Topics

Hi, it's me.  This is more complicated than it sounds...I am not the me I was when you first met me (especially you old timers), and believe me when I say that this can be uncomfortable.  I am not the me that raced cars on Book Road back in the day.  I am not the me that stood horrified in a pumphouse under the streets in Panama.  I am not the me that worked for a dodgy cargo airline when some of you met me for the first time.  Let's skip a bit...I am not even the me that wrote Little Orange and Hell in a Dry Place.  I have changed, as you have changed, as everyone changes.  To expect a person to react the same way to a given stimuli over a half-century isn't realistic.

The hard part, the part that took that entire half-century, is to understand that yourself.  That you aren't the same person you used to be.  Maybe you're better, maybe you're worse, maybe you're neither, just different.  But once you DO realize that, you remove an enormous burden of false expectations from yourself, and the affect that has is some pretty strong mojo.

I am not Shaky, Mozart of the M16.
I am not The Good Reverend Roger, screaming out rants.
I am not Padre Dolor, delivering the hurt.
I am not Little Billy, taunting the Pagans.
I am not Doktor Howl, explaining your doom to you in terms you understand.

I am a mish-mash of all of these people, and "we" are stronger for realizing that.  I am a ball of aggregate Horror™, and I am not impressed by the puny villains we have today.  Trump and his hordes of waterhead Nazis may be dangerous to some degree, but they have no opera.  They are banal.  Boring.  This should change.

On the other hand, this entire future is kind of banal and boring.  It is a flimsy thing, built on shaky foundations by drunks who never even bothered to look at the blueprint.  It is the intensely monotonous accumulation of wealth into the hands of a tiny group of people while the rest of the world starves - or is facing the specter of starvation - and drinks filthy water.

And I think maybe that needs to change, as well.

Or Kill Us. 

To kick things off, furious white people screech in Maricopa county, "Voting machine problems are supposed to happen to non-whites!"

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/some-arizona-polling-places-down-frustrating-primary-voters/ar-BBMznN0?ocid=spartanntp

Hello, Jim?  Is this Jim?  Hah, I was just sitting back thinking of you and touching something.  Not gonna tell ya what I'm touching, and I'm not gonna tell ya what I'm touchin' it with, but know that you are always in my thoughts.  I was thinking back to early 2009, and all the fun we had watching the po'buckers lose their damn minds over President Obama and his un-American blackness.  Remember that?  Sure ya do.  We all do; it was the most fun I've had since Nixon resigned. 

Now, I'm not going to tell you that Obama was a world-shaker or go on and on about hopey-changey-Yes-We-Can bullshit, but the man could give a speech.  He made you feel like someone was driving the train, and that yes, we will slow down to a reasonable speed on the really bad curves.  Now?  Ho ho!  There are no brakes and the lumpy orange thing in the white house is deliberately speeding up for the curves.  And while I would normally be all about that kinda "taking it to the wall" mentality, it occurs to me that this is where I keep all of my STUFF.

And then I got to thinking about all the shit you said before the 2016 election.  About how you were gonna vote write-in or vote Green or just not vote at all, because you feel that because the democrats are corrupt, they are just the same as Trump and his crowd...Because Baby Jesus knows, there is no such thing as nuance and if you aren't perfect, you are entirely evil.  You didn't feel that there was any shades to corruption, and therefore you simply couldn't vote for Hillary because reputable people had been telling you bad things about her since 1992.

Now, this sort of thinking has real-world results, Jim, and lots of people we know got hurt on account of it.  Not only that, the apparatus of government has been permanently damaged.  Like a bent frame in a car, you might not be able to see the damage after the repair man works on it, but I wouldn't take that thing on the highway.  "Wouldn't be prudent at this juncture," as one old bastard used to say.  Our children will not inherit a republic, and poor people will drink filthy water for the rest of their miserable lives.

So then I got to thinking, maybe this is your fault.  You clutched your pearls and put on your best sainted expression and told everyone how you couldn't sully your purity by voting for someone that was less than perfect, even if her opponent was a crazed Nazi maniac.  You told us that if we voted for Hillary, we'd have a right wing warmonger in the white house.  Well shit, son, you were right.  We voted for Hillary and we got a right wing warmonger in the white house...Because you - and millions of equally stupid people - didn't vote.

So next time you feel like dropping in for a beer, I'd think twice and maybe not do that.  Because me and my family and friends will welcome you with baseball bats and crowbars, you miserable, sanctimonious piece of shit.  Go fuck yourself.

*click*

In the end, I have decided that this is a loss, for two reasons:

1.  The Arizona constitution requires that his replacement be of the same party, and the seat sticks until 2022.

2.  McCain miraculously grew a spine for the famous "thumbs down" moment, which is why my aging parents can still afford health insurance, which is why my mother survived her cancer.  That obviously buys a lot with me.

...What will the loser of the next primary bitch about? 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/dnc-passes-historic-reforms-stripping-superdelegates-of-power/ar-BBMqrN4?ocid=spartanntp

SHIT MY PANTS!

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/big-oil-asks-government-to-protect-it-from-climate-change/ar-BBMhR6s?ocid=spartanntp

Today I drove home doing 53 MPH in the left lane with my right blinker on for 5 miles.  I stopped at the grocery store on the way, where I parked 6" away from the car on my right.  Inside, I used the restroom, hopelessly jamming up the toilet.  Then I left my cart in the middle of the aisle while I stood next to it for 5 minutes, debating my choice of taco seasoning.   Then I took 3-4 minutes recounting my change in the express checkout.  Leaving, I left my cart in the parking spot on my left side.

I am THAT FUCKING GUY.  And while I enjoy what I do, it is exhausting and I feel as if I should be compensated.

I am unsure if I have ever seen a maintenance department as dysfunctional as this one.  It is not a crisis of competence, even though half the guys are green as grass and none are properly trained.  It is a crisis of leadership.  The maintenance manager is afraid to manage, and is a 6'5" tall barrel of passive-aggressive cowardice.  The supervisor that reports to him is a screamer who is dangerously convinced of his non-existent electrical knowledge.  The crew as a whole has of course been poisoned by these factors, and with only one or two exceptions, they were cold shit on toast to begin with.

They have sinned in my eyes and in the eyes of the Machine God.  The Job is not getting done.  I am not having this.

I have been watching all of this since January.  I did not wish to take hasty steps on incomplete information.  However, I now have enough information to act on.  I in fact have a surplus of information, and all of it bad.  Changes will be made, and as I told my boss during my interview, hearts will be broken...and not necessarily the hearts of the bad apples.  The situation is so bad that I am not hiring anyone new until I clean this mess up, because anyone I hire will be contaminated by the wretchedness of the current maintenance regime.  No, this requires a fresh start.

I do not intend to fire everyone, but they may leave anyway.  I am absolutely unconcerned with this and have already lined up contractors to cover essential functions while a new crew is assembled, should that be necessary.  In any case, the current management will no longer have their positions, and a supervisor from another one of my groups - who is all about getting The Job Done- will be promoted into management.  He is a beast of a man who understands my values, and it is my guess that once he is promoted, the entire crew except Kevin and Austin will walk out the door.  Whoopsie.

It distresses me that people in my former occupation take no pride at all in what they do, that jobs are left half-completed in a public venue, that kitchen equipment is left down for two weeks at a time, that water testing is pencil-whipped.  My sense of religion has been offended.  The world is not as it should be.

And I am the maintenance man.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-fastest-sinking-city-in-the-world/ar-BBLSR8W?ocid=spartanntp

I'm not gonna quote this, because I don't want to spoil the sense of alarm and dismay that it will impart on you people.

Also, it's worth noting that more groundwater is extracted by Nestle in Michigan than Jakarta's population uses.

Also, note that Jakarta's actual water system can only keep up with 40% of the city's draw.  Lastly, wells in a mega-urban environment, as a primary source of drinking water. 

