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For the better part of my life, I've had an interest in learning how to make visual art. Due to various circumstances beyond my control, I never really got a chance to properly practice those skills, but recently I've had more free time on my hands, and enough money to buy a Wacom tablet. About a month ago, I picked up a free trial of Photoshop CS6, and although the trial expired today, I think I've developed my skills to the point of presentability. So I'm gonna show off. A lot of these are gonna be related in some way to tabletop games.


Jose Trejo, a character I wrote up for a homebrew RPG based on the high-camp manga JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.


Another player's characters from a Pathfinder game I'm in: The bookish, timid summoner Fenney and his eidolon Jess. Jess is the real character; as far as roleplaying goes Fenney's just along for the ride.

If I can get my hands on another art program, there'll be more to come. Criticism is welcomed.

[Deities:]

This thread is meant to run in tandem with this one, and it's where we're actually posting our statblocks and such. You know, the finished products(and works-in-progress, if need be). I'll be reposting the list from there, and once there are some more posts in this thread I'll start putting up links to them in the OP for ease of navigation. This thread's just for stats; actual discussion goes in the other thread.

EDIT: The lists are here.

Deities:
Eris Kallisti Discordia
J.R. "Bob" Dobbs
JHVH-1
NHGH
The Machine
The Skinsaw Queen(Little Orange Breaks Bad)
Payne, the Messiah

Monsters:
Atlantean Yetis
Dero
Spiders(Hey Jim!)
Upside-Down People(various ramblings of TGRR)
Nessies(More Futuristic Fun Than You Really Wanted)
Giant Mutant Guinea Worms(various ramblings of TGRR)

Afflictions
The Curse of Necronomicoin(A New Currency, not yet approved)
Mutant Guinea Worms(various ramblings of TGRR)
The Spore of the Desert(TGRR and Nigel, conceptual)

Classes, etc.
Rinzai Monk(Chaotic monk archetype, mainly for Nopants, Source: Parable of the Gong)
Zenarchist Swordsman(probably some ToB-style wankery)
Battle Nun(goddamn essential)
Yeti-blooded(Subgenius sorcerer bloodline)

[EDIT:]

EDIT: Here's where everything goes when it's done.

Ok, so I'm biting the bullet and making the thread. This is sort of a casual group project thing that anyone can take part in if they want. The idea is that we're taking various monsters, deities, and assorted beasties from Discordian material and some stories posted on this very site, and we're giving them stats. In the case of deities, I don't really want to give them a stat block so much as a codified set of options for divine casters, but I figure there are plenty of those to cover. We might also write up some classes, archetypes, templates or class options, depending on how ambitious we get, but this shit is not decided yet.

This is not an attempt at prosthelytizing Discordia on the tabletop, nor is it necessarily an attempt at representing these stories with perfect accuracy(though I'd prefer not to monkey too much with the source material). This is basically just "Hey, that'd make a pretty fun enemy in a DnD game, let's give it a statblock," or "It'd be pretty cool to play a cleric of x god." If there's a specific type of plot associated with a monster(Like Spiders manipulating things from behind the scenes), give them abilities that will facilitate that plot(Like Illusion and Enchantment spell-like abilities). If you don't agree with the alignment or whatever, change it in your own game. Being able to tweak that shit on the fly is half the point of the medium anyway.

On a technical level, I'm personally most comfortable with Pathfinder, but if you want to stat something for another system, be my guest. Just clearly state which system you're giving it stats for. And for "Bob"'s sake, keep it clean and organized. Yeah, I know, muh kayoss, but if you aren't gonna use a format, you're basically just being a dick for no reason. If someone else posts a statblock in your system of choice before you do, follow their lead. If you're the first to post stats for a system and it has an SRD, use the format in the SRD. If you're doing domains and whatever for a deity, just be organized and use common sense, it's not that hard to sort out. Anyway, here's our list of creatures. If you have any stories to suggest as source material, post links and I'll see about asking the author for permission to work with it. The question shouldn't come up too often, since TGRR/Dok Howl wrote 90% or so of the source material I can think of and I think he frequents this subforum, but we don't do shit without permission and attribution. I'm just gonna assume group projects are fair game unless there's a clearly-defined ringleader, though, as long as nobody objects. Same goes for ramblings.

The lists that follow are incomplete, boyo. Suggest some things.

