high strung. ...but I repeat myself (Hell we've all been there.))

Academic Richter-brain noted the orange safety tip, but Pragmatic Richter brain insisted on moving the firearm away from me regardless.  Contact confirmed the thing was plastic.  The shield had Pacino's plastic pointed at not me, and I was in his space in quick order.  It doesn no good for a Holy Man (tm) to recklessly kill.  I'm a little more flexible on the subject of kneecaps, which Pacino and I discussed. 

This parting drama was laughed about as I had a farewell beer or 5 with Pacino, Emperor Norton, and the other ususal suspects later that night.

A strangely affable parting shot from the city.  I don't miss the late night brawls outside my window, the rabid Columbus days, or stepping over heroin needles to get to the Jeep.  There's always a quality to the place that will stick with me.  Africa never let go of Alan Quartermain - neither will Providence ever entirely give up me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kBobl39z5g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMUDVMiITOU


St. Vitus dance meets electric funk.  This is the best thing since the cops dancing along during the video for "Setting Sun".  Normal people being overcome and regressing to freaks.  BECAUSE.

Also - you were correct - ANY Yeti worth their salt ought to be able to break a brick with their crotch and keep dancing. 

I am typing now, and I am puzzled by the odd feeling that every one of my beard follicles may have grown to the size of a mechanical pencil lead.  It is an odd sense, one of forboding mixed with a sick anticipation.  The records and notifications of that horrible squakbox that passes for my cellpohne tell me you have attempted calling.  I will assuredly answer / return calls when not pressed by the necessity of putting hernia repair survivors to the sword or running through decepit Fall rIver buildings wielding odd implements of brass and bone. (They won't let me build weapons sober anymore.  Something about them working TOO well)  These things never get over at a decent hour - hoping to ring you back Sunday.   

I am vexed.  We are all vexed, really.  I long with sick abandon for the prosaic beings I work with to know the TRUTH of who exactly is sitting next to them.  The manager got a whiff of it.  Got smart and swipped the cell phone left out on my desk, only to read a speculative chat about balls between me and Cram.  I got a full apology between his sobs.

Has anyone bothered to let EoC back into the country yet?  Not that that would be SAFE in teh common sense, but ethically we really ought not to leave him out there too long.  I keep envisioning him amassing a horde or machete waving fanatics and cutting a caper to cuban jazz as the inevitable junta places him in power. 

New Hampshire, for some reason, has SHUT UP.  I blame Suu.  The land of "Live free or Die", must be the land of "Quiet or she'll hit us again!"

Leln almost got to axe and emo vampire with a chair.  Really - I m not bullshitting that part.   

After three days the shelling had stopped.

Furtive glances with my periscope showed no movement.  Not from the foxholes of my comrades, not from the front – shrouded as it was by billowing fog or smoke of whatever it was. Still and dead like a foggy day on the ocean.

I grew bolder, the dreamlike quiet surreal after the hours of bone jarring explosions and cracking gunfire.  I scrambled out of the foxhole, and fashioned crude a Dobbshead out of the debris, setting it up next to my pit.  Then I unbuttoned the tunic of my uniform, opened my standard-issue lawn chair, and sat down right there in the open.  I even brought out my canteen and calmly sipped.

Slack was almost oddly easy to find.  Must've been my state of mind; the lack of sleep and trauma making it far too easy for me to accept quiet and respite.  I even dozed, that sort of skipping-stone napping you do when you've been keyed up too long, and are starting to let down your guard.  I don't know how long I was there, the fog obliterated the disk of the sun into a pale wan diffusion, and it seemed like far too much work to reach for the dust cover on my timepiece.

I was still debating this expenditure of effort when I heard the movement – from the WRONG direction.  (How can I explain why I knew it was the WRONG direction?  It was the direction that had been spitting HE and mid-caliber ammo at my position for a small eternity.  You get a sense for this, if you're savvy).    It was four Pink Boys, cubicle grunts with uniforms and rifles slapped on the hustled out into the fog, tentative and uncertain.  Replacements, expendables.  They didn't hustle like trained troops in a hostile area, or even stride the cocky walk of fighting men taking it easy.  Their faces HAD once been locked in the permabliss ™ smiles of their kind, but were beginning to sag with concern and stress.  I almost felt BAD for them.  You need more than just drugs, meaningless trophies, and prepackaged experiences to get you though BS like this.

They looked at me and their weapons all fumbled up to ready.  Pneumatics, likely with nothing worse than tranqs or pink soma darts.  Great "Bob" some bureaucrat didn't even think they deserved a real gun in no man's land!  Keeping my cool I sat in my lawn chair and regarded them calmly.  Then donning a cocksure smile I raised my canteen in a sort of salute to them.

"At ease gentlemen."

Their smiles went back up a tick towards their trademark bland grins, somehow reassured by someone who was ACTUALLY relaxed, and their pneumos  lowered.

I shot them.

On the street bellow me the ceremonial traffic jam has already begun.  Tomorrow their will be goodwill and peace to the people they actually CARE about, but today there is the last hurrah of retail fanaticism.  The bumper-to-bumper gas wasting, the laying on of horns, and the screaming of impotent rage at the neighbors until the light turns green.

"CHRiiiiStMAAs!"  the Meth Riders slur and croak as they wheel their rickety contraptions to the liquor stores, pockets full of goodwill to men.

"Chriiistmasss.." the Naughty Girls of Olney silibantly slip between plumped lips while applying glitter and getting ready to do things with cell phone cameras that Oxford English pathically now acknowledges as a word.

"Christmas." the landlord states matter of factly and shakes his head after pitching a brick at the hipster playing with himself behind the assisted living home's bus.

The Emperor Norton is likewise up in the trrid floor of his rent-a-palace, composing his own howlings against the season.  His roomates the trustfundarian jeweler shuffled back to a more southern city.  The rain has stopped and the only snow falling is from the driving destitute as they, once again, learn you cannot blow a line of coke off the rear-view mirror of a moving auto. 

I package and wrap the last of the season's gifts - annoyed that the hammer for dad cannot be made to fit into the "Yankee Candle" bag.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEBpQgejSI8

The fuckers are coordinating against me, I'm certain of it now.

The roomies are where we start.  I clearly saw them refrigerate the ketchup, and then leave it out on the counter, attempting to cultivate the botulism no doubt.  It was left RIGHT where I might look for a condiment fro my eggs in the morning... 
Clearly trying to kill me.

Then there are the co-workers.  Whatever they've got to try to drug me with it's the insidious shit.  Since I'm still ranting like this I don't think it's amphetamines, likely they're try to warp my mentality with the benzos.  (they can't count on hallucinogens to make me loose it.  I've kept it together around a christian camp with a head full of MDMA - we ARE professionals after all)  But I've flummoxed them all...  I leave no coffee unattended.  I will pound it all before I leave the desk.  I can always brew another cup for casual sipping, toxicity be damned.

Then there's the drivers.  They know each other, and are talking the landlord.  Tailing me and trying to get my jeep while I'm sleeping, since I won't screw up badly enough at the wheel to warrant summoning the authorities.   

