Topics

46

Apple Talk / The Elephant in the Living Room, part 3

« on: May 16, 2016, 05:04:43 pm »

I do not agree, therefore I shall not share. 

That doesn't just apply to Facebook.  I'm not sharing anything with anyone on any medium until such time as I find something with which I can agree. Get your own bag.  There is no room in my beautiful car for you, take the bus.

I do not agree, therefore I shall not participate.

Though I might come by and accidentally all over your Tea Party or your Target bathroom protest.  Preach at me while I'm buying underwear, will you?  Come here you fucked up primate you, I know a better place for that bible.

I do not agree, therefore I shall actively oppose you.

No, I don't want to help defund the Arizona education system for Jesus via proposition 123.  If you think you can take back this clipboard full of signatures, you just try it, buddy.  There's got to be 600 names on this petition.  You should go for it.

I do not agree, therefore I shall DESTROY YOU.

I ran over your tiny house.  Sorry.  I got my carbon footprint all over your vaccine-free lifestyle.  What can I say?  I'm a bad person.

Fact is, I don't agree with much.  I am a contrarian by nature, really, and if you want me to agree, convince me.  Tell me why it is in my best physical or moral interests to jump on board that train of yours.  Explain to me why I should wear that uniform.  Tell me in no uncertain terms why I should help make sure Those People don't take over the day to day operations of this glorious nation of ours.  Point out to me why I should make America great again.

Because, you know, I'm not inclined to help, really.  I'm more about lighting the entire thing on fire and kicking it down the stairs.  I come not to "jake" Caesar, but to bury him.  And I think you know what the back-fill has to be.  And I've been into the curry again.

I am a wrecker and a walking glitch and a bit of a cunt, by anyone's standards.  Not because you earned it (you did), not because you deserve it (you do), but because I do not agree.

Or Kill Me.

47

Apple Talk / The Elephant in the Living Room, part 2

« on: May 10, 2016, 04:59:16 pm »

Everyone know about Schrodinger's cat.  You stuff the cat in a box with a device that is exactly 50% likely to be lethal in a specified amount of time, and when that time is up, the cat is both alive and dead until you look (or neither alive nor dead until you look, it's the same fucking thing).  What I am here to propose is Schrodinger's Primate.  What this is, is the same thing as the cat (box, 50% lethal doodad, etc), except that you don't give a shit about the specified length of time.  Nor do you care about which way things turned out.  You just fuck off and have a beer or two, and try to forget the annoying thumping noises and pleas for mercy coming out of the box.

Because, let's face it, You don't like that primate and I don't like that primate and he can stay in an undetermined state until enough time intervals go by that his odds of survival aren't worth computing.  The challenge here is obvious.  You need a big enough box for 7.5 billion primates.

But wait!  We DO have such a box!

Five of the Solomon Islands were reported yesterday to now be underwater, due to rising ocean levels, in turn due to climate change...While the same monkeys deny that any of it is happening, because they are special and God wouldn't do that to them.  Having read the old testament, I am reasonably sure they are talking about a different God...Because the God they THINK they are worshiping has never been shy about killing off primates. 

I have actually had a teabagger tell me that this is Oceana's problem, that the water rising over there doesn't necessarily mean anything over here is wrong, and that Those People should just move.  I shit you not.  Basic physics isn't a thing for the sort of people who still deny the elephant in the living room, and because of this they will all die.  And whether or not anyone else survives, billions of dead po'buckers will give me at least a sense of satisfaction, and a little time to do the I Told You So mocking jig at them before I, too, croak.

Or Kill Me.

48

Aneristic Illusions / Tumblr will decide who you can vote for.

« on: May 07, 2016, 03:37:20 am »

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/05/06/meet_can_you_not_the_pac_dedicated_to_dissuading_straight_white_men_from.html

 

I was halfway into it before I realized that it wasn't actually satire.

49

Apple Talk / The Elephant in the Living Room, part 1

« on: April 29, 2016, 07:25:37 pm »

After last Tuesday, the democratic primary is more or less a done deal.  Barring an outright miracle (like Sanders winning ALL of California), Hillary Clinton will be the nominee, and I am going to have to vote for her.  I am less than thrilled about this, given her comments towards those of us who voted for Sanders in the primary.  But I'm going to vote for her anyway, because I can't see leaving every non-straight, non-white protestant I know behind (my kid included), just because I personally am - more or less - immune to most of the effects of a republican victory in November.

