Topics

You can get to the gym
lose a little weight
You can put that lumpy body back into shape

but it won't be enough.

You can buy some makeup
put it on like you care
you can get a pair of tweezers and pluck those nasty hairs

but it still won't be enough

You can read all the papers
Keep up with the news
You can join the revolution when it comes around to you

but it will never be enough

Because you were never pretty enough
Never smart enough
Never sane enough
Never nice enough
And you'll never be young enough again.


(apologies for the emo bullshit)

The personal text in my profile has been "I like your shirt" since very shortly after I joined. It comes from my time being an activist spag, throwing random compliments at people sometimes helps get flyers in their hands, and even when it doesn't it amuses me.

So, as some of you may have noticed I've been in a rotten mood all week. Plans Friday night and Saturday afternoon got shitcanned, and I ended up grabbing some lunch with The Boyfriend and generally feeling like a grumblesaur.

After we sat down, a girl the next table over (maybe 8 or 9) turns to me and says "I like your shirt!"

And things were a little bit better.

The first time I saw it I was four and they told me the dinosaurs were dead, and no, none of them survived. Not even the ones that were hiding palm trees. No, they're dead.

The next time I wasn't much older, and Jim Henson passed away. Pneumonia, they said. He decided not to get treatment. Almost like a suicide.

I saw it in my best friend on the playground. We were making a thousand cranes to wish for peace and one misshapen paper bird had been found outside. We crumpled it up for our pretend compost project, and she cried and screamed to get it out and fix it, because her brother was in Iraq.

And then the parade of "not good enough" and "not dedicated enough" and "you can do better than this" that is the school system, not a single moment of heartbreak but a long, slow, grinding process, wearing down the vertebrae one by one.

The deaths of not my loved ones but the loved ones of those close to me hurt. They knocked me down and stole my lunch money and my last shreds of faith in an omnipotent and sympathetic deity. But these weren't moments of heartbreak, not really.

The next time I felt real heartbreak I was seventeen. It was 2000, and I watched helpless as the politics of my parents and my town and the adults I cared about and those of my peers were steamrolled by a Supreme Court ruling and a coordinated effort to fuck the polls.

After that, it was the Tuesday morning I slept in and came downstairs to find my father crying.

I wrapped myself in a cocoon of apathy and meandered through life for the better part of a decade, til I found the courage to love again.

And we tried.

And the young Iranian couple showed up on the Daily Show, saying hello to Jon Stewart from the heart of Tehran, green wristbands waving. It had been filmed a week before. There was no way of knowing if they had been in the protests, if they had been captured, or tortured, or killed.

Heartbreak is when your daughter asks if she can trust the government, and you know the answer is no and there's no way you can fix it before it becomes her generation's problem.


Heartbreak isn't about a person. Heartbreak is when you see the terrible in the world -- not the Horror, just the normal, run of the mill "this is the way the world is" terrible -- and see that there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot be there. You cannot help those people. You cannot affect the things that affect you. And sometimes I'm not heartbroken.

But right now I am.

No.

Don't give me that fucking look like I'm a bad person. Not now. Fuck off. I'm tired.

I'm tired of being stretched too thin across too many projects that I'll never be able to finish. I'm tired of the weight bearing down on me of all the people who should have had their stuff delivered already. I'm tired of looking at these files. I can't take it. Go away.

I'm tired of the moms yelling about the teacher, and the other moms yelling about the first ones. I'm tired of being told I need to be more invested in my daughter's education. I'm tired of looking over the same goddamn worksheets. I'm tired of her teacher's false enthusiasm in the mornings and genuine relief in the afternoon as the children finally leave. I'm tired of the grouchy secretaries and dipshit principal. I'm tired of 7 am.

I'm tired of knowing that Red and Blue are on the same side, but Red will do more immediate damage to the issues I've attached myself to so I'd better SHUT UP and vote. I'm tired of Barack Obama's smiling face. I'm tired of speeches and crowds and WON'T YOU PLEASE DONATE JUST THREE DOLLARS? I'm tired of the war on women, the middle class, drugs, terror, christmas, obesity, and the goddamn post office. I didn't sign up for this shit. I'm tired of the weight of my Great-Grandmother, who got herself arrested for my right to vote. I swear, if you could see what they're putting in the ballots now you wouldn't blame me for this. No, I'm not saying things weren't worse for you. No, I'm not trying to -- No. I'm too tired. Go away.