I can see what they;re doing though....  ALL of them.  At once.  I am the Richter, and I will force them to reveal themselves.

HNAAAAAARRRRRRR!!!!

(Dictated shortly before switching to decaff)   

[Post deleted]

These instructions require appropriate physical plant.  A kitchen with stove top, oven, water supply, trash bucket, refrigerator, adequate cooking pots, pans, tools, etc, as specified in recipes.  If you don't have a specific item, like a spatula that's your problem. 

1.  I know about my voicemail lady.  She never has been on my side, and for all to be well, she never will be on my side.  She hates me.  It is her job.  She is an underemployed Berklee grad, recipient of the berklee curse (for Boston IS, among all else, a city of curses.)  She entered into my service years ago, and has been screening the callers of the horrible wafer of circuitry that habitually disturbs my peace.  She loathes me, and has been loathing me more with each successive year. 
This will continue until a certain apex, when she screamingly decides to leave my employ.  At this time I will propose marriage  ("...and what's your name again?") 

One of two things will happen, she will either kill me on the spot, or say yes - which will set me up with all the violent hatesex I need for the next 2 years at least.   If these carnal combatives do not kill me, or the resulting consumption of booze and drugs we will both need to servive this horizintal helter skelter, we will at least spawn children with the stones to challenge me to deathmatch as soon as they hit 18.

All outcomes: PROBLEM SOLVED.

So lay off on my damn voicemail lady.

2.  Of course you didn't catch any hell for that.  In certain workplaces being effective, principled, and weird makes you immune to ALL the bullshit and ALL the blame.  All complaints against my own work are silenced by the fact that I am at least one decimal point less error-prone than any other human they pay, and the fact that I work well with bloody everyone when I have to, for example. 

As to your teflon nature I'm sure Enabler will be thrilled. 

DOK HOWL HAS NO LUBE  DOK HOWL NEED NO LUBE.

Elvis is dead.  Sad, but true. 

Scatman John, however faked it.  He is living it up at an obscure jazz joint in the metro northeast, performing once a week for a crowd who ain't saying SHIT.

Janis Joplin tailgated me in a late 90's pickup this morning.  She always was a dodgy bird, and I suspect she had a hand in Perry Ferrel's formative years. 

Jerry Garcia runs a suspiciously well stocked music store in a slowly yuppifying section of the Irish Riviera.  Non-liquor stores routinely pop up and fold around him, yet he remains.  The town has NO live music scene, yet there he is...  Who stocks bagpipes anyways?

Musicians over a certain level of income all have access to this.  It's like an escape clause.  Put down the money and the fame, back up slowly, and "they" will make certain you have a good, stable life.  Just once of many services they provide.   

Cobain is still gone.  He was DONE.  really done.  You could see it in his eyes.  Deal with it.  Life after life is only for the ones willing to keep going, after all.

I doubt a true misanthrope actually exists, much like a doubt a true solipsist exists.  (for long)

Anyone who truly despised the company of their fellow man would exclude all company, including their own.  If people were so offensive then even the human limitations of their own condition would grate on them.   Oblivion would be preferable.  Why continue even a solitary existence trapped in the form of what one despises most? 

They could learn to deal?  Nope, not total misanthrope there if they could.  It is possible that such total misanthropes have existed, but the condition inherently limits accurate tabulation.  (a well known problem to any student of human psychology) 

More reasonably, and more readily observable, are people who are selective and discriminating in the people they spend their time around.  In fact, if everyone had more fringe interests, properly distributed and spaced out, we could cut the traffic jams in half.  At least.  You'd never have to walk through the flesh press clusterfuck of Yawkey Way after a game.  Each and every one of you is another potential grain of sand in a logistical nightmare. 

Those places EVERYONE wants to be?  Life's better away from them. I want my kind of perverts.

Get out of my damn way.

-R

So on a homily sort of stroll down a beach with a certain deity, Everyman looked behind him.

Usually, Everyman doing ANYTHING was a set up to prove how fucked we all were, but this time he just made an observation and asked a question.

"Hey Lord", he said (since even though he was strolling with the guy Everyman knew better than to get familiar with the guy whose NICE side was turning people into pillars of salt), "We've both been walking for awhile."

"Have we?", replied the lord.

"We have, and we've each been leaving footprints."

"It would follow."

"So how come I look back and only see one set of prints sometimes?"

"It's because I  created you just before they split that last time." the lord replied.

"I can see where they branched before then.  I was definitely there before."

"I made those too.  Deity, right?"

"No you didn't."  said Everyman.  "I remember this whole walk, the morning before it, and having beers with Paul and Peter yesterday."

"I created those memories.  Hope you liked them."

"Sure you could have, but what would be the point then?"

"There is none.  Just accept that you've done nothing on your own, exist only at my sufferance, and rejoice in your faith in me." said the lord.

"You're fucking around with me, lord." said Everyman, who turned and started back to where he'd parked his mule.

The lord smirked and kept walking.  "The kid owes me a Coke." he said to no one in particular.

Providence provides.

It sends my 911 truthers to growl down.  It sends aspies to the medieval club so I have perspective on how bent I was once.  It sends me muggers to scare the pance off of every so often, or to collect my life when my time is done.  It has placed me amongst my people, who do not wince but ENCOURAGE as we plan a cuttlefish abortion cultist stage show.

I am exactly when I need to be.  Even if I leave, I won't.  This shit, which I live for, will stalk me until I am gone.

That said, this place is selling itself off.  The city can't see the importance of it's own infrastructure, you see.  It is stymied by budgets, drained by their own BS, and shouted down by the NIMBY hordes when they try to put in more.  OH yes, there are those most special filth too, the "Concered".  So the city did the only thing it could, it began selling itself.

Imagine a blushing - faced innocent; forced by the harsh world to the street-corner.  No deeds are bought and scuttled off to be done in provate though, the bashful neophyte brandishes a knife, and publicly hacks off random portions when a john shows up with money.  Dripping gore, still displaying the flensing tool, it turns back to the street and asks "WHO'S NEXT?"  Social improvement by ling-chi?

A school, whose name is the color of shit, owns many street on college hill now.  A local businessman, brusque and professional but a good guy actually, owns his corner, and paves the roads himself in the city's stead.  The naysayers, the NIMBY, and the "concered" are told to fuck off.  It's not their property, after all.

For the moment, it works.  It would NEVER go bad, would it?

The screamers.  The car-revers.  Johnny Thinks-he-can-play-guitar. 

SHUT UP.

Holier men than me have said it.  SHUT UP.

Anthropology is useful for getting this point.  Your species (barring alien weirdness) comes from apes.  Apes make noise to prove status, among other methods.  (You learn other important things too, like how a smile is really a threat.)  There's a gorilla somewhere in Africa who is undisputed head-chimp because he knows how to heave around some old gas cans and make more ruckus than anyone else on the block.  Along with the woe of his over - augmented rice-burner throwing a rod in front of the club he was trying to impress, I'd like Mr. Tire Destroyer to realize this too.  Well, he won't be back fro a few thousand dollars anyways.