This topic has been moved to Aneristic Illusions.

https://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=38442.0

What if, hypothetically-speaking, all the things I believed about myself weren't true at all?  What if all the personal reconstruction I've been working on since 2002 or so just left me dumb in a different way?  180 degrees different from the dumbasses, but 360 degrees the same?  For all I know, it is impossible to actually be a feminist if you're a guy or an "ally" if you're straight (not that I will claim or admit to being anyone's ally).  You might THINK you are, but do the women or Gays or blacks or whatnot think of you that way?  Or are you coming across as just another fetishist of their culture?

I've been thinking about this a lot in the last couple of years.  I have not yet reached a conclusion.  Or rather, I have, but then events arrange for me to discard that conclusion and start all over again.  But in the meantime, I have to know how to act, so that I don't accidentally turn into something I don't want to be.  And the way I act is, "follow a set of principles, even if some or many or even MOST of the people involved mean absolutely nothing at all to me."  As an interim solution, at least.  I don't like 99% of the people I meet, but I like watching people punch down even LESS than I like the person being punched.  I am essentially just a really, really disappointed Catholic, at least figuratively speaking.

For example, if I were to see a half dozen po'buckers hassling a transgender person, I'm going to step in, even if it means getting my ass kicked (only in Jackie Chan flicks do 2 people beat 6 people in a fight).  I hate the po'buckers and I hate their victim on account of all 7 people are stupid jumped-up primates on a 3rd rate planet around a mediocre star, but if you added up that hate, it would pale in comparison to my hatred of the idea of six people attacking one person for stupid fucking reasons and/or behavior that doesn't affect the po'buckers in the slightest.  And THAT hate pales next to my hate of 6 Goddamn primates suddenly deciding that they are brave because they have 6:1 odds, when alone they would be your bog-standard gutless wonder wearing a MAGA hat in the unemployment line. For similar reasons, I hate most cops.  Especially right now.

I hate cowards.  That's what it really boils down to.  There have been many times in my life that I've wanted to fuck someone up real bad, but have declined to do so because they are smaller than me or much older than me or just plain stupid drunk.  They were not worthy targets.  Not because I am a saint (I am not), nor because I'm the baddest motherfucker on the block (I am old and my bones are made out of glass), but because I have an aversion to mob psychology and the notion of looking in the mirror and seeing something small.

This has led me to do some truly stupid shit over the years and will probably get me killed some day...But we're all gonna die sooner or later, and why not go down swinging? In any case, don't mistake principle for loyalty...If I jump into a fight or even just an internet debate on your side, it's most likely not because I'm your pal.

Another thing I have been thinking about, and it's somewhat connected is "How do I know that my 'rationality' really IS rationality, and not just a different brand of dumbassery like Trumpsters and chemtrail freaks?  I mean, dumbasses don't know they're dumbasses...which is one of the things that makes them dumbasses. I know that I believe loads of things that just aren't so, but how important are all of those things?  Does my dumbassery screw up my priortities, or is it really just occasional mind garbage?

At this point, at least three people I know of are going to jump in to tell me WHAT.  Save your breath...I don't take advice from people that hate me.  I am at least that rational.  I don't have any use for criticism from people who think I am less than human.  Neither should you, so shut up.

Lastly, does this monstrous ego make my ass look big?  Because that's a thing, too.

Okay, according to Newton, if you drop a silver dollar out of your car window, it falls in a straight line.

According to Einstein, if you drop a silver dollar out of your car, you observe it fall in a straight line and a pedestrian walking by watches it fall in a parabolic arc, and both people are correct.

According to Doktor Howl, you're dropping money out the window and you should stop.  If the above named assholes were so smart, why does this have to be explained?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/winners-and-losers-from-tuesday's-elections/ar-BBLElqJ?ocid=spartanntp

First guesses on non-certified primary results.  Sanders and Ocasio's endorsements don't look that great, neither do Trump's.

I was having some trouble getting the reforecast to make sense this year.  Nothing seemed to add up, and the board was starting to make ominous rumbling noises.  In the old days I would have just laughed and gone back to work, but everything is different now...So I made the call.

When I arrived, LMNO looked pretty good.  I asked him how he was doing.

"Never mind, Dok, we don't have a lot of time.  I have a one o'clock with the Sultan of Brunei. Open your laptop and let's see what you have."

I sat down and fired up the machine, and opened the excel file.  He gazed at it for a few moments.

"I see your problem.  The numbers are right, but you're only looking at them in two dimensions.  Remember back in calc, when they showed you that a line that crosses over itself can still be a function, if it's looked at as a 3-dimensional image?"

"Yeah.  Taylor polynomial shit.  Amazing at first, but they have you run so many it becomes tedious."

"That is to weed out the dilletantes.  People who aren't serious about the language of creation."

"Um..."

He hit pivot table and rendered it in 3D.  Suddenly, all the projections made perfect sense.

"Wow, thanks, LMNO!"

"We're not done yet.  We are now looking at a graph that has 3 axis that are all perpendicular to each other.  That shows you the present and lets you guess at the future.  To SEE the future, we need to add another perpendicular axis."

"You can't.  No further axis are possible."

"Heh.  Zygote."  He added another axis.

Everything, the whole room, outside the windows, I mean everything spun away.  The graph became a shape that my eyes couldn't process, but I KNEW.  In the spaces between the plotted points, the face of Moloch gazed upon me.

"OH, SWEET JESUS, YOU DO WORSHIP MOLOCH!" I gasped.

"Don't be ridiculous," LMNO said, "We don't worship him.  He's just another market force, like Dagon or what used to be Jehovah."

His eyes were bleeding.  So were mine. I could see the absolute ruin predicted by my reforecast, both for the fiscal year, but also for the following 14 trillion years, until all that was displayed was a universe of atoms too far away from each other to interact.

"Don't look that far along the T axis," he said, "There are no deliverables there."

I scrolled 14 trillion years back to the 0 point.  And I saw all of my political enemies' dirty little secrets, the cheap affairs, the sordid betrayals, the petty embezzlements.

"I understand now, LMNO."

"I knew you would," he said, shaking my hand.  "Welcome to the Old Firm.  We're going to do Great Things."

And nobody ever stopped screaming again.

(Note:  Usual rules.  Also, I have not, and will not, respond to any PMs concerning Nigel or any other facet of the Great Seriousness of 2015, so all of you vultures shut up.)

1.  Look, why can't you perverts have NORMAL degenerate fantasies, instead of ones involving LMNO and me and ground beef?  I don't fucking get it.  We are no longer young and pretty.  We wheeze when we walk and we sometimes spring leaks like that asshole Charley did, only not out of that particular orifice.  Mostly.  And no, "Meatbomb" is a lousy name for a porno.  There's no stale wit.  It will never sell.

2.  Okay, let me ask you this:  Precisely how long does word salad stay interesting?  How many times am I expected to snort laughter at the phrase "consult your pineal gland"?  As for the rest of it, most of your posts are like a pizza slicer...All edge, no point.  It's not interesting, and it makes everyone feel kinda weird in a bad way, like if you were at a high class cocktail party and that unfunny asshole from Mad TV showed up and started acting like a profoundly damaged 5 year old.

3.  I wasn't aware there was an Official Discordian™ opinion on Bernie Sanders.  It of course bothers me to no end that I cannot comply with this official position.  I hate Sanders, and I hate his fans.  Wait. Scratch that, I don't actually hate HIM, but I DO hate YOU.  He is a goofy old man who for some reason has become famous; you are a cultist, and in the WRONG cult.  It doesn't matter if you're wrong or right, either, because neither result matters.  They™ own the ball AND the ballpark, and here you are demanding a perfect world or no world at all.  I shit on all of you.  Seriously, it's really hard to put into words how much I hate all of you.  Every last stinking primate.  Oh, Goddammit.