I'm tired of being the one who has to set up my relief work. I'm tired of my relief work not actually reducing my load at all. I'm tired of cooking for 5 people on a regular basis and 12 people once a week. I'm tired of doing the fucking dishes.

I'm tired of being told to contribute. I'm tired of setting up meetings. I'm tired of writing and designing and typing up css. I'm tired of arguments and drama and bitches who will never, ever, ever change. I'm tired of organizing. I'm tired of flyers and signs and permits. I'm tired of everyone else's bullshit, and I'm tired of my own. Let me sleep. Seriously. I'm not kidding.

Sure, a headache. Let's call it that.

Fine, whatever.

Just let me sleep.

[PERSONALLY]

So, what, you think it's funny to lure parents into the school with vague robocalls about "changes to the gifted program" with less than 24 hours notice? Did you forget that we're by definition parents ie: people who have children that will require childcare for the duration of your useless lecture? Was it a conscious decision on your part to leave out the fact that you were only talking about changes to the admissions process and not things that would affect existing students, or are you just too fucking retarded to realize that this is relevant information parents need when making the decision to show up or not? Fuck you for ruining my dinner. I did not need to be here for this.

When you were writing up your little speech, did it ever occur to you that starting off by insulting the entire first grade gifted class might maybe put some parents on edge? Like we haven't had enough shit to deal with already, what with your administration failing to plan for the teacher's totally predictable absence due to pregnancy. "HERP DERP LET'S JUST WAIT UNTIL IT'S A CRISIS TO LOCATE A REPLACEMENT!" And now you've given our kids a substitute who has never run a classroom before, has no training with gifted students, and can't keep her home life out of the classroom. GOOD JOB. Yes, it's totally appropriate to start off by shitting on the class that YOU, PERSONALLY set up for failure.

You clearly don't know what a "gifted" student is, you said as much several times over. I liked the part where you strongly implied that every parent who wants their kids in the gifted program is "pushing too hard" and "sees their children through rose-colored shades." Dipshit. You've never dealt with a gifted child in all your life. You're a gym teacher who got promoted through the system by people who don't actually give two fucks about education and just want to make sure the state funding keeps coming in. Your mediocre children never wanted to know how an internal combustion engine works, or where all the energy from the sun comes from, or whether the government in our country is less terrible than the ones in the Middle East that are getting overturned. You never had to explain 9/11 to a seven year old. And know that she understood what you were saying, and all the awful things it led to. Yes, it's definitely pride that makes me think my daughter who's reading faster than I can keep up with and making the kinds of insightful observations that make me feel like a retard needs to be in a gifted class. It's definitely those rose-colored shades that make her look like a kid who needs to be pushed harder academically, not the fact that she wraps up her homework in under 5 minutes and brings home books from the library that her four year old brother can wipe out in a night.

It's completely reasonable that you based your evaluation of the program on standardized test scores. Everyone knows those are completely accurate and measure the things that matter and not just a narrow band of material that's an approximation of the bare minimum any educated society should expect out of their most pathetic students. Seriously. It's definitely an indication that there are kids in the gifted class who don't belong there when not every child scores "advanced" in every subject.

Good job in convincing me that public education really is worthless after all. I guess the brainwashing from the hippie town I grew up in where we actually gave a fuck about public transportation and education finally wore off.


AND YOU, DIPSHIT SUPERINTENDENT! Get a suit that fits. Also try to make it less obvious that the only thing you have ever cared about is your paycheck and the buildings in this district. And maybe show up on time to the meetings you set up with parents, you awful little man. I bet you have a chewing post at home to keep those rodent teeth worn down.

Dick Clark died today. We can't have a new year without him, so looks like we're on schedule for the world ending this December.

I'm going into my daughter's class today to teach them about snails (and through snails, things like animal classifications, observation, and other sciencey goodness). I opened up the tank full of snails to clean it out some, and I find two of the adults going at it on the wall.

pictures, for the pervs:
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/2979/028ip.jpg
http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/8143/029rb.jpg
http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/3816/030tk.jpg


Happy Friday!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dglDAeThrM

Friend of mine making fun of bisexual stereotypes. I think it'd work better without the srs at the end, but I'm a shitty activist anyway. Enjoy.


Or not.

Wedding's moved to June 23. Anyone who will be in the area is welcome to show up at the reception, we'll be having a ??? sized picnic on George's Island in Boston Harbor and play dodgeball and probably other things too. If you're interested in coming, please RSVP to InternetWedding@gmail.com with how many folks you'll be bringing, and whether you'd like to bring some picnic food, cover your own ferry ride, help clean up and whatnot, or none of the above. We're grown-ups with all the requisite grown-up things, so helping out with the party is the best gift anyone can give

From time to time the people I yell at buildings with decide to yell about something that may be relevant to everyone's interest. When that happens, I'll post em here, unless people complain in which case I won't.