So at this point, I have to consider the "Bernie or Bust" crowd to be my enemies.  It's not hard to do, between their tantrums and their insistence that four years of pain would do us all a world of good.  No, that sort of shit makes me hate them almost as bad as the Clinton supporters who have spent the last 6+ months actively making me hate them, though for very different reasons.

I am uninterested in this big fucking elephant in the living room.  I am apathetic towards it entirely.  I will go vote the straight democratic ticket, then I will go home and hate the democratic party, from Hillary and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz all the way down to the shitbags that decided to tell me WHAT weeks or months ago.  I am doing this because I can tell the difference between "bad" and "worse", not because I have seen the light or failed to notice a rigged election or three.  I can look past all of that to see my youngest kid.  For whatever reason, the bernie-bots cannot.  They would prefer Trump over Clinton, because they are having what amounts to a screeching tantrum.

You may notice that I am in the slightly bizarre position of hating every single faction in an election.  I am of course okay with that.

That being said, it's also worth mentioning that where you get elephants, you get lots and lots of elephant poop.  One of the mighty stacks of said poop has red hair and a beard. and is snarling at you, saying:

"If you hated on me because I voted for Sanders OR because I am willing to face a few stark realities and vote for Clinton...If that was all it took to call me a "Clinton shill" or a "racist" or "part of the problem", then do not bother trying to reconnect with me following the general election.  No, instead you should go find new friends, because I am not nor will be your friend after what's been going on.  Not because I'm so terribly butthurt about the election, but because you don't meet my standards of friendship.  I have your contempt and you have my hate and so far everyone seems to be happy with the situation.  So fuck off."

Or kill me, dirtbags.


(This is being cross-posted at a political board on FB, and more is on the way)

50

Apple Talk / Latter-Day Spags of Discordia, part 2

« on: April 18, 2016, 05:35:24 pm »

The Coming Weird Times didn’t make you crazy.  The New World Order didn’t make you crazy.  Crazy is your default state; it is the new normal.  After all, crazy is the only thing that works when wearing shoes at the airport is outlawed and children are sold ballistic blankets to go to school.  Craziness is a survival trait, and paranoia is just the condition of having enough of the facts to form a decision.

What’s awesome about the shoes business is that not only is it an admission of defeat in the face of terrorism, you can ALSO arrange “pre-screening” in advance to avoid all that business.  Said pre-screening consists of a fee…So it’s not about making you safe, it’s about showing the mob who the peasants are, and who the “quality people” are.

The blanket, now…It costs $400 after markdown (was originally $700).  A cheap handgun in Dallas, Texas runs from $20 (has drops on it) to $100 (new).  Call ammunition another $50.  So, a class of thirty needs $12,000 worth of ballistic blanket that may or may not protect them, and a school shooter needs $150, max.  To further that, protecting a school would cost about $425,000 vs that $150, and this in a system in which teachers are expected to pay for classroom supplies out of their own meager paycheck.  And that’s all leaving aside the REAL lesson to the kids:  “In this world it is normal that complete strangers will come to try to kill you.”

Assuming the police don’t, of course.

Our technology is up, but the fabric of our society is in tatters.  Is it any wonder that people try to simplify their lives in foolish ways?  Is it any wonder that science is rejected in favor of “alternative medicine”?  Or that the best way to deal with geo-sats demonstrating the ocean level rising is to turn off the geo-sats?  Don’t laugh too hard at that last one, because how do we deal with Afghanistan, the longest-running war in our history?  Oh, yeah.  We turn the TV off.

We have been conditioned to hate smart people, yet demand the things those smart people develop for us.  We have been conditioned to holler “buy American!” in the same exact breath we use to explain that off-shoring happens because the blue collar class is greedy and wants to take money off of the shareholders.  We have drug commercials on TV telling us they can make our heads feel better, with a mild risk of anal bleeding, stroke, and death.

Is there any doubt at all as to why people are crazy?  There is no “grand conspiracy”, just a combination of greed and stupidity that has demoralized our population until someone like Ammon Bundy thinks that seizing a BIRD SANCTUARY is somehow a good idea, while the rest of the country huddles in their homes waiting for the crazy to go away and could we have our 1980s back please?  That’s particularly ironic, given that all this shit really got rolling in the 1980s, but again, popular culture depicts the serene soccer mom as being a very 1980s housewife, white button-up shirt and capris and everything.  Mostly because very few people – comparatively – remember the 50s, and the current crop decision-makers grew up in the Reagan years.