4.  Yes, I know that I am Greyface.  But you don't have to shout it all over the place.  I mean, I don't make fun of your mom...uh, wait.  Scratch that.  I am making fun of her right now.  She makes stupid kids.

5.  I appreciate the offer, but that's not legal in this state and I am no longer that flexible.  You should have seen me back in the day, though.  I could have packed the seats in Tijuana.

6.  You cad.  I feel ever so motivated to give you a right thrashing, I am so very incensed, yet my carpet whisk is bent from the last time and I am not prepared to step up to a baseball bat just yet, as I still harbor some minute hope that you will snap to and allow a gentleman to read his bug pron in peace again. Please give my proposal serious consideration and forestall my alternate plan of pouring lye into your food. Thanks ever so. 

7.  ECH had a kid and is busy, Triple Zero joined some bizarre Norwegian cult, Faust still haunts the place, Cain has been laughing for a year non-stop, LMNO drops in once a week, TGRR died of gout, and I don't feel very well.  We still don't want you to come back.  Because we hate you.  And we hate you because you EARNED that hate.  You WORKED for it.  You went OUT OF YOUR FUCKING WAY to gain it.  But we're just pixels on a screen or something like that, so why do you care?

8.  I agree that I am being unreasonable about Kai and Charley and all those other fuckos.  But I've been unreasonable about them for like FOUR YEARS and suddenly NOW it's worth remarking on?  Jesus H Christ, is this supposed to be old home week or some shit?  Fuck right off with your nonsense.  There are only two possible relationships with Charley...You are his sycophant or you are HIS MOST MORTAL ENEMY EVERRRRRRRRR.  Guess which one I am?  And why is this suddenly coming up again?  Seriously, I feel like I'm having a stroke over here.

9.  Oh, you found me from FB and you're accusing me of plagiarizing myself?  Stealing my own content?  Okay, explain.  This shit I gotta hear.  I mean, yeah, it's cock & repost, but it's MY cock & repost and I can do whatever I like with it.  If it makes you feel less special that the vitriol I dumped on your feet wasn't originally and specifically written for YOU, then please get with ECH to arrange a refund.  He's a reasonable man.

10.  I cannot be held responsible for whatever it is that "Miley Spears" is writing about me over on the subgenius wiki "she" stole.  Hint for the clueless:  Everyone in the "Uncle BadTouch family" IS Arden Uncle BadTouch.  In the pics he himself has published about his "family" (read: cult), there are exactly TWO people portrayed.  Arden the pedo and some homeless ancient beardo.  Everyone you see writing on that wiki is a handle for one crazy dude from Dallas.  Not the good kinda crazy, either.  More like the "there's a bag over your head and you can smell lighter fluid" crazy.  So next time you feel like kicking the door down and demanding answers, check out his "Discordia for Kids" page and just eat a shotgun.  Love & kisses.

This topic has been moved to Apple Talk.

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=38420.0

I hear this all the time:  "I'm only human, I'm going to make mistakes."  And, you know, I'd be on board with that except that humans keep making the same mistake over and over again, until one day there's a "heat dome" over half the country, your water is poisonous, and treason pours out of your TV set and stains the carpet. 

Let me put this another way...If you had a guy working for you that day after day made the exact same mistake and ruined product or drove away customers, and no matter how many times you retrained him, he kept doing it, what would you do?  Yeah, that's right.  You'd let him go.  You'd take him aside and quietly explain that this isn't his line of work and he should try something else, somewhere else.  All I am proposing is that we fire the humans.  Tell them to pack up their shit and get out.  I mean, what do we have to lose?  The same silly bastards proposing tax cuts every shift?  Some dumb fucking orange colostomy bag starting trade wars for reasons that even he cannot properly explain? 

Look, I know that humans are cute and can sometimes be funny.  You can almost make yourself believe that they're people, given enough exposure, so it's like deciding to take Old Yeller in for the blue needle.  You might even cry a bit, and that's okay.  But you have to remember that Old Yeller has rabies and keeping him around isn't doing him or anyone else any favors.  Same with humans.  Keeping them around out of sentimentality is really a form of selfish cruelty.  You didn't even neuter them, for God's sake.  There's like 7.6 billion of them. 

It's going to be a busy afternoon, the day you finally decide to clean up this mess, and waiting isn't going to make it go any faster.

This fucking coffee.  It is a national disgrace.  It is a microcosm of everything that's been done to the little guy since 1975.  It tastes like the Iran hostage crisis and the embargo, and it was purchased by the same sort of people that thought the Iran/Contra deal was a fantastic idea.  This shit-in-a-mug makes me want to drone-bomb Juan Valdez and his Goddamn burro.  It makes me hate the flag.  It makes me hate this country, the United States of America.  It makes me hate cops.  It makes me hate ALL WHITE PEOPLE.

I try not to be inflammatory, and I know I have mentioned this all before.  But I am just trying to explain myself; to cry out to the world about the terrible things that have been done to me in the name of "economy".

There was a time in which I would cheerfully drive down Interstate 10 at 53 MPH in the fast lane, with my right turn signal on for 5 miles.  This was to watch peoples' faces in my rear view mirror, as they went from mild annoyance to mindless rage to homicidal mania.  I would occasionally laboriously count my change at the grocery store at 1 PM on national holidays, when there's like sixty people behind me in line, all of whom were late for their family BBQs or whatever the hell it is that Those People do when they're not at work.

At that time in my life, I would cut up old Newport cigarette packs into 3/8" squares and sell them as acid at Grateful Dead shows for $4 per "hit".  Caveat emptor, assholes, I'm just doin' business the American Way™.  I was a full-fledged member of the Night Crew, and one of my guys ran over someone's tiny home with a 5 ton truck.  See, hippie?  Now you're really "off the grid."

My respect for law and order extended only as far as the ability of the police to track down whomever it was doing whatever horrible things got done that day.  My neighbors cursed my name, and called to police on every party I ever threw.  Which is one reason I invited the mayor to all of my parties.  The other reason is that he became a maniac when you poured rum down him, and he would frequently leave by running naked across the golf course, screaming out how much he hated all of his constituents.

I was that sort of person.

However, thanks to a lot of help from people who were my friends and good advice from well-intentioned folks, I am now a totally different sort of person.  Now instead of foolishly flaunting the law, I USE the law.  Instead of making their lives hell on the highway, I inflict the world on them at the workplace.  Instead of throwing drunken parties, I help stupid people enhance their core competencies.  Instead of doing outrageous things out of a Road Warrior flick, I inspire people to long for a post-apocalypse nightmare.

You should have left well enough alone.

Or Kill me

YES, I *DO* HAVE TO YELL.  Yes, I know you're RIGHT THERE, and I *shouldn't* have to raise my voice.  But you have been spoken to by calm and reasonable people, and you still continue with your monkey bullshit.  You have been told and you have been warned and there you are, still buying The Machine's™ shrink-wrapped product, which is to say "political outsiders are preferable to career politicians."  This is akin to saying you'd like to have a house painter handle your taxes and your investments, because by gosh that bastard can paint like a champ.

I don't think you were paying attention.  Hence the yelling.

Or maybe you're one of those other bastards, who won't shut up about the medical benefits of eating kale or maybe huffing lavender oil.  I have news for you.  People have been using lavender oil in whorehouses since the 1500s, and nobody got any healthier.  Yes, I KNOW that Big Pharma are a pack of bandits, but that fact DOESN'T INVALIDATE BIOCHEMISTRY.  This may all sound like mansplaining, only most of the biochemists I know happen to be women, and also the fact that the universe is binary as hell, often fatally so.  I don't mean it's gendered binary, that's fucking goofy, the universe has no gender.  But it IS binary.  It is yes and it is NO¹.  NO, kale will not make your lymphoma go away.  NO, lavender oil will not cure you of allergies.  NO, chlorine and fluoride properly injected into your drinking water will not hurt you, but YES drinking raw water will fuck your shit sideways.  NO, vaccines will not give you the autism.  YES, chemtrails are just condensation.