Deities:
Eris Kallisti Discordia(COMPLETED, Critique wanted)
J.R. "Bob" Dobbs
JHVH-1
NHGH
Greyface
The Machine
The Skinsaw Queen(Little Orange Breaks Bad)
Payne, the Messiah

Monsters:
Atlantean Yetis
Dero
Spiders(Hey Jim!)
Upside-Down People(various ramblings of TGRR)
Nessies(More Futuristic Fun Than You Really Wanted)
Giant Mutant Guinea Worms(various ramblings of TGRR)

Afflictions
The Curse of Necronomicoin(A New Currency, not yet approved)
Mutant Guinea Worms(various ramblings of TGRR)
The Spore of the Desert(TGRR and Nigel, conceptual)

Classes, etc.
Rinzai Monk(Chaotic monk archetype, mainly for Nopants, Source: Parable of the Gong)
Zenarchist Swordsman(probably some ToB-style wankery)
Battle Nun(goddamn essential)
Yeti-blooded(Subgenius sorcerer bloodline, CLAIMED, IN PROGRESS)

Confirmed Contributors:
President Television
Bearman

Potential Sources:
Principia Discordia
The Book of the Subgenius(and related materials)
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
Black Iron Prison(honestly, probably gonna source this by individual segments)
Parable of the Gong(Cramulus)
Hey, Jim!(TGRR, LMNO, group)
More Futuristic Fun Than You Really Wanted(TGRR, group)
Little Orange Breaks Bad(TGRR)
Life During Wartime(TGRR)
My Girl Friday(TGRR)
A New Currency(Paes, group)

If there are some other stories and/or sermons that you know about, please post links. I know there are a lot of things I'm forgetting about, and I just can't remember the exact titles.

[TRIGGER WARNING, FOLKS]

I want to speak, but I don't know what to say. I don't have anything to say. Even when I do have something to say, someone else has said it. I don't have words anymore, so much as a general sense of terror and dread, and no particular reason for either one. I'm living in Calgary, capital of the richest province in the country, and I can't find a job. You see, whatever thoughts I have, such as they are, are terribly selfish, and never even tangentially connected to the subject at hand. But too much is better than not enough, as "Bob" said, so I might as well vomit up everything I can manage, coherency be damned. I'm afraid Roger would hate me if I spoke. I'm afraid one day soon this place'll come crashing down around our ears, and when the dust settles it'll be Nigel and LMNO and Twid and ECH and all the rest standing ankle-deep in it like giants, and I'll be a gnat nibbling at their heels.

I'm afraid I'll never get along with my grandparents. They're too nice, and I'm too much of an asshole. I love them, but I hate being around them, because I always feel like I have to pull my punches. I hate pulling my punches. It's the only thing I ever get to do. Last time I didn't, I got fired, and then I headed out west to be unemployed in Calgary. I'm afraid I'll end up like Gilligan, too boring for heaven or hell. I'm afraid I'll sign up for university, and I'll fail at everything because I have such a shitty attention span. I'm afraid I'm dancing around the fact that it's really just simple stupidity, and there's nothing I can do about it. I'm afraid that's just cowardice, and I'm just too pathetic to take responsibility for my own laziness. I'm afraid I'm too weak for the military. I'm afraid it's the only place I'd ever feel at home anyway.
TRIGGER WARNING, FOLKS
I'm afraid there's a rapist around every corner. Some of them have a badge and a gun, and some of them don't, but it doesn't matter, because if you fight the ones that don't have guns they'll just call the ones that do, and then the rapists with badges will come to throw you in a cage with rapists in bright orange uniforms. I'm afraid that the voice in my head that tells me to be afraid isn't really mine, it's something my stepdad jammed into my head years ago, and that's the scariest part, because how many of the rest of my thoughts are mine? I can't trust my fear, I can't trust my thoughts. In the back of my skull there's a leering face, the face of evil, a snaggle-toothed ape of a man stinking of tobacco and salivating in pleasure at the thought of stepping on throats in jackboots or maybe pinning down a little boy, and whispering in my ears, all the time.