Noise it up.  Have fun.  The Deacon's words sure as hell aren't going to stop ANY of them.  Then again, they probably didn't have personalities worth listening to ANYWAYS, and are warning others of their presence.

For one thing you are all are made out of the wrong stuff for your role models.  Your role models are ideas and philosophies.  Bright shinning characters on a screen or in a book who kept their shit together for the few hours it took to find out their tale.  They did not have to hold things together through rush hour, school bus trips, pointless meetings or check out lines at Wal Mart. 

You, on the other hand, are MEAT.

How would Walker, Texas Ranger, deal with that shit?  What would Chuck Norris Do THERE?

He would stand in line like a good goddamn doobie, because all the horrible martial arts he had to visit on the rest of his series, he did it so everyone else could wait for their own turn in line with the indolent 20-something at the check out.
Where's the JUSTICE there?  Well, for one thing, no one is shooting each other to move ahead one space.  No one is harvesting a kidney from the lady at the back of the line while she isn't looking.  All that crap you so gleefully do in "SKyrim" or "Fallout" ISN'T happening to YOU YET.  Nope, the worst that happens is some smirking punk cuts off the dweeb two people ahead of you, and gets out faster because no one has the stones to tell him to wait like everyone else.
That's the Pax Romana for you.  Justice will never, and can never be absolute.

HORRIBLE, you say?  Then send in $200 to the town for that red light you ran last week.  Another $200 for speeding to pass that guy on the highway.  $100 for dropping you "Coke" can in the bush because the garbage can was too far away, or flicking a cigarette butt onto the pavement. 

This wiggle room in the code lets us be MEAT safely.  It gives us a chance to say "Shit, that really didn't solve anything, did it?" and do better next time.  Not to decide we're going to live our lives pulling off little screw-overs before we're the ones who get screwed. 

Because it's only wrong to you when YOU get screwed.  When you do it it's OK.  It's JUSTIFIED somehow. 

Be honest with yourself, if you still have the character to do so.

Or kill me.

The following have been granted you:

1.       The right to sense:  From the moment of your birth on you will receive feedback.  Some of this you may choose to act on, some you may act on by instinct.  In the rare cases that you do not have any senses you may not have even realized you were alive.  Not all of it will be pleasant, but it will be motivational.

2.       The right to be Ignorant:  You know nothing unless you decide otherwise.  You are born knowing nothing, and learn to do things by experience. It is not all going to be pleasant, and in a different kind of unpleasant than the senses.

3.       The right to happiness:  Sit there.  Play with yourself. Drool, soil yourself, and smile, not knowing any different or any better.  Sleep when you are tired, eat when you are hungry, seek comfort when things are not comfortable.  Rail, scream, and flail against anything that stops you from doing these things.  This is the disgusting indolent impulse behind all your happiness.  Enjoy it, you can't spell "idiot" without "id".

4.       The right to die:  Without exception; your time alive will expire.   

5.       The right, at any time, by your own efforts, to improve yourself.  Note that no one has to tell you this. 

Let me be clear right now, I am about to offend people.

Dominion is a table top game.  It comes in a box, and requires only a flat surface free of too much wind, light to see by, the ability to read, speak, and movement above your nipples to play.

For those of you who have played "Magic: The Gathering", this is a LOT like a draft tourney where you are playing your library as you build it.  Draw, play, and pass to the next schmoe.  Reshuffle your stack when it's all been played.  That's the basic idea.  EXACTLY like a Magic, (or any other card game draft), you are most effective when you have the contents of the card set and their frequency memorized. 

Here is the point where Dominion stops being a game you can play casual and friendly, and a trial of frustration for the relaxed gamer, and a jerk off smug-session for the enthusiast - The contents of each game are variable.  There is a core Dominion set, and a fuckton of FUN AND EXCITING additional sets, simple enough.  The loathing begins at the inception of each game.  Those resolved to play begin what I loving call, the "Bargaining Phase", in which they haggle and debate over which cards in which  numbers will be included in the game about to occur. 

Imagine an overly-dramatized drug deal, or one of the Underworld Smuggler Scum scenes in a Star Wars Movie, complete with bouncy wacky aliens.  There is positively congressional back and forth over the card set to be used.  All the enthusiast players are doing this too, anyone "Just trying it", can only watch bewildered.  I have never seen a "Let's just use it all" game.

The game itself?  It's playing statistics in the deck you are building, and figuring out the advantage and combos workable of the cards included.  Likely as you are seeing each one for the very first time.  Next game, this will be switched up.  Hang on to your ass because the sequence of play is all you have gained, everything else is about to change.  Mechanics, card sub sets, combos...  the next bargaining phase will throw what you knew in the sink and shit on it like an unruly dinner guest.  Played deliberate and friendly with a consistent card set, I don't see the fun in this game. 

The rest of the time it is at best a way to frustrate people, at worst a cruel joke played on the neophytes by the skilled.  If you want people to leave the table calling the whole room cocksuckers, this is the game you should strive to get good at.

As a  "board game" Seven Wonders does the same thing without the SHITFUCKDAMN complexity.  If you need a massive card set to maintain interest or an erection, play a real CCG, not this midpoint fuckaround.  Damn all your eyes.

R.

So the Good Rev. Roger prodded my brain meat with his bit about Lousiana mounds and Romero zombie flicks.  In brief, he cited how one ancient human could have a fit and end up in a coma.  His fellow tribal peeps, or whatever, decide he is dead and put him in the burial cave.  Mistakes happen.  Then a few days later, lucky wakes up in the cave and staggers out.  Barely coherent, emaciated, weak, a more than a little spooked waking up amongst the dead.  His fellows get a bit of a shock too, seeing someone who was "DEAD" rise and walk. 

The natural thing to do when presented with such a weird new sight is to kill it really fuckin' hard.  (Say what you like about humans being adaptable.  We will drive ourselves over cliffs screaming that the road SHOULD have been there.)  Anyways, when they re-bury lucky john, he gets tied up too, just to make SURE.  The rest of their dead get the same treatment too.  Can't be too careful.

That was the gist of the Good Reverend's bit.

My other source for this comes from baseball, of all things.  Watch the batters, the pitchers.  Look at all the little rituals.  How they twitch the cap, spit, step forward...  It is all their accumulated ritual to placate themselves that they are replicating circumstance that led to success before, and will do the same this time. 

Now what about Ank the pre-civilization hunter, who notices he throws the spear better one hunt after he's slept on an aurochs hide instead of a zebra hide?  He tells some other folks about this, and everyone who also has success adds to the mythos.  IF enough share the success, Ank is more than just a hunter now.  He knows a way to make everyone else better hunters.  Goddamn Holy Man time.