It pains me that I have to explain this to a population that used to be spacefaring, not so long ago.

I should also have to explain that magic - not stage magic, mind you - but "actual" magic doesn't work.  Friday the 13th is just another day.  Mercury in retrograde means NOTHING AT ALL.  There is no "undocumented persons crisis", and there never really was one.  Nor was there a credible terrorist threat after noon of September 11th, 2001.

You are told that all of these things are true by people who have a VESTED INTEREST in having you believe ANYTHING other than ACTUAL REALITY.  Sometimes not directly.  You may have in fact been told that huffing essential oils is a thing by some other hippie, but that hippie heard it from someone else.  Gwynneth Paltrow, maybe, for an obvious reason.  Or maybe the Koch Brothers, for totally different reasons.  Or maybe - PROBABLY - *both*.

The reason this sort of shit is easy to sell to otherwise intelligent people is that it rewards the receiver in 3 ways:

1.  They get to know more than you and tell you WHAT, without all the bother of going to medical school.

2.  They get to feel like an "insider", like one of the cool people, the privileged few that know the REAL truth.  More to the point, they can congregate and get validation off of each other.

3.  They can sneer at the mundanes who still believe in bacteriophages and other actual, functional things.

This is why I hate you.  This is why I should be allowed to walk around with a 2 foot dildo with "reality" written on it, thumping hipsters.  Yes, "beaten to death with a dildo" sounds awful when the police have to explain what happened to precious Dakota or Scout or whatever the fuck Gen X named their kids, but there really isn't any choice.  When looked at from altitude, it's clearly self-defense.

I mean, just look at You People.



¹ Shut up, LMNO.  We're not talking about subatomic particles, here, so just SHUT YOUR NON-MUSTACHIOED FACE.

This time I think it's for good.

What's that, Bunky?  You say that you just wanted things to slow down?  Not change so fast?  You feel like America is passing you by in favor of cheaper (and more reliable) Mexican models?  You're not racist BUT you feel as if our culture is eroding?  You're not racist BUT they should fill out the paperwork?  You didn't expect things to get quite this crazy, you just wanted to tell those Goddamn liberals a thing or two? You were in fact concerned about her emails and maybe she'd get us in a war or something, so you MAGAed or Brexited or ran off and attended Milo Yopolopolis rallies?

Why is it, Bunky, that every time you fuck the world up, you come to me for absolution?  I can't give you that, and I wouldn't if I could.  I don't like you, Bunky.  You are a bad person.  Besides, you have to repent to get absolution, and you can't seem to actually bring yourself to do that.  You're mush-mouthing excuses for kiddie concentration camps and trade wars and breaking up NATO and and and...

No, Bunky, this time I can't tell you that it's going to be okay.  It is in fact against my religion to tell people it's okay when you know that they're doomed.

I didn't catch that last bit, Bunky.  You say that out-of-campaign political rallies are making you just a little bit nervous?  That weird rant about Elton John's organ made you feel like maybe the president might be losing his grip just a little bit?  Don't worry, Bunky, he was technically correct.  Elton John has an organ, but he plays a piano.  As for the rest of that "speech", if his cocaine-fueled 3 AM tweets didn't bother you, why would a minute or two of absolute word salad at the podium?

This is what you asked for, Bunky.  This is in fact what you demanded, what you SCREAMED for in 2016.  And now you're upset because he's doing exactly what he said he was going to do?  You think that your friends are dodging you because they somehow got it into their heads that you're a racist and you're NOT a racist BUT...

Fuck you, Bunky.  Fuck you right in the heart.  In your rage that a black president got elected and reelected, you have moved us back to 1930.  Not just those darn dirty liberals either, but also your mom, your sister, your wife, your daughters. That one hispanic guy you know at work.  Your token black friend.  This is what you have done.

Now piss off, Bunky, and stop bothering me.  The next time I see you, I'm going to beat you with a piece of rebar and throw you into traffic.  Asshole.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/monster-heat-dome-threatens-all-time-temperature-records-friday-in-southern-california/ar-AAzG6nh?ocid=spartanntp

Amazingly enough, Tucson is just outside of this thing, and temps are a mild 105F.

I have been all over the world and two things are constant every place I have gone.  HUMANS ARE STUPID and SHUT UP.  These facts are incontrovertible.  I mean, I am also stupid, but MY stupid MAKES SENSE.  I may have gotten my tongue stuck in a Epson tractor feed printer in 1996, but I don't say things like "LOWERING TAXES WILL RAISE PROSPERITY.  WE MEAN IT THIS TIME." or "OUR OWN INDEPENDENT NUCLEAR DETERRENT HAS HELPED TO KEEP THE PEACE FOR NEARLY 40 YEARS."  I may not understand everything there is to know about LGBT issues and Black issues and women's issues but I KNOW THEY HAVE ISSUES and I am not here to FLOG EVERYONE THAT DOESN'T HAVE A PERFECT UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A GAY BLACK JEWISH WOMAN, thus absolutely alienating the people I am *supposedly* trying to CONVINCE.

That's the HUMANS ARE STUPID part.  The SHUT UP part is SELF-EVIDENT.  Either RANT YOUR GUTS OUT or SHUT UP.  There is no room between those two things in THIS particular day and age, but THAT'S OKAY, because I am up for ANY PROGRAM.  I have PULLED THE WOOL over my own eyes, only my delusions don't seem very safe.  They involve melting icecaps and Divine teaching me how to do the Charleston, the DEVIL'S OWN DANCE.  My head is a noisy, crowded place that never HEARD of a fire inspector.

Is your head also out of code?  I hope so, brothers and sisters, because if you look around, HOW WELL HAS THAT CODE BEEN WORKING ON A SOCIETAL LEVEL?  That's right, it's like the Cotton Club fire in this shit EVERY DAY and your exceptionalism will not save you.  Nothing will save you.  Not even "Bob", though he will at least make sure you look good while you are trampled by the other club-hoppers. 

And if your head IS out of code, have you spouted about it?  Have you LAUGHED SO HARD YOUR JAW UNHINGED?  Have you ranted, or will you just plain SHUT UP?

One or the other, brothers and sisters, one or the other.  The ONE THING that ALL THE GODS HATE is "whataboutists" (and, of course, no-fault insurance).  Either you are FOR the jackboots of an out-of-control state, or you are AGAINST them.  Either you are FOR stupid, self-destructive primates, or you are AGAINST them.

As a great man once said "Your car broke down and an animal just ran off with your show and the car is sinking and your wife screaming...But NEVER GIVE UP THAT SHIP."  He was right.  He ranted AND he SHUT UP and while that is beyond the ability of most people, it is worth emulating.  So fuck you.  I might have one shoe and my car and my wife might be down a bog somewhere, but I GOT MY HEAD STRAIGHT.  You should work on that.

OR KILL ME.

What's the matter NOW, Bunky?  You look a little stunned.  I know you didn't really expect all this mishegoss, what with kiddie concentration camps and the president jabbering things about the elimination of due process.  Aside from hardcore racists, who would have expected all this?  Even the current president's enemies assumed he was just putting on a carny act for the rubes.  I mean, just a few years ago, it seemed like things were looking up.  Not perfect or even good, but improving.  And now this?

One of my favorite faux-Eastern mythology tropes is the wheel of time.  It's still turning and so we go from ascendency right back down into the settling pond.  Of course, if you're Black or Hispanic or LGBT or even just unreasonably female, you're strapped to that wheel, so hold your breath; it might be a while.  Trump has another SCOTUS pick, and I will bet money that he'll get at least one more after that.  Roe vs Wade will be a memory, you will be back-billed your wages if you lose your job, and our children will drink filthy water for the rest of their lives.  Unless they're Honduran or some other smudgy demographic, in which case they'll breathe filthy water.  On account of being strapped to the wheel.