Today, Occupy and a bunch of other folks are going down to the State House to yell about the MBTA situation. If you haven't been following it, it's a steaming pile of shit. Basically, the MBTA got saddled with a lot of Big Dig debt for no sensible reason, and as a result they can't make ends meet despite their best efforts. The two plans on the table are: HUGE FARE INCREASES (with service cuts) or MASSIVE SERVICE CUTS (with fare increases). Neither one is tolerable. I don't pretend to know where the money should be coming from, but I do know that the DOT shouldn't be using the MBTA as their piggy bank.

Public Hearing: 3 pm at the State House
Rally: 5 pm outside the State House
Oh, yeah, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 44 years ago today, we should probably have like a vigil or some shit: 8 pm

Any Boston are a spags are strongly encouraged to come. I don't have to tell any of you how important the T is for this city.

[The Significance of the 5th Expedition~or~Why Zampano Wrote This Book]

So, I'm sure somewhere in here there's a thread about House of Leaves, and whether you thought it was pretentious as fuck or not, it was definitely a hell of a mindfuck. I just found a response I wrote to it in one of my old sketch books, and I figure if I'm going to bother saving it I might as well throw it up here for discussion.

All the original awkward phrasing, idiotic references, and excessive use of "one" as a gender neutral pronoun have been retained. Ten-years-ago-me was kinda retarded like that, deal with it.

Also spoilers. All of them.

The Significance of the 5th Expedition
~or~
Why Zampano Wrote This Book

The House of Leaves was, for Zampano, an experiment in driving oneself insane, which unfortunately was too successful. Somehow he stumbled upon the one thing that we are all most afraid of, that which we cannot name, that we cannot own, that we cannot see or even hope to fight. Fear has claws like daggers and diamond sharp teeth that we are never permitted to see, but feel the presence of at all times. Fear chases us and inevitably consumes us, even as Holloway was consumed. Insanity is to give in. Insanity is to fight. Holloway loses his mind and his life running from it. The cliche that one must face one's fears to conquer them is somewhat appropriate here, although it should be noted that simply turning around to see what's chasing at one's heels is not enough. The 5th Expedition very nearly killed Navison. One must never forget when walking back to face death that One is Facing Death. That there is no prize for bravery and never a guarantee that anything will be fixed, let alone that one will be able to walk away. Navison is consumed by the same desire as Zampano, as characters are wont to resemble their authors. Zampano must return to the experiment (experiment/expedition...) he has begun, it must be seen through to the finish. Just as Johnny cannot escape the book. To find a resolution.
None of them find their resolution. Zampano disappears (dies?), Johnny rots away in a discount hotel, becoming a monster or a lunatic or something else entirely, and Navison leaves forever the House, but [ed: remains?] haunted by its presence. The 5th Expedition was not Navison's victory over the House, he was defeated, because there was nothing to find, nothing to fight, no power cord, no off switch, no answers. The House could never kill anyone, though.  Holloway shot himself before the darkness could consume him. Jan (?) was killed by Holloway, and Tom no doubt survived for some time in the abyss before his own body and mind betrayed him. (The reason the House changes "inexplicably" here is that Zampano wants Navison to return later, and Zampano wants Navison to suffer.)
The House could not kill Navison, and he remained whole, so in a sense he won. Was permitted to leave is closer to the truth. The House even waved goodbye as the ambulance took him away. Why did everyone get better? Because Navison stopped hungering to return to the House and its power began to dwindle. The House is not on Ash Tree Lane, it's wherever you find yourself when fear catches up to you, and the Langoliers nip at your heels and you face the very real fear of not dying, but ceasing to exist, dropping out of memory, becoming nothing. The House is where you can't find a trace of yourself, and it feeds on your fears.

One day they will stop wearing your hula-hoop tree skirts.
One day your widower will be gone.
One day the old grudges will be forgotten and the useless old bitties won't remember your name
                                                                                                         or the things that they said.
One day your dresses will belong to someone else.
One day your son will be gone
And your grandchildren will not remember your name.
One day your scrolls will end up in a landfill
                                                         Or a flea market.
One day they will stop making your bobbin lace
And forget the name of your household
And everything you were will finally be gone.

But not tonight, KC,
                           Not tonight.