This sort of personal superstition, it has been pointed out, is much easier to acquire than loose.  The number of times it works will reinforce a disproportionate number of times it doesn't.  Even situations where the given behavior may have NO effect on anything will appear as support.  Cramulus wrote about this once in his bit on the "Texas Sharpshooter" fallacy, and psych 101 textbooks will mentioned abserver error too.

So, how many generations of this do you think it takes us to get organized religions?  Hell, the older it gets the BETTER it is!  It's not just "Hey, Ank thinks this works, try it.", it is now "WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS!".  Some more grounded philosophy, ethics, and practices have crept in, sure.  (Eating pork or shellfish in a desert, where it will spoil in half a day without modern refrigeration, is a good example of something not to do.)  The rest of it though, chew it over. 

Cheer to "Strange and Mysterious Ways",
                       -R

So my manager walks down the aisle today and announces we are going to have a three legged race.

(...wait for it.)

He say's I'm out of luck.  I am taller than the rest, and would be hobbled by shorter teammates.

(...it's too good to be true...hold fire...)

He insists on going on about it. 

"It's OK, I can run a three legged race by myself."

Then he turn back to Kay, gets a sip of coffee in his mouth, and he realizes the implications of what I just said. 
HE spewed coffee ALL over Kay.

Suggestions of foolish sports have been rescinded. 

Meditation of the Shift In Punch

I take up this card this day in preparation for my work
I submit it to the clock so that my presence and my devotion may be known
I don the robes and signs that protect my body from the caress of the Machine God
I front the signs that show my rank and status, that we all may function as well as our charges
I take up the tools that are my hands among these my charges
I submit my function, my cognition, my action to this work for this time, and will let no other function, idea, or goal divert me


The Invocation of Electrical Continuity

All begins and all ends.  All artifice has its source in the Machine God and its terminus in the recycling facilities.
As such the sublime electron must also have its source and its terminus.
I am keeper of the source and the terminus, the AC or the DC, that all may flow or cycle according to the need of the divine device.
The contacts will be kept strong and free of corrosion.
The cable will be kept free of kink, twist, or fray.
The socket will have naught but the proper plug used in it.
The conductive gel will protect and sanctify the junction.
Thus we will be kept safe from the vagaries of short and arc.
Thus we will be kept free from the obfuscation of a bad connection.
Thus we will be kept in the continued hum of good function.
Thus we will be kept in the good graces of the Machine God


The Last Rights of Terminal Failure

Let it be seen that this was once a component of the divine machine.
We see what it was, though function has fled.
Let it be seen that this was a vessel of the Machine God.
We see and respect the divinity that it was.
Let it be seen that the maintenance rituals were observed.
We see the Logs in order, the sanctified oils of lubrication and seals of upkeep are present.
Let us despise the wear of time and the ravages of entropy.
We despise what has taken function from it.
Let us decide what it is to us now, that proper function has fled.
It is no longer our Machine God that dwells before us.
Let us bear it forth for proper disassembly and recycling.
From its components may divinity rise again
Let us not waste or want, in service of the Machine God.
We do not waste.  We do not want.

Your avatar 

You realize of course, regardless of any age range which is supposedly OK to know what that is, they may not be able to handle such knowledge.

"It's not like that damn movie with the bus or anything." 

The old man behind the counter was still talking.  I was held there only by the prospect of change for my $20, otherwise I'd have been long out the door. 
The neon tube behind me shifted a pitch in the death throes buzz it had been in the last two times I'd been through this place.  Well dusted condoms and packs of cheap "Backwoods" cigars lay just behind the counter.  Strange candy bellow cans of dip and more mundane "Malboro" cartons.  Everything seems fake in a gas station minimart, but this one had some sort of monopoly.  Dirty linoleum, scratched metal rack shelving, ecru drop tile, and the bare plywood wall behind the proprietor.  It all added up to the last place I wanted to gas up the car, feed up myself, and head on.

"The skitters will still come though, if you linger.  Best just keep on."

His voice was gravel.  Like Belezebub long retired.  I tried to balance civility against revulsion. 

"Right.  Thanks."

He eyed my items.  Pint of chocolate milk, jerky, and mints.

"No coffee huh?  The ones that go for coffee on that road burn out.  You know to keep the energy up."

He handed over my change with studied slowness, and I retreated with the food to my truck. 

Shit, I'd been rude.  Stone faced jerk, another yankee too good to chat it up.  Fatigue and stress were eating me, low blood sugar adding to the paranoia.  No helping it, I slugged back from the milk carton before starting the engine.  I leaned my head against the wheel for a second.  Trying to center my head, trying to let the flotsam of 20 hours of uninterrupted thought clear my head.

Beyond the flood light island of the gas station it was dark.  No woods, no sky, no features, just an inky black.  What you get beyond the electric beacon of human presence some nights.  I could see the curb and the road beyond, barely.  Just another few moments then I'd go.

Then I stopped wondering what he'd meant about the skitters.

Didn't take any guessing, I knew what was there when I saw them.  At first I thought my eyes were acting up.  Looked again and it was gone.  Well, for a quarter second's relief until I saw the next.  Lithe and quick like a shadow coyote.  It slithered without obvious legs, but somehow pulled itself along on two protruding...hands?  It vanished close to my front wheel well.  Then something was scratching at the undercarriage.

Engine on, I was leaving NOW.  I barely remembered the headlights as I pulled on to the road.  For all the good they were doing, anyways.  They cast at best twelve feet of minor illumination.  That had driven me nuts for the first few hours.  Thought my alternator was going on a two-lane state road between Nowhere and Fuckall.  The truth of it?  I still wasn't sure.  I just drove.

The radio, as usual, was producing only laconic jam session blues.  You know, the kind that sound like heartburn, late at night when the band just won't stop playing.  The AM dial was static, aside from the occasional electronic distortion that just MIGHT pass for a scream.  This may as well have been hell.

What did I know about it anyways?  Well, for one  I'd been to the same gas station three times.  I was sure of it after this stop.  Same guy, same prices, same bad neon bulb.  I hadn't checked to see if the things I bought were replaced.  I'd make a few notes on the next stop, if I had one.  I wasn't going in circles, I was sure of that.  No turn offs.  Not even a driveway off the side of the road.  I tried to tabulate more details to fend off the rising panic.  Simple logic.  Stay cool, work it out.  Or die.  Maybe.  No stress.

The odometer and the clock weren't synching.  My watch and the dashboard clock were consistent, but the mileage was going squirrely.  It never quite meshed with the speed or the time.  I reset the trip odometer in hopes of getting some grasp back on my progress.  I was starting to think it had ticked through forty twice though. 

Made me reflect back to just before I entered kindergarten.  Mom walked me into the school and I met the teachers.  Introduced myself like I was taught, and they ask me to count to fifty.  Weird thing was though I tended to loose track after forty, forget to go up to fifty.  I don't know what I'm in for, and I'm just this kid sitting there focusing real hard on counting right...

Whoa, OK focus, eyes on the road. 