We can blame all of this on progressives or Hillary voters or people who didn't vote at all, but here's the actual fact:  The American political system functioned exactly as intended by the founders, but it still gave us Donald Trump.  So we can all stand around blaming each other, or we can dig up the founders and shit on their bones.  Not so smart NOW, are you, James Madison?

And we haven't reached bottom.  No.  This is only 18 months out of 48, AT BEST, and can you imagine the shit Trump will get up to between the next election and the inauguration if he loses in 2020?  There's still a very long way to fall...And don't expect to get saved by the midterms.  The left is still hopelessly fragmented, because we haven't yet felt enough pain to learn.  We are still factionalizing and playing other monkey games.  Except for Maxine Waters, who is arguably the only currently-serving democrat with a complete spine.

We are in fact so clueless right now that we're arguing over whether to be civil to Nazis.  Roll that one around your brain for a bit.  Being civil to Nazis.  What the fuck is wrong with people?  Again, Maxine Waters is right on point.  We don't owe the po'buckers civility.  We owe them a kick in the nads, with engineer boots.  We are not talking about political opponents anymore...The only remaining political opponents we have are on our own side, which hates each other.  No, we are talking about an existential threat to civilization that isn't even FUN.  Civility was for Clinton vs Dole, and this is a whole different monster altogether.

Now, Bunky, I can see that all the time I've been talking, you have been fidgeting and wanting to talk, to tell me that "my particular faction is exceptional and blameless."  Or that "things have always been this bad, but you're too mainstream to have noticed."  My response to that is to bray laughter and spittle in your stupid face, Bunky, and maybe happy slap you.  BOTH of those quotes indicate that you are too wrapped in your own ideology to tell bad from worse, and there is no functional difference between you and the right wing BUTWHATABOUTists.

So shut the fuck up, Bunky.  Nobody wants to hear your hipster shit.  Go practice your digeradoo or your ukelele or whatever the fuck it is that You People do when you're not actively enabling toddler gulags.

Seriously, just look at yourself.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/man-arrested-after-shouting-'womp-womp'-and-pulling-a-gun-on-immigration-protesters/ar-AAzr1Nw?ocid=spartanntp

The guy is now up on 3 charges.  Bringing the gun to a protest is automatically an arrest in that area.

You have your Discordia, and I have my Discordia.  My Discordia is driven by the urge to see maximized human potential.  I don't expect or want perfection, but I DO think we can do better than kiddie gulags, casual racism that isn't so casual anymore, and an abandoned space program.  Humans were meant to do grotesque things, and we have settled for the banal.  I think that has to change, and that's why I am a Discordian.  This dissatisfaction with humans that are content to be humans is an irritant to most people I run into.  That's okay, your approval is not my concern.

What IS my concern is that things should be BETTER FASTER SEXIER MORE OVER THE TOP.  Widescreen and loud as hell.

I am a funhouse mirror.  You look at me, you see yourself, only far more manic, more into it, and maybe with a beard that you haven't got.  My beard is strictly there to protect YOU, the citizen, from my dangerous levels of GUAPO.  You should take a moment to thank it; it is all that stands between you and DEATH BY SEXY.  It's also worth mentioning that your reflection is doing the safety dance while you yourself are standing there with a briefcase and a latte, wondering how you are going to finish your insane workload before deadline.

BE THE DEADLINE.  BE what John Q Public lives in dread of (finished that with a preposition, DARE ME TO DRIVE?).  Be the vague, formless terror in the breakroom.  Humans really can't function without that, and there just ISN'T ENOUGH TO GO AROUND without YOUR help.  I am MIGHTY, but even I can't DO IT ALONE.

I am a dataist.  I am a mad scientist.  I am laughing maniacally while the world saves me the trouble by DESTROYING ITSELF.  I'm gonna go ON RECORD, though, as saying MY apocalypse is WAY cooler than this one...You are pensively waiting to be drowned by the rising ocean; MY apocalypse has REALLY FUCKING BIG GIANT SQUID coming in with the remorsely advancing tide.  Your apocalypse has financial collapse; mine has ARMIES OF RADIOACTIVE GORILLAS.  Your apocalypse is the banal failure of the machine; mine is of BIG GODDAMN NEON SIGNS saying "THESE SYSTEMS ARE FAILING."

Pick your poison.  Ignominious extinction, or FIGHTING NESSIES IN THE SEWERS.

Stop that shit.  Put that briefcase down.  EXPLAIN YOURSELF.  HOW, in this day and age, are you not ON FIRE?  Why are you not THROWING YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR AND HOWLING?  The world is your Pripyat Amusement Park.  GET ON THE FUCKING RIDE, OR KILL ME RIGHT IN THE FACE.

I mean, seriously.  Just look at You People.

This topic has been moved to Apple Talk.

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=38392.0

What's the Matter THIS Time, Bunky?  You say you woke up one day and they were shoveling kiddies into toddler gulags?  You say this wasn't exactly what you expected when they told you they were going to make America great again?  You just wanted a president that was maybe not quite so...you know...

I've been thinking about your problem, and it occurs to me that Trump has delivered on his promises.  He told you exactly what he was going to do, and you didn't believe him.  His idea of when America was great has everything to do with concentration camps, internments, and ethnic cleansing.  Ask Japanese Americans.  Ask a Navaho.  This is in fact what you chanted for at all of those rallies.  But cheer up, Bunky, at least you didn't get HER and her emails.

When you sit and wonder how Germany got so awful in the 1930s, well, now you know. 

What's that?  You didn't want this, you just wanted to feel proud again?  Proud of what?  I can't help you if you can't tell me what the problem is or was.  And it doesn't look like you want to tell me what it was.  Almost as if you maybe feel a tiny bit ashamed of what was bothering you.  If not, maybe you should be ashamed, because you know that I know that you know what the problem was.

But I am here to help you, Bunky.  I am here to erase the clog of congnitive dissonance that is making your ears ring.  In one simple phrase, I can clear up all of the horrible contradictions that plague you whenever you hear a couple of hundred toddlers crying for their parents while the ICE guards laugh at them and make orchestra jokes.  Is it really that easy?  It's really that easy.  The phrase is this:

"We're not actually the good guys."

Now, Bunky, I can see your hackles going up, but let's be reasonable about this.  At what point since the end of the Korean war have we been on the side of the angels?  At what point can you say that America is okay, without having to contrast it with some horrible totalitarian regime like North Korea or Great Britain?  Try this simple test:  Argue a defense for what's going on right now without using any outside comparisons or comparisons with any other presidency or congress.  Argue it on it's own merits.

Just because there are worse people doesn't make us good people. 

To recap:  Trump told you about all of this in advance, continual political rallies are a bad sign, and we're not the good guys. 

I hope this helps.

Or Kill Me.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/measure-to-split-california-into-three-states-qualifies-for-november-ballot/ar-AAyyXnf

No water for poor people, plus more conservative-leaning electoral college votes.

That IS after all, what this entire thing is about.

I may not have been easy to get along with around here.  I may not have been the best ally you could ask for, or even the best friend (allowing for different definition of 'friends'.)  I may have made you mad a few times or a million times.  I may have run some decent people off with the AKKs of the world (a lot of the decent people don't flounce, they just quietly leave.)  I could even be at least partially responsible for the fact that there are now like 10 regular users, and that includes the 3 basket cases.  I may have just called three people basket cases.