And every time I see the man in person, or hear him on the phone, it's GO AWAY GO AWAY GO AWAY GO AWAY GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT and I can't hear myself over it because I guess it is myself, all of myself, so there's nothing left of me to speak. I'm afraid I'll be a virgin for the rest of my life. I guess I'm not technically a virgin, but I'm afraid I'll never go there by choice, I'll never know for sure that it isn't really the way it's always been for me, forced, hated pleasure at the barrel of a gun. I'm afraid I'll trigger someone by writing this. I'm afraid I'll never understand or respect the need for trigger warnings, and I'm afraid that makes me a sociopath. I feel like a monster when I don't feel weak, and I feel weak when I don't feel like a monster. Always snapping, always shrinking away, always cowering one way or another because talking to people to their faces and hearing their derision is just too scary of a prospect.

I'm afraid I'm one-dimensional for failing to forget about it, failing to find anything else to think about but it's this all day every day and this is why I look down my nose at the rest of these pussies with flashbacks because I don't need a trigger, I live it every day. But still I'm afraid it makes me flat. I'm afraid it makes me an attention whore. Worse, I'm afraid it was good for me. I'm afraid that if you took it away, there'd be nothing left of me. I'm afraid the man knows what I've been up to, I'm afraid he'll leave behind everything he's spent his life hoarding, the greedy fuck he is, and he'll drive across the country for a week with a rifle and shoot me, and maybe shoot everyone I love along the way. I ended it with a deal, a bargain, a pact, you see. Nobody finds out, and he doesn't kill himself, but I'm pretty sure there was another implicit deal that if I keep my mouth shut I get to keep my head. And this is why I don't speak.

Dammit, I hate what I've become. I'm a walking appliance. I can do the work of two men, but I can't smile, or tell a joke, or even laugh at one. I spend all my time at work half-awake, trying to psychoanalyze myself and make up fucking terrible fantasy settings for games that are doubly imaginary, since they'll only ever exist in my own head. I have no education and no idea what I even want out of life. The only friends I ever see in person are filthy borderline cultists that keep pressuring me into joining a hypothetical primitivist settlement that I really don't want anything to do with because I think it's fucking retarded, and it hurts whenever I see them, because it feels like I'm watching them die. I talk to them, but I know on some level I'm just talking to the corpses of the friends I used to have, and what's left is just a pair of puppets, and sometimes I can feel the things inside them reaching out with their tentacles and trying to pull me in. And you know what? They were jerks to begin with. And so was I. So fuck it. It is what it is, and everyone involved deserved it.

And right off the bat, he's talking about removing all the daily spell limits. And I'm like no, dude, just give us wands. Make them cheap. Apply the price adjustment that you'd apply to firearms in a Guns Everywhere setting and you're golden. Look, I have Ultimate Combat right here. 10%. There you go.
And then he starts going off about how maybe I'm right, but continues to kind of miss the point. He's like, "Maybe the battle mages have magic items that are kind of like wands, but they recharge every day and you can change which spells are stored in them." And I say no, you're underestimating wands. They'll do just fine.
And then it occurs to me that in a setting where everyone's a spellcaster, the schools of Illusion and Enchantment are almost completely useless. Conversely, spells that require Fortitude or Reflex saves are overpowered.

Is it worth trying to balance, or should I write off the idea altogether?

Alright, passengers. This is your captain speaking. Buckle in, fold your trays up and make sure your seat is locked in an upright position. We're about to have a little turbulence. If you look out the window to your right, you should be able to see the flooded-in remains of the eastern seaboard, anti-air batteries and the occasional little blue gremlin snacking on the skin of the wing. On your left, there should be... Never mind. I hear it looks back into you, and then the cold sweats and the night chills never go away for however long you've still got left. Best to close your blinds.
Yeah, the conditions are pretty rough. But then, it always gets that way up where we're headed. It's grim up north, says the captain's manual, and this flip-book calender looks an extra page thick. And there are monsters down below, horrible things. Writhing, squamous, toothy things, climbing atop each other to eat us whole. But we're too high for them, and we're too fast for them, and maybe the panels off the tail fin will be enough to throw them off our trail. And there's something in the fish, but we'll have that taken care of when we get to our destination. So buckle in. Chat, read the paper, whatever. And whatever you do, don't panic. We've still got cabin pressure. We've still got hydraulics. We've still got wings.

But I am getting a little low on air. Would Striker head to the cockpit and relieve me? Thanks.

Yes, I've decided to post some writing that I did back in high school. Because really, how miserable to you have to be to feel nostalgic about that?