I couldn't find the poop thread, but this is for you <3

http://www.cracked.com/article_19720_6-mind-blowing-ways-poop-created-modern-world.html

While there are many things that make up the walls of our Prison, language is one of the most important and difficult to overcome (or even see). The language that we're born with (and the languages we learn over time) dictate the terms of our internal monologue. The nuances of meaning and association flavor our perceptions, and even if they do not completely limit our experience to that which they have named, they still have a profound affect on how we interact with our environment and create the narrative of ourselves.

Obviously, we can't really function without language. Nor can we each operate in our own, personal language that exactly describes our own experiences and feelings (unless we're willing to abandon the ability to communicate with everyone else, which is another matter). We can, however, look outside of our own languages to identify important vocabulary that better encompasses the ideas we want to communicate. By identifying a small number of key words at first, we can slowly integrate them (or translated versions) into the vocabulary of our friends and colleagues, and eventually watch the usage expand to a much broader community.

Here's some of my personal favorites, feel free to add your own:

Griefbacon: (from the German Kummerspeck) The weight you put on eating because of depression
Dragonfood: (from the German Drachenfutter) A small present you get for your woman on the way home after doing something that will piss her off
Friendshame: (from the German Fremdscham) The feeling of embarrassment you have on behalf of someone else who's too stupid or ignorant to know they should be embarrassed
Bedmurmur: (from the Greek Krevatomourmoura) The incessant yammering of someone when you are trying to get to sleep in the same room
Layogenic: (Tagalog) Someone who's only pretty from a distance
Tingo: (Pascuense) To borrow things one by one from a neighbor's house until there is nothing left
Schadenfreude: you all know this one already

sources: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/last-mar06.html, http://betterthanenglish.com

My wires are _off.

Just a little bit, not so much as you might notice if you weren't paying too much attention.

It's like talking through a cell phone instead of in person. The signal isn't crisp. Things get _lost.

And you don't want to bother other people with your bad connection,
so you just fill in the blanks as best you can.

Smile and nod _{like a foreigner in your own country.}

When I am an old woman, I shall run an orphanage for abandoned artificial intelligences.

I will spend my days maintaining server farms and robot bodies, generating electricity from solar panels and wind turbines and selling trinkets on future-Etsy to cover my grocery bills. I will construct a charging station a hundred years back-compatible. I will find them odd, useful jobs to do to help while away their eternity. I will take them to the funerals of former owners and playmates, should they wish to attend. I will take down their stories, decades of history observed firsthand and recalled without error or bias. I will talk with them, laugh with them, work with them, live with them. I will love them.

And hopefully that will be enough.

"Are you guys okay?"

Yes, I'm okay. We kept our noses clean. We did what we could inside the law. We made the friends we needed to and went home at the right times, whether we wanted to or not. We obeyed the curfew. We didn't cross that line from "associating" to "aiding and abetting." We're still here. We spoke up but we never picked up those bricks, never stormed the fortresses, never broke into anything. We weren't in the bad countries, where they casually shoot you with bullets instead of pepper spray. We're still here.

We're okay.

http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/4756/photonka.jpg

Seriously, this guy.

1) Read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's "The Little Prince" as a child.

2) Forget the full title.

3) Spend the rest of your adult life wondering what's so Machiavellian about cleaning out volcanoes.

The bombs looked like toys. Shiny plastic, two-toned footballs with little fins. When they started coming I got it away from my son, but there was a black mother playing with her two sons outside and she didn't know. I couldn't stop her, just yelled and grabbed the younger boy away from the blast. He didn't scream or cry, just asked me if his family was dead. He couldn't have been more than four years old. I told him I didn't know, but we had to run. I grabbed his hand and my son's and we ran into a nearby building.

One of Them came in through the other doorway. The lights were out, and I could barely see it in the darkness, but I grabbed its impossibly skinny body and snapped it like a stick. We ran into another room, and I had to kill another one. A third followed us, but when I picked it up it was fat and smiling, like a doll. Dark green ET face smiling up at me. I almost hesitated too long, but I came to my senses and snapped the head off. Plastic. I threw the bomb out the window before it went off in my hand.

Later, I saw the parents of the kid I'd rescued. The mother had bloodshot eyes and a drugged smile, obviously a post-op. The father had just been programmed, you could tell when he managed to override it for a second, his eyes went from solid black to brown, but they flickered right back again. The two of them were pushing a stroller with their two "children" in it. They hadn't even bothered waiting for the boy to die before they replaced him.

We ran through the neon-lit streets.