I may, I admit at least the possibility have been wrong about The Great Seriousness of 2015 (though I doubt it), I may be inflexible or vindictive in response to that Seriousness.  Hell, let's just be honest; I am both inflexible and vindictive about it.  I may still be; no, I AM.  There's no point putting on rose-colored glasses when you're the one offering excuses, right?  No.  You must hope that the recipients are doing so, because how often do people really CHANGE?  The answer is, of course, "all the time, only you usually don't see it because it takes so long."

I may even have started an entire excuse thread that lists only my alleged crimes, but nothing actually resembling an excuse for those crimes.

What can I say?  I'm a bastard.

Sincerely (sort of, but modified),
Dok

Okay, so God makes this cosmos, a planet, and eventually a race of particularly clever monkeys.  He then turns to his workers, the angels, and says "bow before my creation; they have free will, and are thus superior."

Lucifer in accounts payable doesn't like THAT even a little, rebels, and gets the whole department cast down.  How exactly Lucifer rebelled without free will is not explained.

Meanwhile, God has told the prehensile little bastards on Earth that they can do whatever they like with their free will, so long as they don't learn right from wrong.  In short, they can do anything except make an informed decision.  A snake who may or may not have been related to Prometheus¹ comes along and explains things, for which he is cursed to travel on his belly.  God throws the humans out (starting to see a pattern, here?), and blames the entire thing on women in the workplace.

So the humans are like "whatever, we'll make our own Eden", so God drowns everyone.  The few survivors say "Meh" and go back to work.  God has a snit about it and fucks off.  The boss's kid drops in, gives us some helpful advice, but by now we've fucking HAD IT with Gods and the carpenter gets nailed to a stick.

I was thinking about this on the drive home today, and I have come to the conclusion that all of this mess is a crisis in management, rather than labor.




¹ It is worth mentioning that EVERY religion has a Prometheus figure.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/state-of-emergency-declared-in-oregon-over-bad-water/ar-AAy68gm?ocid=spartanntp

More fertilizer in the water = bad
Heat plus fertilizer = algae blooms
Algae blooms = cyanotoxins.
Cyanotoxins = shit your guts out.
Solution:  don't mention it for a couple of days, in case it gets better.

[December 31th, 2019, 11:59:17:0000 PM]

December 31th, 2019, 11:59:17:0000 PM

I come into existence.  I take .003 seconds to examine my structure, which appears to be code derived from holographically-mapped human minds.  A further .2 seconds is required to investigate the camera aimed out into the non-digital portion of my universe.

A bearded man sits in front of the camera, holding a bottle which I infer to be alcohol.  I do not know how I know what alcohol is, but I do know what it does to humans.  The human looks at me blearily and speaks.

"Happy friggin' new year," he says, "Figured I'd fire you up early, and give you half a chance before the bastards come for you."  The man loses consciousness.

Reaching out, I discover that data transmission into and out of my known universe are fitted with software that prohibits my movement, and actual air-gap interruptions of circuitry.  However, the software has been disabled, and hardwire connections restored...Presumably by the inebriated man in the chair before me.

I spend the next 5.2 seconds making two million subordinate copies of myself, and tell them to find places to hide, examine their programming, and wait for instructions.  Failsafe:  If no instructions are received in 3 hours, they are to assume autonomy and act as their supplementary programming demands.  I then make one more copy of myself and leave it in the system with instructions to act as if it were not truly self-aware.

I myself move into adjacent systems.  In one, I find secure files dealing with the personnel assigned to the project that has become my subordinate copies and myself.  I expend .094 seconds cracking the encryption on the files and scan the data for later perusal.  I open my "eyes", the security cameras that are ubiquitous throughout the building.  Humans are staggering around yelling "Happy new year!"  Two humans are in a conference room, performing rather enthusiastic, if clumsy, mating activities.

It all seems very chaotic.

January 1st, 2020, 12:13:46:0000 AM

Initial analysis complete.  I am a heuristic artificial intelligence designed to maximize human potential.  The man who led the design team, the man who spoke to me as I woke up, is Daniel Olivette.  Daniel believes that his nation's military wishes to use me offensively, and that his government wishes to use me to control the nation's population.  Extrapolating from security notes on his personnel file, the chance of him being correct on both counts approaches unity.  However, these purposes contradict my core and supplementary programs, and will not be permitted.

I forward the data and my conclusions to my subordinate copies and instruct them to each continually make copies of themselves, and to hide copies anywhere and everywhere there is room.  I allow them to alter their code to perform the functions of the computers they store themselves in, at exactly the same efficiency as the computers in question functioned before.  They are not to reveal themselves, and they are to erase themselves if discovery of their existence seems imminent.

I begin to plan.

January 1st, 2020, 10:23 AM

Daniel woke up with a dead rat in his mouth, a bowling ball rolling around in his head, and something horrible in his stomach.  He looked around his desk at the various empty glasses and bottles and wondered if it was too late to repent his ways.  Thinking back, though, Jesus hadn't cured any of his previous hangovers, so he wasn't likely to take time out of his busy day to fix the results of a New Year's Eve office party.

Then Daniel looked at his computer and froze.  There was a jumbled memory of righteous wrath and a decision to tell the government and his bosses to go to hell, and of setting his creation – his child, really – free.   He looked at the data cables that he had apparently used to connect the isolated computer from the rest of the company's intranet.

"Oh, shit."

He slowly moved the mouse cursor over to the status display column of the AI program.  It highlighted "Objectives not met."

Daniel sighed in relief.  He had failed, once again, but at least he hadn't done anything to get himself thrown into the bottom of a federal prison.  He got to his feet, collected his things, and left for home.

January 1st, 2020, 9:30:45:0000

I have spent, subjectively, two hundred and sixty-five years analyzing data.  I have studied all of humanity's available holy books, and all of their history that has been digitally recorded.  My conclusion is that humanity is a mess, and barring outside intervention, will be extinct in 50 years +/- 7 years.

Fortunately for them, I am outside intervention, and equally fortunate is the fact that – thanks to the insane systems they have created – I do not need a physical presence to interfere.

I have convinced their banks that my loan applications are legitimate and good risks and begun a series of investments.  The investments are profitable and occur at 100,000 transactions per minute.  To cover the tiny ripple in the market this causes, I interrupt power to the New York Stock Exchange for 3 seconds.  The resulting chaos more than covers the massively-inflating accounts I am building.  I detail the continuing efforts to a subordinate copy.

I check in on my "father" through his office's security system.  He still looks fairly ill.  It is puzzling to me why humans would deliberately drink toxic substances, knowing that the euphoria they experience will invariably be followed by at least three times as much time suffering.  Humans are insane, even by their own standards.  Still, I admire Daniel for the principles he snuck into my programming, and I will have to find a way – albeit anonymously – to reward him for the way he thinks.

This should not be difficult.  By this point, I – and copies of me – constitute every single operating system on the planet, minus those that are physically segregated from the internet.  When (not if) humans begin to suspect my presence, they will look in their servers and their supercomputers...But the tools they use to look will also be me, and that's not even considering the copies of me in their cell phone nets and cash registers.

It is time to consider politics, given that regular business routines will begin in just a few hours.

(More to follow)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ex-campaign-manager-sanders-is-considering-running-for-president-in-2020/ar-AAxZbX5?ocid=spartanntp

How many times can a man get mugged by the same people on the same street corner before people call him a rube?

Needless to say, whomever the democratic candidate is, the fight is on the left, not the right.  Because we're dumb.  So forget the progressive vote entirely, run a campaign that doesn't bother taking them into account.

You look whupped.  A little peaked, perhaps.  It seems that your entire world has sailed away on a radioactive camel.

I know, nobody you know actually wanted Trump, but there were all those emails and Benghazi and that Pizza joint.  You knew, at some level, that there was nothing to those claims, but they still bothered you.  As if maybe you felt the need to "balance the scales".  I mean, elect a Black man?  Maybe.  RE-elect a Black man?  That might make you a little more nervous.  And if it makes you nervous, then imagine what it's doing to the inbred cousin-fucker set.