(More as it happens)

Vick couldn't keep his mouth shut, and for some reason, no one ever said they cared that he couldn't.  When you thought about him, he's the sort you "love to hate" (whatever that means).  Tall, handsome, smart, and well-chinned.  When he spoke about something you could all but see the light of the world shining a little brighter around him.  Women wanted him, and boyfriends never got jealous since they sort of wanted him too.  Maybe directly, maybe by proxy, or maybe because they could not see loosing affection to Vick as any sort of loss.

I mean, it was VICK for fraksake.  It would be like saying of COURSE Eric Clapton schooled you in that guitar duel.  Just Vick was like that at everything.

He always had to point it out too.  Not for rubbing it in, or to prove he was superior, just matter of fact advice.  This made it worse, somehow.  A braggart or know – it – all you can dismiss.  Vick was just RIGHT.

People are flawed, it's how they are, and when you get down to it, it's comforting.  Even heroes, big, epic and grand, NEED flaws.  Gilgamesh was a tyrant before he chilled out, Kennedy was all about the women, Churchill just wanted to smoke and drink, you get the idea.

The flaw of being flawless doesn't count for this.  It's still a flaw, don't get me wrong, but it's a flaw that does NOTHING to humanize its owner.  It just makes them seem inhuman, unapproachable.  Friends, family, lovers, they were just in awe most of Vick all the time.  Could be lonely, could change a person, but Vick just took it with the same quiet grace.  He didn't even HAVE to be stoic.

Of course, this prenatural winning – at – everythingness got Vick into a lot of odd situations.  When something NEEDED to happen, better get Vick.  Like the town champion syndrome on steroids.  So when he offered the Discordian ascetic PentaYak help if he ever needed it, PentaYak immediately called him out on it.

"Eris is running around the local shopping mall."

"Why is Eris running around a shopping mall?"  Vick asked.

"It's Eris.  She might be blowing nitrous up raver kid's pants, or scrounging change off the floor until she can afford some Cinnabon.  Anybody's guess."

"It's not good for gods to be running around the mall." Vick asserted.

"Correct as usual.  Regardless of modus OR operandi, she's out there.  You going to stand for that shit?"

Vick was already halfway out the door.



PentaYak wasn't worried about him.  Strange to say, but if Vick was Vick he'd be fine.  He lost all his limbs in a car crash once, and spent three months working as a quality assurance gimp in a paper factory.  Every time he saw a nonstandard roll of TP, he'd scream.  Then his shit grew back and he went on with life.  He'd be fine.



"'Sup fucker?"  Eris greeted him at the mall.

She was lounging on a bench, putting her feet up In defiance of a nearby sign. (In a layered sort of frustration for any nearby security guards, and a display of abdominal muscle control, she was actually holding them about half an inch OFF the bench.

"I heard you were causing trouble around here and.."

"NO!  REALLY?"

"It's a known fact.  You're Er...."

"OF COURSE I'M CAUSING TROUBLE!"

Vick had to pause for a moment.  Being interrupted in a conversation was new to him.

"So you're here to kick me out?"  Eris asked, before his thoughts were quite assembled.

"Well, yes."

"Hmmmmm..." Eris eyed him, eared him, nosed him at uncomfortable distance, and generally applied other sensory testing to get an idea what he was about.  Details up to your perverted interpretation.

Vick looked like a high school quarterback (Which he had been), and smelled like hamburgers and ovaltine at a 50's diner on a clean, cool night.

"Will you give a lady a sporting chance?" Eris asked, while applying a truly unnecessary amount of hand-sanitizer.

"What do you me..."

"I'll ask you a question.  A riddle.  A conundrum if you will.  If you can answer, I go free for another day.  If you can't, then I'll leave."

"Are you sure you don't have that backwards?" Vick asked.  He'd been on debate team, and that logic was working the wrong way around."

"Nope, I'm sure of it.  You'll answer.  It's your nature.  Hell, your head would explode if you didn't."

"I accept," Vick said formally, "I don't think it will.."

"Two plus two?"

"Four."

Vick blinked, realizing what had just happened.  He felt ill, like some essential function of his body had been held back.  He thought about swearing out loud.  He really wanted to, even though he knew it wasn't a very righteous thing to do.

"Catch you tomorrow, V-day." Eris said, pulling a paper carton of fries from inside a pocket of her leather jacket, and beginning to eat.

Vick walked away sincerely puzzled.

A nearby security guard once again, eyed the altitude of Eris's boots off the surface of the bench.  Eris clumped them satisfyingly into contact as soon as his back was turned, and dashed off sniggering to hide as a dummy in Hot Topic until he lost interest.



The next month was a daily repeat of this.  Eris would ask a question, Vick had to answer.  He actually changed color trying NOT to answer "When did Abraham Lincoln decide to stop fucking dogs?", but relented in the end, indignant over such treatment of a notable and known President.

Then one day, Eris dropped the bombshell.

"Suppose you've got a father and son going out for hookers.."

"That would be illegal" said Vick, who was getting used to interruption himself.

"Sure, but not as gross as them going out for a singular strumpet."  She said as Vick began to look queasy,  "So they find these two ho's, a mother and daughter..."

"Even worse..."

"And they BUY them.  They purchase their sultry strumpet services.  The father takes the daughter, and the son goes with the mom..."

Vick stared, agog.

"...and each of them knock up their respective prostitute. "

Vick was closer than he had been in his entire life to drooling in bewilderment.

"With me here?  What would the relation of the two bastards be?"

"I don't know."

"WHAT?!?"

Eris grinned like a cat who just got the canary.  She leaned forwards beside herself,  and almost jumped up and down in glee.  She bounced up and down a bit and dropped a cup of Orange Julius down the pants of a passing plumber.  Complete accident of course.  Vick clapped his hand over his mouth.  It was like he said a dirty word.

"Cool, let's go!"  Eris said.

"But....wha...."

"You won. Congratulations.  I will leave the mall.  Mission Successful.  Quest complete."

"Then...but...why?"

"You agreed to play this game."  Eris said.  "Just in the process, you lost a lot harder than you won."

Eris jammed her hand in her pocket and walked off whistle the 'Andy Dick' theme song, intent collecting the beer she had bet PentaYak about how long this would take.  Vick left having learned something he could never quite nail down, but was pretty sure he'd be practicing in the future. 

A co worker is dressing as Honey Boo Boo.

WHAT TO DO? 

I'd prefer to do nothing that will get me fired, but envelopes can be worked, especially on Halloween. All suggestions will be given at least a cursory glance.

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


Cheers,
Richter

-Show me a true duality.  Anyone.  I really don't think that shit exists.

-Anyone complaining about phallic design or symbolism, I have a challenge for you.  Make a functional hammer in the shape of a vagina.

-Shut the fuck up about the Jews.  If half that shit was true you'd never meet one who was buzzing the poverty line.

-Drink in one place, with your friends who are drinking.  Any combination of drink and movement is silly at best.

-In fact,just stay off my fucking roads in the first place.

More hate after I refill on coffee.