This also explains those God-awful nostalgia memes that bombard social media 300 times a day.

So there they are, 47%+ of the population, wanting to pray in a candidate to take them back to those “great days”.  Well, America, praying won’t do you any good, not really, because you asked for this.  You demanded it.  You thought you were just being outraged or maybe pissing off your local hippies, but what actually happened is that laws got made…And now you piss & moan because 6 year olds are being arrested on felony charges for acting out in class, or Kansas has decided to put an actual bounty on transgender persons using the “wrong” bathroom.

Well, I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I’m happy that you have built this.  This is the future I was promised.  This is the time foretold.  And I have no sympathy, because, well, you earned it.

Or Kill Me

51

Think for Yourself, Schmuck! / A few thoughts on branding.

« on: April 15, 2016, 01:50:01 am »

What's killing me about this election is that it is 100% about brand.  Not parties, but rather the brand of the candidates themselves.  This is pretty obvious when one of the surviving five candidates is known to his followers as "Bernie", and Donald Trump is considered a serious contender.

Not only that, but candidates are so driven by their brand that they have to insult the people on their own side of the aisle, rather than courting the middle.  I have been told by Hillary Clinton that I am naive.  I have been told by Hillary Clinton's followers that I am a misogynist, a racist, and basically just as rotten as a Rand Paul voter.  And I'm a lefty.

Granted, Sander's partisans haven't exactly been a model of civility, either, which leaves everyone on the left in the painful position of not being able to point at Trump and Cruz and laugh, without being hypocrites. 

But we'll do that anyway, because that's what brands are for.  You can ignore these little inconsistencies, because fuck if you'll be reasonable in front of your friends, right?

52

Apple Talk / Feeling Up the 21st Century, part 2

« on: April 12, 2016, 05:33:11 pm »

Danny looked across the table at the Meetrack.  "Just like home, right Dieter?"

"Nooooo," Dieter said, "This is just like the clubs at home when they are closed.  Or perhaps entertaining strict Lutherans."

"Are you saying we ain't perverted enough for you?"

"I am saying, you horrid little troll, you aren't perverted at all."

"You hear that, Roger?"

"I hear it, but I am not listening.  I am not listening because there is a new bartender tonight, and he has been giving us the stink-eye since we arrived.  I am considering beating him until an eye or something falls out."

Dieter stared at me.  I grinned.

"This are the sort of thoughts that keep me happy, Dieter."

He hadn't wanted to come down from the mountain, in the first place.  He had insisted that it was the only place he felt safe, where the United States police state wouldn't grab him and shove him through the meatgrinder for any reason or no reason at all.  Consider our history with the Native Americans, I had said, Do you REALLY think the US government would respect their land if they decided they're out to get you?  Dieter then agreed that a dry mountaintop is no place to endure the America Dream, and we headed for the gin mills.

And now he was looking at me as if I were crazy, merely because the bartender needed a little attitude adjustment.  Or maybe not.  Maybe he could just tell us why he for some reason hated our guts.

"He's an asshole, Dieter.  I tell you what, you find out why he's looking at us funny, and I will consider not dropping the wrath in his lunchbox."

"You think everyone's an asshole, dude."  *giggle-snort*

"That's because it is true, Danny.  The everyone in the world is an asshole except you and I, because we are dicks and we do not multitask well."

Dieter got up and talked to the bartender.  I heard snatches of conversation, but it appeared that the 20-something college failure was a Trump fan, and didn’t want a bunch of foreign krauts stinking up his bar.  He wasn’t fooled, you see.  Germans were Nazis.

Anyone who knows me knows that I fucking hate irony.  Things went badly.  So badly, in fact, that I have been banned from the meatrack until further notice.  So now I have to find a new bar to not drink in.  This upset me greatly, and probably had an impact on work this week.

to be continued.

53

Apple Talk / Latter-Day Spags of Discordia, part 1

« on: April 12, 2016, 05:21:51 pm »

We have often said, most often correctly in my opinion, that the Church is whatever the individual in question wants or needs it to be.  That covers everything from the writing done here to the knuckleheads on Facebook/Myspace pages.  This has to be true, because as we all know, everyone is a Discordian, whether they like it or not. 