Graffiti

As I walk along the walking path,
All the world is a blur
Until I reach the bridge.
I always stop
To look upon
This graveyard
Painted with skeletons of philosophy.
"GOD IS DEAD" proclaims the bridge,
But the words are lost in an orgasm
Of colour and swastikas.
__________

Disharmony

The music in my head
Is factory machinery,
Thousands of feet on a tile floor,
The beep of a deep-frier.
But there is also the roar
Of a distorted guitar,
And the howl
Of a police officer
Getting kneed in the balls.
__________

Depression

Black twisted barbed wire
Has tightened itself
Around my eyes.
I want to tear it away,
But it has become my universe.
__________

Misinterpretation

empty trees
bring memories
of a solitary brand of fun
neck-deep
snow that heaps
till the plow chops it up
into neat little cliffs
cliffs to climb
cliffs to break
and harvest for a sculpture
of a cyborg onion
a concerningly phallic shape
__________

Avoidant Personality

you won't hate me
will you?
if I observe some of my sadness
reflected in your face
and wonder:
if you were my mirror
would I like what I'd see?
more than I love myself,
I mean
(though that's a pretty low bar
to set)
I guess what I mean to ask is
this shyness, does it make me
a creep?
__________

Self-Reference

when I write
in lower case
the words seem to float
without punctuation
without squiggly comma legs
__________

in this city
there are monsters
they live ordinary lives
and they plan their own extinction
while they're hiding from their wives
the company's a mistress
with a perfect alibi

yeah, I'm a coward
let me way out

in this pity
there's a death glare
I can't help my own damn pride
I'm a special kind of cripple
I'm the kind that beats his guide
my glass is pretty empty
when it's laying on its side

yeah, I'm a loser
let me way out

in this shithead
there's a talent
but it only sits and sighs
and he doesn't talk to no one
not an ordinary guy
he could be so special
yeah, and he could really fly

yeah, that's a lie
so let me way out
__________

if I dared to talk to you
the first thing I'd say would be
"I'm glad to be a decoy
on your hunt for enlightenment"
and excuse my point of view
but I'd knock you back a few satoris
cause you can't be one with nature
if you're two with a machine

if I had a microphone
the first thing I'd say would be
"It's nice to be alive but
could I have an amplifier?"
and excuse my honesty
but I'd knock a window outta that store
cause you can't get rich and famous
without taking it away

if I was a parakeet
the first thing I'd say would be
whatever goofy thing you'd
think's funny enough to teach me
and excuse my servitude
but I'd leave every word in that story
cause Polly don't quite give a shit
bout your friends and family
__________
Pouches on pouches on pouches. You just know Robert Liefeld had a say in her fashion sense. Atop a crown of kaliedoscopic spiky hair sat a pair of swimming goggles, useless. It took me a second to realize it, but she wasn't wearing pants at all. For some unfathomable reason, she'd taken to fastening a full-length skirt around each leg with an oversized safety pin. Her modesty was protected by a tie-die t-shirt that reached her knees. Over this was a vest, on which the aforementioned pouches perched. All atop a pair of sensible brown leather shoes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EKTw50Uf8M

The bastard.

You create, and you destroy, and you negate it all with a wrathful twitch of your fingers at the keyboard. You know this isn't what you want to be, this 21st-century monkey raised by the internet, but you're too bored and too tired to do a thing about it, and you know that your fingers aren't hitting hard enough. Of course not. These fingers were made for flinging shit, but you know that that isn't what you want. You want to be a glorious mad bastard, and you could dance in the ashes of the last age of nuclear hellfire if only you'd learn to let those feet fly. But the feet have fingers of their own, and thumbs besides, and sometimes it feels like the thumbs are all you've got.

Bullshit. Batshit. APESHIT. You know you're kidding yourself. You could be a god if you weren't so wrapped up in your self-indulgent self-hating fappery. YOU COULD BREAK THIS CITY. All you need to do is practice. Practice, and one day you too could be the spectacular porcelain-cracking wonderboy of brilliant, mad, deranged and perverted prophecy, burning and razing nations with a breath and pausing only briefly to sing "I Am Henry the Eighth I Am" to the screams of a thousand dessicated rabid Tusconite savages. Isn't that motivation enough?! Fine then. Wallow in your shit, and feed on it, and twist in on yourself like origami. And when the lights go out, you'll be the first they throw in the fire. Because you're a freak. You know it, and they know it. They can smell it on you. YOU WALK NOT IN A LAND OF GODS BUT IN A LAND OF HIDEOUS TWISTED APES. GIVE EM HELL.