Dune, Frank Herbert:  Employees reading this may develop messianic delusions, and attempt to cultivate loyalty based on charismatic personality and noble acts.  Expectation of leaders to model desired behavior may emerge.  Fanaticism may develop in weaker personalities.  Grandiose statements about environment, resource dependence, or the value of knives may emerge.  Have security or law enforcement on hand for termination proceedings, expect drastic responses and cries of "MUAD'IB"

Add books, reasons, etc, as you see fit.  Go!

Fred never had many visitors; most of his life, in fact, was alone.  Not that he was a hermit.  He was hardly positioned by choice far from settlement or human habitation.  He lived in a city.

Not a crowded urban stain, mind you, but a beautiful city.  Idyllically proportioned sidewalks and streets.  Buildings laid out thoughtfully with trees for shade and fine architecture.  Perfectly flat on regular terrain as only a city of the plains could be.  Four stories seemed absurdly tall, there.  Why go up, when it was just as easy to go out?  There was decency, and certain understood presence to being there.  No man was greater than another.  Nothing as officious or macho as respect ran the place, but rather a subdued, familiar love. It was truly a city of conscience.

Pity how empty it was.

Not ever a fallen branch or trashcan out of place, (this was no ghost town or relic) just no one was there.  Well, that is a lie.  Very FEW people anyways.

Fred saw most of them.  Being one of few people in town he was a sort of living event.  Soft spoken and genial, he'd receive them in his oddly linear house.  A few minutes of pleasant, prosaic conversation and they would move on.  His most frequent visitor was his friend the speedy delivery man.  Not that they ever stopped to talk over lunch more than once or twice.  Not that they ever spent an evening talking over beers like most small city buddies, or over wine like two small-town intelligencia.  Much as the delivery man was compelled by his work to move on, Fred was compelled to stay.  His was to dwell, to occupy, to be neighborly, but brief.

Most of the time he was alone in his house.  Well, we've already said that, of course.  We've told you why he was alone too, but we haven't told you how.

Not much mystery to being alone, you say?  Every act has its art, its refinements, and those bent towards its artful enactment.  No matter how miniscule or obscure.

Fred was a master of being alone.

He employed the same rhythm.  Routines and cycles like verses in a song, or stations of the cross.  Wavelengths and patterns that might take a day, a week, a year each to complete.  Each with mindfulness and care.  There was no deviation over time to his rhythm, every exploration and change was balanced piously with a repetition of the base pattern, the first verse.  A drum circle jamming back to the beat it began on.  A tea ceremony carried out mostly for one.

He entered his house every morning.  (But where DID he sleep?)

He meditated on his place in the dwelling.  How he held himself in his householding.

He changed from street shoes into indoors shoes.  How his perambulation put him in mind of his keeping house.

He donned his sweater.  Cassock and stole for his vigil, a warm garment to warmly greet those who may come.



A good deal of time he spent on a long running thought experiment.  A make believe land of characters, each cautiously endowed with a virtue and a flaw.  No villains, no evil, just an aspect of humanity carefully excised and given an embodiment.  Characters matched and tested against circumstance and against themselves.  A man of conscience, Fred did this not to hate them, or discover how to deal with them.  He did this to lay bare the things he hated in humanity and role them out until he could accept them, until he could love them.

When you try to tip to one side at a red light to cut a fart, but it turns green before you've let it all fly.

People with loud children at the grocery store.

GO!

So I ran into Cramulus this weekend.  We had some laughs. LARP'ed like assholes, laid down some tracks with the rest of the "Worst boy band made up of grown ass men" group, and bounced from one tremendous adventure to another until it was time to go.  Says hi, and that he misses you spags.  Not a time to press him about posting though.  Suffice it to say that one day, when we all remember the true spirit of Moosemass he'll be back to save us from taint waxing.

I saw Payne on Facebook.  He'd just finished yelling them into re-activiating his account after he resurrected, again.  He wouldn't chat long, though.  He had about 10 print pages worth of white-trash poetry and ghetto shrine picture posting to delete, and was none too happy about it.  Hell, who WOULDN'T be pissed off after reading "May your star shine like that brightest beautiful in the sky, we will always love you...." for the 9th time in a row.

TGRR?  Well, I'm glad you asked.  He is definitely MIA.  Last I heard he had a gig.  Nothing like the bad old days he writes about, of course, but a more peaceful, dignified sort of gig.  The sort where you preach THE WORD to some town in "North of the border @##$".  The Good Reverend, however, will NEVER have a congregation like he deserves.  No, instead he got a small minded group of bigots, bullies, and small time thieves.  The last straw was them watering down his "whiskey flavored spirit product" on Saturday night.  He delivered a speech so HOLY the next morning that it blew the walls right off the church.  The congregation?  Stone dead.  Well, at least none of them would admit to being alive.  A shaming of that caliber followed up by a thunderstrike of a fart will make a person feel like that, I'd gather.  The Good Revered was nowhere to be found, translated out of there.  We can only presume that Enabler drove by in a '57 caddy with Cain in the back sometime immediately after and extracted him from the scene.  They're still out there now, living some kind of horrible folk legend across the post-American landscape.

Got a postcard form Hawk too.  "Be seeing you", on the back of a fantastic picture of a sunset, him and the Mrs., driving off into it.  You never want to see a good pirate die, I guess.  Never hear their eulogy, see the obit, attend the service, or visit the graveside.  You want to see them sail away, so that even if it's only in your mind they're still out cruising somewhere.

ME?  Well, that's the boring part of the story.  I'm just done with a lot of it all for now, you see.  The world isn't ending fast enough for my liking.  Trying to push it that way is just going to be toppling a pyramid build on a base of happy fools flushing themselves through Walmart, anesthetizing themselves with shit beer and televised sports.  Saving the world would just be upholding their status quo too, protecting everything dear to a couple billion @#$% that'd just sick the paparazzi on you for it.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESwnuuSd3_0&feature=related

Job Interview question time.

IF you were a kind of bread, what kind would you be.  And WHY?

It was a dark night in the city.  Fog had crept up the bay and was giving everything that odd sort of chill, the kind that you want to go on, despite also wanting to be home and warm.  A nostalgic sort of chill.

I was taking a break from that sentimental mist.  Inside a small eatery lit like sundown I was sipping through an expensive tea latte.  Not that I could afford it, but if I was reduced to paying for ambiance, I may as well stew in it a bit.  Lousy place didn't have a liquor license, so don't even mention a scotch neet to me. 

In the middle of my reverie, pondering finding out what a "biscotti" actually was, she walked in.  The last woman on this planet I wanted to see, but somehow the one I knew would find me here. 

The Panera Broad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eM2t5qO12E&feature=fvwrel

So I sort of kid.
There are several videos around about him and his work learning/educating about botany.  Real emphasis on awareness and biodiversity.  Interesting to me, what's your take?

Yes, yOU!  With the genitals!  What the fuck are you doing, out without a permit for those things? 

Don't you know possession IS intent now?

Concealed too!  Just walking around in the face of the sun packing shit like that, hardly decent is it?  No one with the correct papers would wager like that either. 