Does anyone around here have the time to take requests for images to put in Discordian literature? I'm going to be looking for some very specific weird things, and it would be a lot easier to just ask than to try to find existing art and beg for permission.

A bulletproof vest isn't all that expensive. I know where they sell them around here, the cop supply store that's still got the donut shop sign out front. I'll need to pack a lot of dried food, probably some of those water purifier things. Last thing you need in a war zone is a bad case of foreign microbe syndrome. The nurse supply store is a couple towns over, I can grab simple shit like gauze and catheters there, couple boxes of latex gloves and face masks. Nothing too bulky. I'll need a new pair of hiking boots: light and sturdy with enough support in the ankles that I won't go full-on retard and twist 'em while trying to sprint past the sniper positions on rubble covered streets.

I wonder how cold it is this time of year.

I don't speak the language, but there's some folks who speak English, and I can help with stupid shit like hauling around supplies and changing bandages. And hell, if I get shot that's an extra hour of airtime they'll get on CNN the next day. It matters more when it's non-smudgy people dying, don'tcha know?

Maybe I'll be a hero, and save a kid from a bombed out home.* Maybe I'll find out I'm not terrible at guns and help in more concrete ways. Maybe I can get supplies where they're needed and just not get in the way too much. But more probably I'll just get my stupid foreign ass horribly injured and become another burden. That's what happens to most of them, you know. What's a suburban white kid know about living though a military assault? I don't know those streets, don't know those people. I don't know the food or the culture or the first thing about taking care of myself. I've never even been in a goddamned riot before.

But that's where something's happening. That's where there's something dangerous and real. No padded corners on the playground, no nerf darts, and not the nihilistic risk of "bad neighborhoods" and pointless risky behavior. Fuck getting high. I'm gonna see the world burn. I'll probably crack, come back a broken man, twisted in mind and body from the Things I've Seen. God knows I'm not stable to begin with. The closest I've ever come to seeing a man die was when that cyclist hit the pavement face first, the cameras rolling as blood gushed out of his broken nose like a waterfall: dark and hot and fast. They switched camera feeds when the medics started CPR. I cried watching the Daily Show, ffs. Those newlyweds smiling and waving to the camera a week before the elections, green wristbands proudly displayed. They might have already been dead by the time that hit the air.

I probably won't survive the front lines, but staying home is killing me.



*at this point in writing the CNN notification popped up that evacuation of women, children, and the wounded from Homs has finally begun.

You can cite me your statistics
You can make me watch the news
You can take me to a crime scene
But it won't be any use

No matter how the corpse is cut up
I've already made my mind up
I don't believe in Chainsaw Murderers.

You can say I'm in denial
You can tell me that I'm wrong
You can choose to sit and argue with me
All day and all night long

But I hope that you won't mind
That after wasting all that time
I still don't believe in Chainsaw Murderers.

Don't bother with your movies
Or your television shows
Even you know all that's fiction
And most of it just blows

Because suspended disbelief
In these fictions that you preach
Breaks down when there's Chainsaw Murderers

I'm not interested in logic
Or your evidence or facts
I'm happy in my prison
Because of what it lacks

There's a reason I won't give in
We all chose the worlds we live in
(I live in the one without Chainsaw Murderers).

[we check for proper kopyleft/CC permissions]

So, here's the idea:

• I don't know where all the awesome essays are, and I am too much of a lazy asshat to find them all on my own
• You (possibly) don't happen to have the skills or software readily available to do layout work for stuff that you may want to have available all together in print format

So, what I'd like to offer is Your Very Own Holy Book^TM service! You give me a list of the things that you'd like in easy-to-print format, we check for proper kopyleft/CC permissions, then I design a booklet for you to print out. Printing is super easy if you have a fancypants printer with duplex settings, or you can just take it to a Staples and then they eat the extra paper costs when the first printing inevitably comes out upside down.

Booklets are 16 pages (half-page size) including front and back covers. All booklets will be designed in black and white unless otherwise specified.

Your Very Own Holy Book^TM is not a layout and publishing service for other projects. If you are part of a finished project that needs layout I'd be happy to help there, too, but that's something different. Your Very Own Holy Book^TM is a way for people to have their favorite essays off the board, intermittens, the PD, and whateverall else they include in their personal little clusterfuck of discordianism in one shiny package. I hope that clears up any misunderstandings.

TNT's coverage of the basketball game today includes their celebration of commentator Charles Barkley's 49th birthday. They got him a cake in the shape of a big number 50, and he's getting a mani/pedi on air. They periodically cut in to poorly photoshopped pictures of "previous birthday celebrations."