Or Kill Yourself.

Never mind. Nothing to see here.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/08/22/layton-obituary.html?ref=rss

Well then. Now that the only leftist politician with the balls to stand up to Harper is dead and his replacement is being subjected to a largely-successful smear campaign, we're pretty much in the same boat as America, aren't we?

What is the meaning of this?

Ok, here's the deal: I'm planning out this setting for Pathfinder, and one of the central aspects of the backstory is the conflict between magic and technology. Because of this, I want to have a class built around working with machinery. Not an artificer; I want this class to be able to work without magic, or at least with a bare minimum of magical involvement. I'm thinking of building it based on the Engineer advanced class from D20 Modern, but I don't have a lot of experience and there's a whole extra 10 levels to come up with if I want to make this a base class, on top of the necessary cross-system adjustments. How do I build class, PD?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F1cOvZ3nS8
I love this game and I haven't even played it yet. CHAAAAAAOOOOOOOS DUNK!

We hustle to delight every single customer with perfect food served blazingly fast.
Well, so do I now. I am employed, and A&W seeks to devour my soul with its corporate propaganda! I will not have this! I will not submit! It's important to KYFMS, I know, it's important to lay low, but I've been trying to lay low for my entire life now, and I'm telling you, it only makes me stand out. It's no good. All this time I've been keeping my head down, I could have been doing something amazing. I could have been having a good time. I was told that a job would bring freedom. Not this job. This job brings only stifling regularity. I will not stand for this! That's why now, I'm finally going to take some initiative and really fuck myself over. I'd love to see how deep the rabbit hole goes, but first I have to fall in, right? That's the problem with me, you see. All my life, I've been afraid of the consequences of fun. I've been a coward. No more! I choose to embrace my mania! I'll do my job, sure, but in my free time:
I WILL get another job.
I WILL have a good time.
I WILL break this town.
Or Kill Me.

Alright. I've recently begun preparing to DM for my friends, and as I went over the contents of the DM's Guide, I could not help thinking that it could be great fun to be able to play, say, a mad wizard who specializes in combining magic with science. Or a nerd empathically bound with a shapeshifting magical weapon, empowered by a knowledge of engineering. Or a magic-user with spells bound directly into one's body, such that spells are literally secreted from the glands and digestive system.

Currently, due to a friend's request for a kickass living motorcycle mount, I'm working on the second of those classes. What I'm having trouble with is the weapon itself. I'm treating it roughly like a familiar, except that the class depends entirely on it. I was planning on having a spell-list-like system in place for its forms, heavily restricting its size and technical complexity at first, with larger and more complicated forms becoming accessible as it levels up. Unfortunately, it seems that many of the weapons as described in the Player's Handbook are of similar size and complexity, meaning that they'd theoretically be available very early on, which would be somewhat overpowered. Of course, I could devise a tech tree system, with each technology available requiring prerequisites. Now the problem remains of designing an entire repertoire of technologies and weapons available to a shapeshifting magic weapon. I want it to be fun and distinctive from the other classes without making it overpowered and Mary Sue-ish, but can you blame me for being sorely tempted to make mecha a distinct level 20 possibility for this class? Hell, would an Iron Man suit be overpowered at that level? Where should I draw the line?

It's lonely in here. Sometimes it gets to me. Whenever that happens, I remind myself that being a beastly antisocial subhuman creep is my own choice. I could go out and integrate into society any time I want to. I could even be fairly likable, maybe. But I refuse to compromise my ideals(read: "SELF-INDULGENCE? PETTINESS? UNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG"). The world's a shithole, but that doesn't mean I have to go out there and pollute it even more with my insipid brainwaves. It doesn't really make me feel any better, but it's something, I guess.

Except that lately, I'm beginning to think that maybe it isn't enough. After all, is it not imperative to have a good time? If meeting people and having fun with them makes life better, why should I withold them from me, and myself from them? The world may be a shithole, but that's no excuse to cower and hide away. One should strive to make it better. Yeah, I'm discontented. But that is as it should be. It's motivation. If I hate society as it is, why not try to fix it? Why not join this stagnant culture that I hate and make it into something with substance? After all, my misanthropy is truly motivated by love. I love humanity, I really do, but I'm frustrated that it can't take care of itself. I'm frustrated that it puts up with its own bullshit. Why should I suppress that love for any longer? I'm only making things worse by festering in hate. Yeah, I'm sounding like a hippie. So what?