I'm not to thrilled with my Discordia right now; and I can't "just stop", because I haven't been doing much of anything.  My Discordia is an empty midway on Coney Island.  All the rides are closed down and garbage is tossed around by a chilly breeze.  Busted bits of the future lay around, trod underfoot by whomever used to be here.  A Buck Rogers official laser pistol lays smashed in the street, it's atomic battery weakly sputtering.  Rusting cars with gigantic tail fins are smashed into each other.  The corpse of a bear behind the driver's seat of one, nobody at all in the driver's seat of the other.  Big fat rats scavenge through the ruins and somewhere there's a memorial to the manned space program.

Me? I'm down at the end, the last man on stage.  I am pulling rabbits out of my hat but their heads keep coming off and I've scared all the kids away.  There's no more magic to be had.   It's all just cheap carnie tricks.  Cigar smoke and cracked mirrors.  A howling empty wilderness that's about as entertaining as the Pripyat Amusement Park. 

But then it occurs to me that the entire country has gone insane.  Nobody is wandering the midway, because nothing Coney Island can offer is as fundamentally weird and downright retarded as what is going on all across the country.  When times were good, people flock to Discordia, more as something to do.  When times are bad, it becomes the job of prophets and other holy fakers to go to them, braying and spraying spittle all over their faces, and asking them WHY THEY'RE UPSET, because - for fuck's sake - this is what they've been demanding since we fired Jimmy Carter back in 1980.

My version of Discordia does not thrive when people like Obama are in the white house.  Sure, there's taunting teabaggers, but that's more schadenfreude than spouting The Word.  No, I am really in my element when the humans have been dumb and need to have their noses rubbed in it.

I am not trying to spur a revival, here.  If people want to jump on board, I will not object, but it is probably more fitting for me to realize that the crowd may one day return to the midway, and I'm the guy laying booby traps for them.  Seven years of snub demand no less, really.  When they crowd in, looking for shelter from the abuses of whichever maniac wins the election, all fresh-faced and eager to get back to pretending to be revolutionaries - with varying degrees of success - I shall be here in the guise of Jason Vorhees' mother (and, yes, in the first movie).  Don't you wish you were me?

Just imagine it.  322,000,000 humans (in the United States alone), looking for someone to tell them that North Carolina and Mississippi were reasonable; that things won't be so bad under president <whomever>.  Looking for absolution for the hilarious things they did while trying to "stick it to the other side", but that resulted in laws that nobody wants.  It was a game, they thought, but now it is law.

You guys can hand out absolution if you want.  It's not in my plans.  No, my plans are to make things worse.  They have fucked around and they have fucked around and then one day all they have left is enemies.  This must be what they wanted, or they wouldn't have worked so hard for it.

But once again, this is my Discordia, and the rest of you can do what you like.  Create your safe spaces.  Fight the intrinsic evil of the liberal system.  Tell us all what.  But don't expect me to listen, I'm busy with a can of gasoline and a book of matches.

Or Kill Me.

54

Apple Talk / Feeling Up the 21st Century, part 1 of ?

« on: March 31, 2016, 06:12:23 pm »

5:45 AM, Thursday, 3/31/16

Danny and I waited just outside of the security area in the airport terminal, as the plane our new guest had arrived in finally offloaded.  There had been trouble at the gate, when an obese man had collapsed in the aisle of the plane; but that had been dealt with, and we could watch through the monitors as people moved toward the luggage carousels.

“Hold up the sign, he’ll be here in a minute.”

Danny held up a sign.  It had an arrow pointing at me that read, “I’m with bigfoot.”  I elbowed him, and he flipped the sign over so that it said “Dieter ____”.  He made that sort of giggle-snort laughter that is common among the hillbilly Irish.  I sighed.   I am not a morning person and I feel that it is unreasonable to be exposed to this sort of thing before the sun is up.

“There he is,” Danny said, pointing at the monitor, “Looks like the nervous type.”  We both grinned, as we watched the German astronomer more or less twitch his way down the hallway.  He was a clean-cut guy in his 20s, wearing fashionable clothing.  He probably dated women who liked Italian classical music.  He looked absolutely fatigued and miserable.  I loved him already.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and looked around.  Seeing us, he smiled and walked over.  “I am Dieter.”