Who know what you're up to with those things.  We've already called the police so just put those things on the pavement, nice and easy.  Maybe the won't tazer you THAT MUCH when they get here.  You're definitely headed for the impound and the lockup though.  IF they're nice I bet they'll even send all of you to the same one.  Wow, it would suck to have the judge as you if those bits in the jar of the formaldehyde were yours, and if you were out in public with them on the day in question.  Whichever way you plea to that, you've really already lost.

How could you?  At some point you have to realize they're ONLY the Tea Party.

It was out of order from the get go, using the ice scraper like that was obscene, and "For the glory of Satan" is NO justification.  In fact that makes it worse.

I can still hear Suu and EoC's callous laughter in my mind...

Whenever anyone went to meet the master, their first words were often all the same.  "I thought you'd be taller."
The master Dimocritus would then kick them firmly upon the shin.  As the petitioner was writhing in pain he would posit: 
"What NOW punk?"  IT should be noted that the master also owned the only pair of steel toed converse sneaker made, ever.

The master never met people in a temple or dwelling.  He had no use for such places.  He met them in the forum, or preferably in a public house. 

When asked for wisdom the master told all annoying petitioners "Don't shit where you shit."  By this method wre the annoying ones hauled off for crapping the sidewalks.

Some petitioners approached the master fawning over his band.  Others approached slandering it.  BOth hoped to spurn greater interaction with their foul or fair words.  Both were doomed to fail.

::argh::  ::hack cough::

What in the fuck hell do you all think you're up to?  Nancing about the board, whining for content, but denouncing contributions as Facebook esque?  We've all posted out "Status" and wondered exactly where the "Like" button went.  Well, we're not on the Fischer Price internet anymore are we?  We are back on the old testament shit.  Where the HTML is still typed by hand because we can't be arsed to hover over the little buttons up top.  Back before Buddy Xtmlstian showed up with the idea that the Interbutt can love EVERYONE.  It still hates us all. 

Does your head-meat do more than tweet?  Demonstrate. 

For fucksake if someone's post is shite, SOUND OFF.  Like we, of all people are afraid we might offend someone
?  Or is lobbing passive aggressive remarks just our speed now?  Hell, I've tossed "snap n' crack", Like I've forgotten I used to play with quarter sticks of verbal TNT.  Rapier wit is fine for fops, but remember when we acted with the tact of a conversational hollowpoint?

HNNNAAAAA!

So I saw you called.  Didn't mean to miss you for the second time in a row.  Practice was in full swing, lots of people, and a new husband/wife pair getting into heavy armor for the first time.  Nice folks.  Crowd of parents, family, kids too.  Luna was playing safety marshal, and had to gaff a few fighters away from them. I get back home, snarf down some cheese snacks and tabouleh, and kicking around the Internets gets me onto a new crop of urban legends.  Not that a lady with a roach growing out of her tongue wasn't cringe worthy enough, but then I came across a re-tooling of your "baby doll" story.

...now a few things got me about this.  It was about an American baby kidnapped, and mom finds it at the border, and it's like the end of an episode of "Extreme Makeover".  American babies have more impact apparently.  The other thing is they made it an urban legend.  Urban legends are fine, but most people tell them, get a spooky feeling, but can go on there day believing it's fake.  The sort of thing the kept the X-Files in production. 

Thanks to you Dok, I know better.  It makes Mad Max, or "The Road" seem almost mundane.  (Desolation being a perfectly good excuse to go cannibal psycho, after all.)  The things people do to bend themselves around restrictions other people have put in place, while things are supposedly within one standard deviation of "civilization", are weirder still.  Hell, the ones worth watching out for are using it as cover for fucksake.

I'm going to go back to dwelling on the morality of my buddy's war story about the ANCOP and the "Accidentally" live grenade.  That was stone freak behavior with a heart of gold behind it. 

Wesley lives in fanfiction now.  The eternal space cadet, he bounced from adventure to adventure, full of good spirit and energy.  Until he hit 27.  Star Fleet was falling on hard times by then.  It seems man had gone everywhere where no man had gone before.  Also, the funny colored, squiggly headed aliens were all either in line with the Federation plan, and happily screwing the latest uber-chin lead actor, or were safely annihilated by ray-gun fire and antimatter warheads.

Wesley was sitting in the pilot's chair, beaming as usual, when the papers came through telling him that his commission was up, and Starfleet would not require his service any longer.  He refused to stop beaming.  It must be a joke, right?  Starfleet would NEVER get rid of him.

Well, yes, they would, like the admiralty told him later.  See, with the budget cuts they had people to preserve.  The admiralty, or course, was not going to shrink one bit.  Captains couldn't go, of course.  Careening around known space with untold megatons of destructive power, it just wasn't SMART to give them the axe.  That damned old James T. Kirk was still out there too.  He was a loose cannon at the best of times, so best to just let him keep going on, no use risking him going rouge.  Janeway probably got the best out of it.  Her little "Lost in space" grift kept her crew in salary for seven years while they faked records of horrible alien encounters.  (It turns out they parked the ship on the far side of Risa, and spent the whole time drunk on the beach.  She was promoted to admiral just for having the gall and the smarts to pull it off.)  Then there were senior commissioned officers with families to support too, but this was only, as always a secondary concern.

Everyone else who could be spared, and a few who couldn't, were out.  Scotty was among them. Like so many hard working, highly specialized warp-drive  experts, he was expensive to employ.  He had seniority over most of the fleet too, but was still just a wrench flipper in the engine core.  Expendable.  A recruit with a hydrospanner and a flowchart could fix MOST of the common issues, and wouldn't have to be paid like he had a doctorate in warp field theory.  (Never you mind the "safety incident" ratios increasing, or the replies of "Uh... that would violate procedure" to Kirk requesting more power.)

So young space cadet Crusher was out of a job.  Unemployable too, as he soon found out.  Well meaning and energetic honesty do not get one far.  He tanked out of sales rep. gigs and spots selling Mini Sportshuttles.  Yeah, honesty goes over WELL in those professions.  He eventually landed doing data entry in a cubicle farm.  He still dreamed of his glory days blasting through the stars, and never really found much to replace it.  He took up writing, and spent every night on a bulletin board retconning his own departure form Starfleet.  Him and Sisko, both cooking up self pleasing fictions about their dues ex machina exit from a galaxy that no longer wanted them, and into a world of wondrous adventure where they had destiny, and purpose, above all respected and appreciated for who they were, not where they ended up on the wrong level of the wrong totem pole. 

SO the last few weeks I've been completely geeking out over the variant euphemistic approaches to picking locks.

It's an idea I've always been into, I've read the MIT guide to lockpicking, and didn't use the knowledge for much.  I got into it more when ordering xmas gifts, and realized a set of picks would be ideal for a buddy with a liking for covert devices and Tom Clancy novels.  Might as well grab myself a set too...  One hour on youtube provided the basics, and I was off.