Shoot me if I'm wrong.

I'll sleep to this tonight, then report my results in the morning. I'll be out and about all day, but when I get back I'll post on whether or not it has affected my day, and if so, how. When I'm done my work, I'll continue to update on an hourly basis.

If anyone else wants to try this, here's the link: http://www.endlessyoutube.com/watch?v=6KUJE2xs-RE

Will I survive the day? How will my sanity fare in the face of this eldritch refrain? It is difficult to say... All that I know is that the next 24 hours will go down in the textbooks. For that, my mental health is a sacrifice I'm willing to make. Let's get it on.

DO IT ASSWIPDS

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. It's tiny, and sometimes it's hard to see it, but it's there. Down here, where the sun gave up 500 feet ago, there's still a little speck in the darkness. You've seen it before. It was a friendly speck. It danced around in the water, and it told you things. It spoke of a perfect world, a place where everyone's equal, healthy and wealthy, and the people in charge really do care. It spoke of a world of contentment; of symmetry, beauty, and no crime. No problems.

What do they do with the problems? Dr. Israel knows. He takes the problems and locks them up in bedrooms that could better be described as cells. He straps them to machines and shocks them until they learn to keep their mouths shut. The Colonel knew. He got his problem to sign a contract for 33 films. By the end of it, there was no spirit left in the boy. Hitler knew. He took the problems and worked them to death. The ones that survived got sent to the showers and doused in Zyklon B. Insecticide.

You've got to know where to bury your problems. You have to make sure it's nice and deep. If you can't manage that, you've got to curse the site. The idea is to scare off grave robbers. Let enough of those types parade the limp, festering corpse around, and maybe it'll come back to life. And you don't want that. So keep them away from the body. Distract them with music and television and fashion. Distract them with cars and sex but don't let them have any fun with them. Fun makes a mess. That's a new problem, and you don't want any more of those.

Maybe you listened to the light. Or maybe you noticed the jaws behind it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcy78rnDKiQ

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/07/08/cat.bionic.feet/index.html?hpt=C2

A British cat, Oscar, has made a full recovery after being fitted with a pair of prosthetic feet in November. The cat's hind paws were severed by a combine harvester.

The three-hour procedure, performed at an animal hospital in Surrey, England, by neuro-orthopaedic veterinary surgeon Dr. Noel Fitzpatrick, could serve as a model for human amputees.

Oscar's custom-made implants, ITAPs (Intraosseous transcutaneous amputation prosthetics), were modeled after deer antlers, which have a honeycomb structure that bones can grow through and skin can grow over.

Fitting a cat with a prosthesis at the joint below the animal's ankle is a procedure that had never been performed, said Fitzpatrick, who waited seven months to announce news of Oscar's surgery because he wanted to see how the cat would recover.

D'aaaaaaaaaw :3

http://www.alphastudiossoftware.nl/fancy_vs_nasty/day4.php

Check out the description for Fists of Steel. 

How do they all do it? How can they stand this isolation? Man, the air in this place is so thick and wet you can drink it off your upper lip. The noise, it's maddening factory machinery to grind you up.  Clattering, rattling gatling gun feet on tile. But both of those things only happen in brief bursts. Only a few minutes at a time. The rest of the time is waiting. You sit and you wait. You sit and you wait. You watch the big round thing in the sky and you wait. You rest your head on your arms and you wait. You wait for a break. You wait for a job. All this time spent waiting, you could be spending on something real.

And it isn't like your allies are all too friendly either. They don't want to say anything, they just want to be heard. They don't want to listen to you, they just want to take a breath. Too much small talk, not enough communication. Too much conversation, not enough action. One thing the King got right. And you know you're just gonna lose them in the long run, so maybe you don't bother getting attached. Maybe you don't actually want anything to do with them, but they're the ones you'll settle for because the rest of them are so goddamn annoying and anything, anything is better than being alone.

But it's not all bad. Sometimes, you find someone you really like. A real brother-in-arms, as it were. Or maybe a sister. That isn't important. Anyway, you finally find someone you can stand to be around. Someone you can even get to love. But you're nothing to them. Because all this time you were pushing everyone else aside, you weren't talking to anyone at all. You haven't learned anything at all about people except that you hate them. You haven't learned anything at all about war except that you hate it. You've shot yourself in the foot, soldier. And maybe you're no better at all than the rest of them. Maybe you're nothing but a creep.