I shook his hand and said, “I’m Roger, I run the facilities on the mountain.  Our normal driver is ill, so I came to get you.  This is Danny.  He’s housebroken.”  Danny gave another giggle-snort, and I watched, fascinated, as some of the smile ran off of Dieter’s face.  “Anyway, assuming your luggage made it through customs in San Francisco, it will be over on carousel four.”

By a minor miracle, his luggage arrived less than 10 minutes later.  He began to pack his passport and visa paperwork.

“I wouldn’t do that until we’re on the mountain,” I said, “You will probably need it.”

“But why?  I have cleared customs, yes?”

“You are also less than 30 miles from the border.  Just trust me on this.”

Ten minutes later, we’re in the car.  Tucson Boulevard to Valencia, Valencia all the way West to Ajo Road.  Less than five miles down Ajo, we hit a Border Patrol roadblock.  As I braked, Dieter asked, “Why are there soldiers on the highway?”

“Those aren’t soldiers, Dieter, they are federal police.  That’s what our police look like.  Get your passport and visa out.”

There were a half-dozen cars ahead of us, so we settled in to wait.  A moment later, three windowless Wackenhutt busses went roaring by, past the checkpoint, without even slowing down.

“Why did those busses just drive through,” he asked, “Why have they no windows?”

Danny did his giggle-snort thing.  “Your grandfather would know.”

“Oh?  OH.”  I watched as poor Dieter’s hair more or less stood on end.

“Of course, the people in those busses aren’t going to be gassed,” I said.

“So far as you know,” Danny replied.  Giggle-snort.

“Why are they on those busses?”

“For having the wrong values.  Because they could not explain.  Their paperwork was not in order,” I said, “They could not remain between the lines.”

Dieter was staring directly ahead as we pulled up to the checkpoint.  A fat guy swaggered up to the car wearing a ridiculous Batman belt full of various handcuffs, pepper sprays, spare magazines, etc.  “You boys all American citizens?”

“Nope,” I said, and gestured to Dieter, “This guy is a foreign national.”

“Can you tell him to pass me his papers?”

I grabbed Dieter’s passport and handed it over to the fat guy, who looked at it.  “You guys from the observatory?”  It is worth noting that our truck has a foot wide symbol of the observatory on each front door.

The fat guy looked bored.  Here he had a real life foreigner, but he couldn’t do anything because the foreigner had his papers in order.  He looked very much like he wanted to have us pull over for a “spot search”, when his supervisor snarled something at him and he waved us through.

A mile down the road, Dieter looked at me.  “How did this happen?”

“Oh, same way it happened in your country Eighty years ago or so.  I mean, the means are a little different – corporations instead of government, for example – but the general idea is the same.”

“Why don’t you stop it?”

“Same reason your grandparents didn’t.  It’s too big.  In Germany’s case, the party and the pageantry were too big, and the problems seemed unsolvable, even if they weren’t real.  Here, the country is too big, and the brownshirts sort of blend in all over the place instead of holding torch-lit parades.  You can’t hit them, because you can’t see them, and even if you could, you’d wear your arm out before finishing the first Podunk town you started in.”

“Hey, we’re in The Nation,” Danny said, looking at a mile marker, “so you’re safe.  Um, safer.”

“The Nation?”  Dieter looked confused.

“The Tribal Nation.  The semi-autonomous Native American entity upon whose land we have built the observatory.”

“And we are safe from your strange fucking police here?”

“Sorta.  Almost.”

“Where ARE we safe?”

“On the mountain, really.  There are so many jurisdictions involved that nobody wants to sort it out, so nobody comes up.  Also, it’s pure up on the mountain.”

“Oh, here he goes…”  Danny said.

“Shut up, Danny.  Up on the mountain it is pure and clean and we do not listen to politicians.  We do Science and the braying of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are to us as yapping dogs.  They are the things that fall out of our asses when we eat gas station sushi.  We are like Werner Von Braun, but we don’t have to join The Party to get what we want.  We merely point at the Gordian knot of treaties and leases that hold the mountain together, and hope that Alexander doesn’t come along anytime soon.”

I turned onto the access road from the mountain.  A dozen domes could be seen at this distance.  Dieter perked up a bit.

“See?  Better already.”

We drove up the mountain, into the light of day. 

to be continued, I am reasonable sure.