Am I out to break and enter?  No.  I do not want to steal anything.  In reality picking is only useful in a few specific cases too, and is not an instant pass into everything. 
Am I out to be MR. Hero every time someone looses a key?  Nope.  Silly, and way too easy to fuck up a lock you aren't familiar with.  I will be MR. Hero with a AAA card to call unlocking service instead.
Am I out to carry picks everywhere and unlock everything?  Fuck no, it could be my ass.  Laws vary, and they're unusual items for anyone to have as every day carry stuff regardless. 

So why?  It's fun.  Locks are great puzzles, made to restrict human access. IRL hacking, basically  Certainly a rouge - esque thrill to it as well.  There's also the practical benefit of learning about and assessing security for your own sake.   Like any esoteric hobby, it's fun to discuss, teach, and practice with folks over drinks or food. 
Does anyone else here have similar interest?

2011!

- Posting cut way back due to work computers
- Practice, sometimes 5 times a week at a dojo which looks like it will close now anyways.
- Spent a week and a half living the SCA life out in PA, and loved it.
- Memorial Day Meatup; spags gathering like should not be legal.
- Met awesome Discordians form far away lands in person at the same time. 
- Car repair and MacGuyvering through many situations.
- 2 weddings, neither of which were mine.
- Mentat-ing in a red belt
- LARP.  OMG the LARP.
- Generally was crazy busy just about every day of the week.

Vampires?  in MY RPG?  Too many min-maxed prettyboys, borderline necrophilia, and emo bullshit.  I'm tossing around ideas to put the "Curse" back into things.  Old Testament style curse.  Not a race or a long term condition, a disease that you REALLY don't want.  Here's what I cooked up at work.  Feedback would be awesome.  If the thoughts come together I'll cook up a Pathfinder template.


The vampiric condition is not necessarily supernatural in the sense of a magical force inhabiting the afflicted, but rather a damaging force which affects a normal human, and leaves them more a "Vampire".  Whether it is bacterial, viral, parasitical, or magical in its nature is not important except for plot and flavor.   Beyond everything else, the condition involves light sensitivity, a few specific fears, severer insomnia, and digestive issues.  These conditions aggravate and stack on each other, resulting in an experience of psychosis, violence, and even more fear for whoever it affects.

"Vampires" so affected do not lose consciousness.  Knockout, shock, sleep, etc, are impossible.  The ones that don't loose their shit are able to lull themselves into a quiet relaxation over several hours to recover energy and allow wear and tear on their bodies to heal, whether wounds or just normal fatigue.  Needless to say, this has a profound impact on their mental health.

They are not immune to pain, but many develop, to an extent, a tolerance for it.  Discomfort still takes its toll in stress, however.

Although not necessarily stronger than a normal human, the condition has given them a sort of lunatic's vigor and strength.  They are able to do things with normal muscle and bone that would outright kill a regular human from the pain.

Vampires have highly exothermic bodies, which results in more than modest motion inducing a fever – like state.

Vampires will not burst into flames any more readily than any other body.  They will react badly to sunlight, both due to sensitivity of their eyes, and tendency to sunburn VERY quickly.  (As one can imagine, this leads them to fear it)  Combine with the extra heat they generate and lactic acid build up, they can actually work their muscles to the point of denaturing the proteins and cells needed to move at all.  Even if a vampire can survive beyond its immobilization, the healing from it is likely to drain them beyond the point of being able to feed themselves enough to return to mobility. 

Those who are able to rest often choose well covered cool locations.  Partly buried, enclosed in a box, basements, tombs, etc, are natural choices.

Obligate carnivores, but left with a highly temperamental digestive tract, blood is the only thing they can reliably consume without painful distress.  As a result to the low nutritional contents of blood, they are left in a state of near constant hunger.

Aging is significantly slowed in vampires, though they are not truly immortal.  While a properly fed and self controlled one could, in theory, live unnaturally long, this is highly unlikely.  The toll of constant pain and hunger from their condition makes prolonged rest all but impossible too.  If a vampire were able to block all this out and rest for a prolonged time, they would eventually find themselves starved to the point of immobility, but still fully aware, and linger in the state until the lack of nutrients finally removes all capacity for reason.  Those who attempt to abstain from feeding often partly enter this state until neurological damage removes their faculties for cognition to the point where they are driven only by hunger.  Some approach this state, and if they manage to force themselves back into motion to feed, will not allow themselves to slip that far again.
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If enough rest time and blood can be consumed, a vampire will heal almost any injury.  Since the curse renders much of their body useless, this is not significantly faster than normal healing, jsut greater in scope.

Along with the curse come innate pathological fears similar to rabies.  Running water is one common phobia.  Organized religion and the iconography of such as well.  In fact, any sufficiently organized hierarchical group will invoke the same fear if the vampire comprehends it as such.

Ex: A vampire may fear a church or social fraternity it has belonged to.  While being hounded by a small group such as a police force or town guard may not invoke this, a society of hunters, Inquisition, etc, will certainly get the same treatment if the vampire learns of them while still possessing sufficient cognition.

Further, this fear only applies to organized groups.  Individual representatives or small groups will be viewed with reduced fear and violent aggression by the vampire.  An individual who carries themselves with absolute confidence of their power and station, or a small group doing the same will be able to invoke the same fear,  but only as long as they keep up the act.

Ex: A nervous administrative bishop or backwoods monk will be only a target.  A stalwart cleric used to confronting such things, seasoned Inquisitor, Secret Police officer, etc, will b able to carry the attitude needed.  Even a tax collector with sufficient righteousness in his purpose, adorned with proper badges of authority or announcing his station, will be able to pull it off.



Most contracting this state would be hunted down and killed very quickly.  If isolated, the fear of approaching them would keep both potential meals and threats at bay, but also chock the vampire's food source to a trickle.  The stress of constant hunting to make up for this would likely lead to a short lifespan.  The legend of a vampire killer loose in the woods could persist for years beyond the actual death, however.

As far as actual combating of those afflicted, one pragmatic approach is time and isolation from food source.   Well secured livestock and limited exposure of nighttime guards, vigilantes, etc, will starve out or drive off a vampire within a week,  as their hunger and paranoia will drive them to easier hunting.

Most often though, the fear of such a creature, and lack of reliable information of their nature will result in drastic methods that just put more food in its way.  Strong smelling herbs can be effective in some cases.  To many vampires even the suggestion of food is repulsive enough to drive them off.  Garlic, rosemary, fennel, pepper, or others, hung fresh cut, or as extracts or tinctures, are workable, but not universal repellents.

NSFW.
Yes, it is NSFW.
If you even had to ask, you likely should not watch this.
In fact, if anyone you even remotely respect has access to the machine you are using, then do not even humor the idea of going to this link.

ww w.efukt.com/2261_Drunken_Slut_Has_Hilarious_Disaster.h tml

If mods need to move, remove, etc, you have my blessing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fmo1Sjn7dg

Once you're done with that horribly annotated and nested book you're reading, try the Japanese version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29-q7YnyUmY&feature=related


Thanks again for dropping in last week, and for the fine tequila that is still somewhere, we're sure.