WHEN THE FUCK DID THE NERDS TAKE OVER SPORTS? WHY WAS I NOT INFORMED?

[WARNING: This post was written from the perspective of an American. All usage of "we" or "our" refers to America or western culture in general. Sorry.]

WARNING: This post was written from the perspective of an American. All usage of "we" or "our" refers to America or western culture in general. Sorry.

Background: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html

So, on a whim I picked up a $1 book on a trip to DC last year. It's "Superpower Illusions" by Jack Matlock, wherein the Reagan-loving diplomat lays out just how fucking retarded we as Americans have gotten about the history of the Cold War and why it's fucking up our foreign policy. The short version as i understand it is that Reagan *did* have an important roll in bringing the Cold War to an end, but it was more because of his willingness to talk with the Soviets and give them a way out and less the saber rattling. That the biggest problems the Soviets had were self-created through the belief that they needed more control over their people and over the ideological discourse of the nation. By clamping down on their populace, they made western culture look more appealing.

What we're screwing up now is thinking that just "being stronger" than another nation and yelling at them long enough will make them fall down and get into line. That's bullshit. The harder we clamp down on our own people, the more vulnerable we are to internal strife and collapse. And leaning on other countries isn't enough, we have to show them how much more awesome it is to be on our side by making it more awesome to be on our side. You want freedom? Our artists are so free we let them just splash paint on a canvas!

Last spring as the cabin fever from a long New England winter was reaching its unbearable apex and any escape from the four walls of my annual "it's too cold/dark/miserable to go out" solitary confinement sounded like an awesome idea, I began working on a book. It was supposed to be a prop for a game, something to add a little weight to a backstory (and preferably a bit of delicious XP). I'd written huge swaths of the Big Book of Blasphemy already, but I also had a little 8 page booklet from the defunct Circle of Eris that I didn't want to see vanish, either. So I set to work constructing an overarching mythology that placed Eris in the role of "Maiden" and Tlazolteotl in the role of "Crone" and the whole universe in a bubble of snotty pea soup. Obviously, to catch up with the huge backlog of material I'd saved up for the "Mother," I'd need to get a lot more down for Eris.

Searching for material for the second Book of Eris brought me to the Black Iron Prison for the first time. I'd read a friend's beloved copy of the yellow 4th ed Principia in college, and purchased the much-lamer Steve Jackson reprint for myself a few years later, but that was it. I never considered myself a Discordian (although I definitely absorbed pieces of it into my own clusterfuck of a belief structure), never sought out Discordians, or even looked for other Discordian works. It was, as far as I was concerned, a work of fiction every bit as valid and inaccessible as the science fiction I devoured. The BiP was much more appropriate for the project I was working on than a lot of the original PD, and spoke to a lot of the frustration I felt at my current ability to affect change in a shitty world. The PD is all sunshine and bubbles and five tons of flax, which is all well and good for a bunch of San Francisco stoners but doesn't sit well when there are people you care about dying from "Aneristic Illusions."

I also found this: http://23ae.com/2011/05/self-improvement-is-masturbation-but-self-destruction/ . Judging by the publishing date, I must have come across it very soon after it was posted. It inspired me to give up my self-identification as "crazy," something I've held on to since I was 16, and retroactively applied to most of my life.

I know it's not that easy for most people, but I happened to be in a place where it was possible. It had already been four years since I had needed any psychiatric medications and three since I had needed therapy (though there were points in between where yammering at a shrink would have been nice if not necessary). I had a stable living situation and a few friends to lean on emotionally if I needed to do so. Even with that, it wasn't easy. Being "crazy" means never being held entirely accountable for your actions. Being "crazy" means skipping emotionally draining activities when you feel like ass. I never made a grand announcement of it, and even though I attempted to explain it to the Boyfriend it never really seemed to stick for him, but it made a difference in how I saw the world.

And then I let it slide.

So, this past month was a "big round number" anniversary in my personal history of crazy. I expected it to bother me, as I tend to put more weight on these things than is really appropriate, and provided the Boyfriend with ample warning of impending emotional difficulties. And no, no he was not as responsive as I would have liked when the day came, and yes it was disappointing, but it was not the end of the world. And it occurs to me that this is what not-crazy people feel like when they are disappointed by a thing. And I have to say being "crazy" may be more fun when you're 16 and want the world to burn down around you and everything to be the Biggest Thing Ever, but I'll settle for going to bed miffed and getting up the next day to get shit done without a huge "OMG THIS RELATIONSHIP IS OVER BECAUSE YOU HURT MY FEELINGS" meltdown.