55

Horrorology / Horror Time in Fat City, part I

« on: March 24, 2016, 03:51:17 pm »

So, you've been denying reality for a while now.  Sometimes it works (at least for a while), most often it doesn't.  For example, if you deny that your late car payments aren't a problem, sooner of later a representative of the bank is going to adjust your world view.  Or perhaps you feel that if the proper candidate is elected, the rapidly heating planet will cool back down.  The world, in this case, will be along shortly to explain to you that it hasn't actually taken your opinion into account, any more than it has that of the climate change deniers.

And much like the Big Blue crane accident, every day that goes by without disaster reinforces the wrong beliefs of those who think that a late snow in New York is evidence that HE is right and thousands of climatalogists are wrong.  "The North pole melted," he'll say, ignoring that the North pole's ice wasn't on land.  "The South pole has more sea ice around it than ever", ignoring that ice calved off the mainland, and now the sea levels ARE rising.  Mauritius is being flooded, as is the Bikini Atoll.  Ted Cruz, the presidential candidate AND chairman of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, has decided that the proper response to this looming crisis is to not look, and has actively tried to shut down both the NASA geo-satellites AND the National Weather Service.

Because, you know, if you don't look, it can't hurt you.

Just like it can't hurt you to use internal combustion engines.  Just like if you spend all your time hollering about your tiny butthurts on the internet, you can safely ignore that you have helped create a system in which you cannot go a single day without benefiting from outright, no-bullshit slavery.  Just like you can pretend that Trump is silly, instead of an indicator that what happened to Eric Garner and Matthew Shepherd is the new normal.  Just like you can pretend the banking system is fixed.

You can pretend all you like.  You can look away from all of this, and most folks will look past all of these, while screaming about their pet cause of the day.  The universe doesn't care, because it isn't alive and thus cannot listen to your elegant reasoning.

It cannot listen and there will come a time when it is impossible to pretend that all of these things are happening.  And when that day comes, praying will not help us either because, let's face it, we deserve these things.  We caused them, we pretended that nothing was wrong, and we pissed away every chance to change things the moment those chances gave a hint of materializing.

Everybody dies, but it's not often that most people all die at the same time.  And, looking at the ocean and the satellite imagery, I gotta tell you, most of us are not going to die of old age.

Or Kill Me.

   

56

Apple Talk / Plato's Cave for Domesticated Primates

« on: March 23, 2016, 04:09:13 pm »

Plato’s cave is, as many of you know, a thought experiment put forth by Plato, in which several prisoners are shackled in a cave with a fire behind them.  The fire casts shadows on the wall and, since the prisoners have their backs to the fire, all the see is the shadows.  Which they take to be reality.

But then one day, one of the prisoners sees the fire for some reason.  Perhaps his shackles rusted away, who knows.  Anyway, he sees the fire and immediately concludes that the shadows are an illusion, and that the principles that underpin his sense of reality are false.  A number of things happen.  One, he tells his fellow prisoners his discovery.  Some of them mock him for his insane belief that the shadows are false, some declare that he is a heretic for claiming they are false, and some sign on and begin worshiping the fire.  Some even decide that the fire is a conspiracy, lit and tended by those that want to mire the prisoners in illusion for vague yet nefarious reasons (this is where we get Ron Paul voters).

And they could be right.  Or maybe the fire was lit by a totally unrelated guy, who’s just trying to cook his dinner or stay warm or do one of the other things that require fire.

Or maybe there’s more than one person tending the fire, and they all have different motives.  One guy is cooking dinner, another is drying out his clothing, and one bastard is building the fire up to fuck with the prisoners.  Who deserve it.  Because they must have done something to become prisoners in the first place.  The bastards.

All of this ignores the fact that the shadows are real, in that they are the spaces on the cave wall that are not directly exposed to light from the fire.  This would infer to the prisoners, if they’d stop beating up the guy that noticed the fire, that they themselves are real, by virtue of having cast the shadows in the first place.  But he’s a heretic, and we know how to deal with heretics around here.

At no point does it occur to the prisoners to mash their manacles with rocks and exit the cave.  They would in fact kill you for suggesting it, because the cave is a known space and outside the cave is unknown and frightening, and where would they get their shadows if they left, anyway?