I like my rights. I like rights, and I think we should all have a lot of them. For this, the current political system would call me a libertarian.
This is a problem. I've seen libertarian arguments, and I don't agree with any of them. Sure, freedom is nice, but is the shrinking of government really the answer? It seems that the current libertarian school of thought is based on a false dichotomy: the only answer to problems involving authority is to either shrink or increase government. This just doesn't make sense to me.
I don't think anybody here likes corporations any more than I do. I don' t think any of us want corporations to have any more power over us than they already do. Now, I won't say that the government as it is is doing a good job of keeping them in check, but at least there are some laws in place to hold CEOs accountable for their actions. Personally, I think it makes sense to pass a set of laws placing greater restriction on powerful corporations and what they can do. This is one example of how increased government can be applied in a positive manner.
Another reason not to decrease government in its totality is simple, and Doktor Howl brought it up recently in another thread: Services.
Roads. Running water. Electricity. A public education system(as horribly incompetent as its employees are). I could go on.

Problem: We are losing our rights.
Problem: More than one entity wants to take them away.
Problem: We like our services, though.

Let's discuss a solution in this thread. Without the anti-government libertarian crap, if you please. The problem is not that the system exists, but that its design is flawed and the employees are corrupt and incompetent.

I've never had an easy time staying awake, but lately, Dok, lately it's all been worse than usual. This happens from time to time. Occasionally, I'll have a day of lucidity if I'm lucky, but it's worse far more often than it's ever better. I don't know if there's a name for what I'm talking about, but I think you might be familiar with it. There's no energy. No sense of motivation. Sure, there are things I want to do, but they're all abstract. It never actually occurs to me to pursue what I want. I'm dizzy and confused, and as I go about my routine I find it hard to keep my head up. I feel like there's some kind of invisible red-white parasite affixed to the back of my skull and draining my life force, proboscis firmly embedded in my pineal gland. Everything starts to go kind of transparent, like animated film cutouts hanging on wires. And here's the scary part: sometimes, it starts to float. I don't know what's wrong with me, Dok, but sometimes I feel like I'm not even here in the real world. This place, whatever it is, it makes me think of the Twilight Zone.
Ever see Terror at 20,000 Feet? I think I'm like the man on the plane, and I'm looking out the window, and I see the crazy blue ape, chewing his way through that wing. It terrifies me, but what's crazy is I kind of want to be that ape. See, I know that when the plane crashes, the ape's going down with it, but at least the ape's going down with a good laugh. The ape gets to indulge its self-destructive impulses. I want to climb out that window, I want to join it, but I don't like heights to begin with. And it's so lonely out there. So cold. Hear that howling? That's not the wind, my good doktor. That's me. Nobody hears it, though. Nobody wants to. And maybe that's a good thing, because it seems like every word out of this idiot mouth just makes things worse. Maybe if they weren't all busy pinning down the crazyman they'd look out the window and see what's going on. Maybe they'd see the monkey that I see.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7069307816427160377#

Jump to the exchange at about 22:50. You'll see what I'm talking about.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/02/18/new.york.doodle.arrest/index.html?section=cnn_latest

(CNN) -- There was no profanity, no hate. Just the words, "I love my friends Abby and Faith. Lex was here 2/1/10 " scrawled on the classroom desk with a green marker.

Alexa's hands were cuffed behind her back, and tears gushed as she was escorted from school in front of teachers and -- the worst audience of all for a preadolescent girl -- her classmates.

"They put the handcuffs on me, and I couldn't believe it," Alexa recalled. "I didn't want them to see me being handcuffed, thinking I'm a bad person."

Need I say anything else?

SHIT JUST GOT REAL:
http://games.adultswim.com/robot-unicorn-attack-twitchy-online-game.html

Beat this:

Relevant links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FftZt-Dw_hQ

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,1,26558490-5006301,00.html

http://www.clockcrew.cc/talk/showthread.php?p=1714054&posted=1#post1714054

O GLORIOUS EXON!
HOW YOU SIT UPON
THAT DOUBLE HELIX FRAME!
THE FEEBLE INTRON,
HOW IT KEEPS RIGHT ON
NOT DOING ANYTHING; IT'S LAME!