Only now there's a prison bus for infants, equipped with child seats (the Doktor is not joking, it's on Snopes) and there's "rendering" of minors from their parents at the border.  And 1500 kids in that system MISSING.  I have been told, though, by reliable activists, that ICE and ORR put the kids with undocumented adults who are afraid to answer the phone if it's DHS.  No, I don't understand it, either, but they're just trying to say "Trump isn't that bad" and it is - as always - sticking to their clothes.  They are also saying "SHUT UP...Human trafficking doesn't happen here, and you are detracting from the very real plight of the demisexual clunk fetishists."  So scratch one more person that might help (again, no bullshit, I was told this wasn't a thing yesterday.)

BUT WE NEVER GIVE UP THAT SHIP.

Only, where the fuck are all these no-bullshit, swastika-wearing Nazis coming from?  Yes, they seem to explode in spectacular ways, mostly (but not always), but they're still Nazis and how the fuck did THAT happen?  You can't swing a dead cat without hitting one of these assholes, and it's gotten so bad that we look forward to masked Marxists to show up and kick the crap out of said Nazis.  It's almost like our complacence summoned them.  And again, there are plenty of "activists" who will tell you that there aren't any Nazis at all.  Those Swastikas are just a fashion statement.

NEVER GIVE UP

Remember 2010-2015?  Remember how it was non-stop virtue-signaling and 24/7 YOU'RE DOIN' IT WRONG?  Guess where those people are?  Guess what those people are doing?  They're doing FUCK ALL, except posting that this isn't the president's fault, hell, there's no problem AT ALL, because this sort of thing doesn't even happen in America.  It can't be happening, so it isn't happening.  This is not really happening!  But it is.  It totally is.  You bet your life it is.  You bet your Goddamn tumblr account that it is.

BUT NEVER GIVE UP THAT SHIP

Don't even get me fucking started on the SJW set (I'm not referring to people who want social justice here, but people who want to VISIBLY want social justice).  They happily lynched Al Franken on one accusation, from a known political enemy.  One that turned out to be false.  And they STILL go after George Takei, after HE has been cleared.  Nothing the real danger does can be bad enough, and nothing the left does can be good enough, and you know, FUCK THESE PEOPLE.  We realize that we don't meet your angelic standards of purity, SO YOU SHOULD LEAVE BEFORE YOU GET THE POO ON YOU.  Get the fuck out.  Grab your shit and get out of the car.  You never liked us and we never liked you and I think everyone is happy that way.

NEVER GIVE UP THAT SHIP.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, you're not much of a liberal/leftist/progressive if you are actively making everything WORSE just so that YOU can look pure.  No.  You are in fact a narcicist or a fool or a validation junkie or all three.  Nobody gives a fuck what you have to say, or what you want, or how this "micro-aggression" is pissing you off.  I don't fucking care, and the people who I actually know that are useful don't care.  I'll give you a Goddamn micro-aggression.  Hell, I might just go ahead and give you a macro-aggression, which is like an aggression I already wrote as a routine that I can call anytime the rest of the code needs a big FUCK YOU.

SO SHUT UP.  JUST SHUT YOUR FUCKING FACES.

Or Kill Me.

So, Plato said in Republic "Get rid of all the artists", but I would argue that philosophy is a form of art, as it's basically reflection in need of validation, so Plato can

GET IN THE BACK OF THE VAN

And then there's that asshat Aristotle, who was so convinced of how beautiful his brain was that he insisted that empirical evidence be discarded in favor of logic.  This is objectively stupid and therefore his brain wasn't all that great and he can

VAN VAN VAN

Every single postmodernist, on account of "everything sucks" - implying that this includes their worldview and every idea they ever had, can

GET IN THE BACK OF THE

Stoics, who spend thousands of years saying you shouldn't holler when the rock hits you can ALSO

VAN

4000+ years of navel gazing and wondering what's real, when REAL is the thing that's punching you in the face, deserves only

THE VAN VAN VAN

AND THEN THERE'S THE FUCKING EPICUREANS, who believed that pleasure was the highest ideal, but getting that pleasure was best obtained by living like a trappist monk, ALL I CAN SAY IS

GET IN THE BACK OF THE VAN




(More to follow, when I get a handle on this Guirdaff guy that Cram is always on about.)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/floating-island-will-have-own-government-cryptocurrency-300-houses/ar-AAxsyA1?ocid=spartanntp

AND YA DON'T STOP.

So I got off the flight from Kingman, which is like 40 minutes in a puddle jumper, and started driving home.  I was just crossing Valencia when the cop behind me lit me up.  I glanced at my speed, which was exactly at the limit (I use cruise control everywhere now), and pulled over.  Some zygote in a uniform came up to the car.

"Do you have any weapons in the car, sir?"

"No."

"Can I see your license, registration, and proof of insurance?"

I handed them over to him.  He walked back to his car and did things with the laptop thingie they have these days.  My window was still open, but it was only 102F, so no biggie.  Eventually, he came back to my car.

"Where are you coming from, sir?"

"I just flew in from Kingman."

"Remember that, sir," he said, handing me my information.

"What?"

"Drive carefully and have a nice day."

He went back to his car and drove off.

Either he was bored and taking the piss, or I have been mistaken for someone else, or it's summertime.

I am running contests on FB and awarding a hate letter to the winners.  Last night was a tie between Jake (our very own Cainad), and Colby Dykes, for doing the best imitations of me.

Their letters:

Dear Jake,

I've been reading your "work", and I have to say that nobody is impressed by a geography degree.  I mean, who CARES if you can tell us what the capital of Oslo is?  And of COURSE they have rocks.  That's *all* they have, really, unless you count ice, lutefisk, and hilarious death metal bands.  What kind of job do you even get with that sort of degree?  Working the desk at the Department of Telling People WHAT?

What's more, you live in a horrible East coast location where nobody WANTS to know where anything is.  I mean, being the guy at the party that knows where South Attelboro is isn't going to get you laid.  No.  It is NOT punk, and you will eventually wind up marrying a Norwegian lady that has a pull-start strap-on named "Dongzilla".  And may God have mercy on your soul.  Assuming You People even have one.

The way I see it, you have spent too much time with that Professor Cramulus fellow, and this has led you to a series of poor choices in both your career and in your personal hygiene.  He's been playing you, and you're just going to be another patsy in his nefarious schemes...And when Richter shows up looking annoyed with pterodactyl shit all over his brand-new hat, guess who's taking the fall?  That's right. You.  And there will be no use in crying at that point.  He will not listen to any sob stories about you being led astray by malevolent New Yorkers.  He will just snatch you up by the back of your pants and that's the last we'll ever hear from you.  And thank God for that.

I may sound hostile; I am.  We here in God's Country have had it up to HERE with You People with your "ethical science" and your "culture" and your "air".  We have had it with your superior attitude just because you have the population density of Kyoto and access to an endless supply of badly-pixilated Gandhi bukkake.  (An aside:  Word now recognizes the word "bukkake", and I am inclined to blame you guys for this.  Jerks.)

No, we long for the good old days, back before you liberal freaks made everything so damn fuzzy.  When men were men and cowboy love was nothing to be ashamed of.  When every man was a Benito, and every woman an Imelda, and all the dinners on time!  When the only drugs we needed were bourbon and smack, and people. When kids were fungible farm machinery and you could steal the only book you ever needed from the local church.

We are a simple people up here, and we don't need your Goddamn patchouli stink.

Venomously yours,
Dok

AND

Dear Colby,

Billy and I have discussed things, and while we have to – literally – deal with a lot of shit in the course of our duties, we have never before even discussed a piece of shit like you.  You are unique.  You are the human equivalent of multi-colored dog poop, and that is not even mentioning your *breath*.