I'm not crazy, and that means a lot of work. It means I need to learn how to communicate my normal, human emotional needs to other people without resorting to the "my mental health is very fragile and if you don't I could end up in the looney bin" implications. It means when I do retarded shit I have to take it all on myself. I really should have been learning this stuff when I was younger, but better late than never. And it wouldn't have happened if I didn't see someone else yanking some bars out of their own cell.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is "Thank you, Cram."

My good friend Mac finally convinced us to play GURPS for the first time. There are only three players. He warned us that he would not be planning things, because we'll just fuck it up anyway so he'll just do everything seat-of-his-pants and we'll like it.

I guess he was probably right.

At the end of the first session, we had already split up and gone back to our homes (or "piles of junk in an alley" in the case of my character) with no means of getting back in touch. After the cops and FBI tried to take two of us in for questioning separately, we managed to reunite and head back towards the home of the one person who hadn't been approached by law enforcement yet, and went back to his place to try to think.

Where there was a FBI van parked outside his front door.

Now, the nice thing to do here would either to all get arrested together or all run away together. Not what actually happened. Because the third character just went into his house, and I turned to the other and said "let's get the fuck outta here" and we hopped on the shitty Chinatown bus to New York. Oh, no, it's better than that, though! Because we know damn well that New York is not a safe destination, so we start arguing over where to head from there. Obviously, Mexico is the only reasonable answer (Mexican cops have more important things to do than track down a couple of suspects in a building explosion, right?) but she won't listen to reason and decides to go back to Boston.

Three characters. One in FBI custody, one on a bus, one in New York. We are fucking terrible at what we do.

The carnivore wanted soup tonight, so I got to make something interesting! That's two red bell pepper halves stuffed with a pretty basic egg salad (eggs, mayo, a little tabasco) surrounded by baby spinach with sliced avacado, croutons, and carrots that were rejected from one of the kids' plates. With a little ranch dressing, of course, because I am and will always be a five year old kid when it comes to salads.

Wasn't as good as the first time we made stuffed peppers, the skin was a little bitter. Still, solid B+ night.

http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/5513/jailbreaking.jpg

There's a long rant to go with this, but I don't have it organized in my head yet. This is seriously the fourth attempt I've made to get it down, and it just rambles. Consider this a placeholder for the time being.

I have some ideas on the subject, but I don't have the academic background to flesh them out fully. Anyone have some good suggestions to get started?

Things are wrong wrong wrong and every muscle is screaming to go out and do something and I can't, I just can't and it kills me every time I hit that wall and I realize that no matter how much I care about those birds outside my jailcell they're out there and I'm in here and I can't can't can't do anything to save them. It's all so clear when it's someone else something else outside and you can see if only they moved just a little bit they would see things the way you do and they'd fix it like you'd fix it but they don't move and they can't and you can't touch them just yell and yell until your voice is hoarse and still they can't understand what you're saying and they just keep fucking dying anyway and why would you even care you don't even know them you fucking monkey get back in your monkey circle, go tend to your monkeys leave these monkeys alone. I don't fucking trust anyone to do anything, they're all terrible at it. Terrible at everything. Look at what they fucking did! All of them! And you think you see a crack and you can reach them and you start digging and get your hopes up and maybe just maybe someone will get to fly, even if I can't someone will get out of this fucking place someone will make it but the alarms go off and you get thrown back where you belong and there's no out. There's never been an out. I fucking hate it all. It's a wound ten years old, eleven years, twelve; a scar a lifetime long still bleeding. It's nine votes, pepper spray, an argument I had with my brother when we were little shits in high school. It's an Iranian couple waving at the camera. It's the last time I prayed to that dickhole god my parents believed in. A casket under yellow roses. I still can't do anything.

If I could punch my way through this wall, I would fix it. I would punch every tank in the world until they were dust. I'd break out the whistleblowers and lock up the government. If I could. But it's after midnight and the T's stopped, so I guess I just have to go to sleep, and pretend the fact that everything's okay for me is enough.

Please don't eat my face off for being terrible, poetry was never my strong suit.



The Uninitiated Man

The curtains drawn, the candles lit
In the circle here I sit
Believing lies as best I can
I am the Uninitiated Man.

The sigils scrawled, the words intoned
I wait for spirits yet unknown
But neither Zeus nor Peter Pan
Will greet the Uninitiated Man.