YOU ARE COOL
THE OTHER GENES ARE FOOLS
YOU'RE A TOOL
BUT YOU'RE STILL COOL

TRANSCRIPTION IS WHERE IT'S AT
AND WHEN IT HAPPENS THEY FALL FLAT
POLYMERASE OF RNA
COMES TO PEEL YOU ALL AWAY
PROMOTERS TELL IT WHERE TO BIND
YOU KNOW THEY CAN'T BE HARD TO FIND

ADANINE, GUANINE,
THYMINE, CYTOSINE
RNA HAS ALL BUT THYMINE
IT HAS URACIL
INSTEAD OF THYMINE
THAT CAT IS WAY TOO RADICAL
FOR THAT RNA
DAYUM, THAT'S THYMINE

EXONS AND INTRONS ARE TRANSCRIBED
TO MESSENGER RNA
BUT NO INTRONS HEREIN DESCRIBED
EVER, EVER GET TO STAY
THAT'S DISCRIMINATION!
IT'S A FASCIST NATION!
BUT WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO
WHEN THOSE NAZIS LIVE IN YOU?

IT'S THEN THAT MESSENGER RNA
FINALLY LEAVES THE DOCKING BAY
OF THE NUCLEUS TO PAY
A VISIT TO A RIBOSOME,
WHICH HAS ITS OWN RNA.
IT'S CALLED RIBOSOMAL RNA!

THREE BASES IN THE RNA
MAKE A CODON, SO THEY SAY
AND TRANSFER RNA
FORMS ANTICODONS
WHICH ATTACH TO THESE IN A LOGICAL WAY
AND BRING AMINO ACIDS IN;
THUS PROTEIN SYNTHESIS BEGINS

THE AMINO ACIDS FORM A CHAIN
THIS CHAIN IS A POLYPEPTIDE CHAIN
NOT SOME OTHER KIND OF CHAIN
LIKE A NON-SCIENTIFIC-JARGON CHAIN
OR A SEND THIS TO X AMOUNT OF FRIENDS MAIL CHAIN
OR A RHYMING BRAIN RAIN CRANE LANE CHAIN
IT IS A POLYPEPTIDE CHAIN
AND IT IS A PROTEIN

post like so:

Any Law & Order fans around these parts?

It happens sometimes. It's easier than it should be, you know. It's easy to pull up the carpets we throw down over everything, easy to see all the shit we hide beneath our mind. You just have to imagine it. Visualise it. That's how I do it. I look around me, I see gravel, I see a house and leaf piles and trees and a dumpster and a city around it all. I don't really look at the sky.

Anyway, I just have to think the right thoughts, and it all goes away, it all becomes alien to me, nameless. I just have to think "there is no such thing as a house." That thought is key for me. I think it, and I've just opened up this barred door and strolled down the hallway. The inmates must be so jealous. Suddenly, I see not house, but windows, then doors, then siding, all one at a time, floating in midair. And then I look around me, and I see this invisible sheet over everything, this crazy blanket. And I peel it back. Underneath, the shapes are the same, and the colours are the same, but they aren't the same things. It's now that I'm finally free to decide what I see. Hey, that rhymes.

I tell myself to be paranoid. Something is behind me! I whirl to see it, but it was too fast for me. Gotta keep looking over your shoulder, cause you never know who's got a gun at your back. And it's then that it occurs to me. I can feel it. It's poking into me. The gun is there. It's a rifle, no, a shotgun, fuck that, it's a pistol at the base of my skull. I don't know who's holding it. I keep twisting my head around to see it, but the gunman's too fast for me. Then I think to look at my shadow. I just want to know what this person looks like, understand. Just want a vague idea. And there is no shadow.

There's no shadow because the gun is invisible. The gun is invisible because it's in my mind. I know who's holding it now. And really, it doesn't matter if it's a gun or not. It could be a truncheon. What matters is who's holding it. And that person is my guard. I guess I'd better go inside now. It's black and wet out here, and I'm a crazyman. I submit, and walk back towards my cell. I guess I still haven't given up completely, though, because I figure maybe I should stop in my tracks, turn, walk away from that imaginary house. But the gun is still there. No matter where I go, I will always have this invisible gun to my head. No matter where I walk, I will only be walking back to my black iron prison cell. It's fucking depressing. I go inside, up the stairs, I take off my coat. Sometimes, hope is hard to find. I guess I have to make it up myself.