Well, most of them.  One guy might bravely leave the cave and then return to explain, but having watched the shadow of him leave, the prisoners are entertained and thus feel no need to take any further steps (the Apollo Program comes to mind), since it’s been done already and they’re waiting for the next big thing.  Probably some loud guy with a fucked up hairdo that looks intriguing as hell when cast in shadow.

57

Apple Talk / High Altitude Horror Stories

« on: March 02, 2016, 01:39:02 am »

3/1/16:  while doing the semi-annual utility line walk, found a smashed car 300 meters below the roadway.  The car brought a sizable portion of the cliff down onto itself.   No body inside, probably washed down a mile or so.  Call ADOT.  It's not on the highway, they don't give a fuck.  Next call to the Nation police force.  They send an officer out.  She's wearing shoes, not boots.  Her sergeant tells her to climb down anyway and inspect the wreck.  we spend an hour making a safe path for her.

Body is UNDER the car, carried out of the passenger compartment by critters.  Skull, half a pelvis.  Now the Nation is going to have to send people downhill for days until they find at least most of the bits.  They aren't happy.

Then some genius decides they have to recover the vehicle.  As I was leaving for the day, they had a tow truck driver scratching his head alongside 12 cops, trying to figure out how to winch the wreckage up 300 meters.  Good luck with that.

Worth mentioning:  the wreck had to have happened more than 2 months ago but less than 6 months ago, and nobody came looking for this person.  The license plate is missing, but the VIN comes back as never registered in Arizona.

58

Apple Talk / Today is leap year day.

« on: February 29, 2016, 04:40:27 pm »

For technical reasons concerning perfection, God can't see you today.  So have a good time...BUT remember that, in secular cases, the statute of limitations is 28 years long on any crimes you commit.

59

Apple Talk / So, what if

« on: February 19, 2016, 05:38:31 pm »

So, what if the ridiculous idea that the actions of an ~80 year lifespan get you an eternity of one kind of afterlife isn't so ridiculous?

Consider the possibility that there aren't "sides" in the afterlife, just machinery of various types.  So the spares, the "blanks" are sent here and grown.  Some tend to be good, some tend to be evil, and some don't give a shit...But all of these souls develop in a different way based on their actions.  So when you die, you get plugged into whatever socket burned out the last part being used.

It's a possibility.  You could make it through this entire lifetime, only to find that you're basically a fuse in God's entertainment system.

60

Apple Talk / So, Mike and Fredo I and went for a hike today.

« on: February 13, 2016, 01:28:06 am »

Since Mike retires on Tuesday, and he'd never seen the plane wreck on the side of the mountain, I asked Fredo to show it to us (he found it last year while hunting).

So we drove down to the correct mile marker, and then went over the side.  It was maybe a kilometer as the crow flies, but was more like 4 kilometers as the primates crawl.  Boulders the size of a car, treacherous grass concealing drop offs, etc.

So there it is.  The burned-up frame of what I think was a Grumman Avenger.  It would have been, at the time of the crash, an experimental aircraft, being tested for use against the Japanese (the data plates we could find that had been stamped in aluminum said 1941, which is about right.  The Avenger was put into active service in 1942).  Flying over the desert at night is great practice for flying over the ocean at night, with the added advantage that anything that goes wrong can be examined, on account of it's not at the bottom of the ocean.  Being classified, there is no record I could find of a crash at that time.

The debris field was very small, about 100 feet across.  As close as I can figure, the pilot and the rear gunner are flying along, and lose track of how many mountain ranges they've crossed.  Figuring they're on the flats to the South, they fly along hugging the deck.  But then suddenly the deck rises, really really fast.  They attempt to turn back, and wind up flying up one of the draws on the side of Kitt Peak.  where the really big columns of rock are.  Then they try to get over, stall out, and pancake on a reasonably smooth rise. 

Reasonably smooth means only a few gigantic boulders.  Their fuel tanks would have exploded on impact.  No bombs, because the debris field would have been larger (this is also why I'm guessing they stalled). 

The army comes in with mules (there's no way they could get trucks up there) and carts off the bodies and all the classified stuff, leaving only a rusted fuselage and a field of melted aluminum bits.

And here we are, 75 years later, deciding that it would be wrong to take souveniers, even if it isn't properly a grave.

Then we crawl back up the mountainside to the truck.

Monday, we're going to the mine and camp where some horrible shit happened a lot longer ago.