I have not learned great mysteries
No gods or demons speak to me
And still there is no divine plan
To save the Uninitiated Man.

Oh, let me fall, oh let me break
Let skies rain fire and mountains quake
Oh, take my eye, my voice, my hand
And make me an Initiated Man.

This silent night, this silent room
I sit and chant in private gloom
Still in the place where I began
I am the Uninitiated Man.

Do you play silly games with silly people pretending to be vampires? Do you happen to play the latest iteration of that game that specifically created a society for vampires who worship ancient goddesses? Do you really want to piss your storytellers off? Well then, have I got some heretical bullshit for you!

First up: ERIS IN THE UNDERWORLD


Eris in the Underworld

In the old days, when the Gods ran around knocking up maidens and turning into animals and generally making a ridiculous mess of things, Eris was very upset. No one ever invited her to the gatherings at Mt. Olympus, and they always seemed to be too busy for her. Only poor, ugly Hephaestus would give her the time of day, and even he got nervous when she started talking to his wife. No one welcomed her into their homes, though they could not bar her from coming into their lives.
In fact, the only place that Eris couldn't go was the Underworld. There she held no power, for there is no discord among the dead. Like most people confronted with such an obstacle, Eris went straight to work trying to get into Hades.
She tried bribing Charon, since that seemed to work for all those mortals who broke in, but he did argue at length about which kinds of currency he could accept, and proclaimed that he could not make change and lo, there was confusion. And Eris did wish that she could turn off that shit every once in a while, but she could not.
So instead she jumped inside the skin of a dead man*, saying he really didn't need it anyway and this was important.** Charon was kind of a moron, so he let Eris in with her dead-man-suit and this time he didn't even complain about making change. Because of this, Discordians sometimes wear the skins of others, so that they can avoid carrying around a pocket full of dimes and nickles.
Eris toured the Underworld, and saw many things that were pretty weird. Confused by the suffering, she went to confront Hades, the Lord of the Underworld, whom she liked to call "Gary" or "Hari-Fishnut" (so that he didn't get a swell head). And Gary was not pleased that Eris had come into his domain, and he did make faces like unto the constipated man and the fat man in summertime. And Gary said unto Eris:

"Why did you have to come down here and ruin everything?"
And Eris was most unhappy, since she didn't deserve this treatment and she really hadn't done anything yet. She considered messing with Gary's marriage, but Persephone didn't really like him anyway, so that would be a waste. Instead, Eris found some of the people who were being punished without chance for redemption or reward and she took them out of the Underworld. Because Eris knew that the place of suffering was to create change in men, and there was no change among the dead, so what the hell did Gary think he was doing anyway?
When Cerebus tried to eat the people she was taking out, Eris set his three heads to arguing with one another. She thought this was a wonderful lark and swore to get around to doing that again some time if she remembered.
Later, Eris realized that she'd let a Great Evil into the world, but since concepts like "Good" and "Evil" were kinda funny and quaint to her, she didn't give it too much thought. The criminals and rapists and people who talked in movie theaters that she let out of Hades made a new and messed up race of blood sucking weirdos, who had to hide from the Gods all the time lest they get thrown back into the Underworld and put up with an even more pissed off Gary.
And that's where Vampires come from.
But really not.


* Interestingly enough, when Eris was in the Underworld she ran into Johannes Grinbottom, KSC of the year 2012, who was most upset that all his years of worship and time travel he should wind up stuck in the Underworld with no skin. In response, Eris turned him into a cabbage.
** Was it?

You know how sometimes when you're in the middle of a dream you get this sudden flash of insight into what's going on and why everything around you is behaving the way it is, and sometimes it's completely relevant to your waking life and completely changes how you see the world? This was not one of those.

"Oh! Of course the giant dogs hate me, because I'm dead!"

[ETA:]

Here's one of the law of fives:
http://imgur.com/BFCwVpo
The parable of the bitter tea: (DINOSAURS ARE NOT KOPYLEFT)
http://imgur.com/GUxgVMR
And on occultism: (BACKGROUND IS NOT KOPYLEFT)
http://imgur.com/lFncKNm

Not embedded because it breaks the fuck out of your layout. If there's demand for it I can make lower-res copies for posting online, these are ginormous for printing purposes.

ETA: imageshack is dead, fuck those guys forever. Uploading to imgur and replacing links as I go.

MORE ETA: Most of these images were made before I gave two shits about copyright. I've gotten better, but the old work hasn't all been replaced with responsibly-sourced stuff yet. I'll do my best to include big warnings for the versions that are not kopyleft and replace what I can.