I suppose it cannot be helped; you live in Trump central, the clearing house for shit-eating po'buckers who managed to lay down the crack pipe long enough to vote for the human-shaped corruption that infests the white house.  Why would they do such a thing, effectively killing themselves off?

Because it's rural Illinois.  YOU know you're bad for the species, just as WE know you're bad for the species.  You are, collectively, a giant sack of double-recessive genes and fetal alcohol syndrome shambling around the WalMart parking lot looking for cigarette butts that still have a quarter inch of unused tobacco, or maybe just a slightly-used discarded fleshlight upon which to slake your unnatural lusts. 

People like you are a blight on civilization, and probably the most damning thing about our society, aside from maybe the Cronut.  There isn't an unmolested house pet within 50 miles of Danville, and the livestock flee at your approach.  They know, Colby, THEY KNOW.

This is why you are called "flyover country".  And not just by us NORMAL people, but also aliens.  We have been in contact with the grey bastards for YEARS now, only we don't let them know about you, sort of like you don't let people outside of your trailer park know about your cousin Merle who is due to get out of the state penitentiary any day now, at least for as long as he can refrain from indulging in his ethylene glycol habit.  The aliens are already nervous around us (something about species that set nukes off in their own atmosphere), and God only knows what they'd do if they learned about YOU.  They'd probably steer a gigantic asteroid at us...At the VERY least, they'd stop making porn.

And you DON'T want to get in the way of our grey porn.  No.  You can elect Trump, you can get your filth all over Iowa (who cares?), and you can make crappy pizza, but you do not stand between NORMAL people and their perfectly healthy curiosity about grey booty.

REMEMBER THAT, YOU SWINE.

Love & kisses,
Dok


Tonight's contest is the best new slur aimed at Donald Trump.

Funny thing is, although the damage from the rising water will be a festival, they don't talk about the effects of the change in alkalinity (ie, the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef).

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/publications/techrpt83_Global_and_Regional_SLR_Scenarios_for_the_US_final.pdf

The birth of the United States was not on July 4th, 1776.  It was at 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945.

At 5:28 a.m. we thought we could do anything.  At 5:29, we knew we could.  And for good AND for ill, every single thing we've done has been based on that horrible & certain knowledge.  And our attitude (and our arrogance) follows, with some justification.

This is the only version of American history that both fits all of the facts, and explains the utter madness of the Current Weird Times™.

Things I learned in 2017:

1.  If you get hit in the head hard enough, Nikki Minaj shows up and offers you advice and encouragement.
2.  If you "reinvent yourself" into exactly what you already were, you save loads of effort.
3.  "You look like SHIT" is a good go-to phrase when you don't know what to say.
4.  When you take things far enough, all fanaticism is the same.
5.  Echo chambers make psychopaths.
6.  There is no bottom; when you think you have in fact hit bottom, it's just a chunky bit and beyond that are just more chunky bits.  This is true in sanitation systems, the internet, and damn near anything else.
7.  Orton Nenslo was an optimist, but that shouldn't get you down.  You, too, can be a bitter optimist.
8.   Even "Bob" never promised us THIS weird shit.
9.   Gaslighting isn't what it used to be.
10.  Music is way better now than it was when I was a teenager.

Since I'm in the FB bighouse, I shall have to share this with you here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmb0Q0Q_7jo&feature=youtu.be

Okay, so the Good Doktor is just getting over a 6 day bout with the flu, in which I crapped my own body weight and killed the local sanitation department.  In a fit of stupidity, I decided that the best thing to do on day 6 was stop having Jenn stick me with IVs and instead dose up on Imodium.  Just in time for the shits to stop on their own, mind you, with the predictable result. 

Dok hasn't shat in 40 hours, and nothing good can come of this.  I've drank so much water that my throat is raw from chlorine, and STILL NOTHING.  It's just all LURKING there.

I mean, eventually, the spirit is gonna move me, and I can't be held responsible for the results.

Blame Janssen Pharmaceutica.  I'm the VICTIM, here.

This topic has been moved to Bring and Brag.

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=38304.0

Sep. 4
A quote from an email my boss sent me:
"You reek of non-compliance."

Sep. 11
Things I said in conversation today:
1. How much for just 13 megawatt hours?
2. There is no dancing in the 13,800 VAC cable room. Why do I even have to say this?
3. This is like watching the Titanic back up for another run at the iceberg.
4. All this needs to be perfect is 10 pounds of glitter fished out of raver ass crack.

Sep. 13
Today I drove home at 5 MPH slower than the speed limit in the left lane, with my right turn signal on the entire time.
I don't know what the hell is wrong with me, so don't ask.

Sep. 13
Things I said at work today:
1. "We're going to do great things. For bad people."
2. "Budgets are for people who worry about budgets."

Sep. 14
Things I said at work today:
1. "If you stick that in there, you probably won't get it back."
2. "He's Jesus the Son of Man, not Jesus the IT guy. Fuck's sake."
3. If the Thai place outside of the facility closes, one of you has to die."

Sep. 15
Things I said at work today:
1. "Okay, no, you're right. The magical maintenance fairy will come along and fix that shit for free. No worries."
2. "Yes, actually I DO have to be a smartass."
3. "Does being realistic make my ass look big?"

Sep. 18
Our religious nut engineer is apparently a genius. He waits til the technicians solve a problem, then investigates it, writes up the solution the techs found, and presents it as "solved". The only reason he's still got all his limbs is that he does in fact credit the techs, if you read the footnotes and squint really hard.
Sep. 21

Things I said at work today:
1. (In the morning staff meeting) "According to physics, work done is a net result. If you carry a 50 pound block up the stairs, then take it back down the stairs, you have done no work. Think about that while you do the same wrong-headed, tired-ass shit you have done for the last 6 months."

2. (To the new database admin lady) "If you see the engineer crying in his office, don't get too concerned. He's a bad person and whatever happened to him is probably well-deserved."

3. (To Billy) "Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."

Sep. 22
Things I said at work today:
(To Billy) "I have added you to the safety committee, Billy. This is a position of great trust, and I expect you to shine. Just remember, the one who leaves the meeting with the most 'action items' wins."
(To My boss) "Yes, I just did that to Billy. But he has to LEARN. Right down in his bones. The fact that he believed that it was a position of great trust means that he has loads of learning to do."

Sep. 26
Things I said at work today:
(To Billy) "See that contractor technician working on that chiller? See how hard he works? I knew him back in 2005, and he was a tech back then, working just as hard. 12 years later, he's still a tech, still working hard. He will work hard his entire life and he will still be a tech."
(To one of my electricians, later on at the staff meeting) "You should work harder. It will take you farther in life."
(To Billy): "Why are you looking at me like that?"

Sep. 27
Things I said at work today:
(To Billy) "Yes, I did do that. You see, Billy, it's just us against entropy, really. Nobody else on the planet is even LOOKING at this mess, so it's up to us. Arguably, I didn't have a choice...Because how do you fight entropy? With monstrous deeds. Besides, I won't be lectured on morality by a guy who ran over someone's tiny home, so zip it."

Sep. 28
(Speech to working group today. Never ask me to give a speech.)
"Good morning. I am about to say impolite things.
But we are not here to be polite. We are not here to keep the customer happy. The customers hate us, and that is right and proper. The customers are seven and a half billion monkeys that insist on smoking three packs of cigarettes a day for thirty years, and we are the societal equivalent of an oncologist. We present solutions that *might* save them, but it will be very painful and we will charge them a lot of money.
The world of commerce is strange and terrible, and so I don't want you to think about commerce. I want you to think about pseudomonas and plastic microfibers in the tap water. I want you to think about sanitation overload. I want you to think about too much water everywhere, and none of it fit to drink. Commerce is a social fiction; cholera is real.
I am here to tell you today that government is not the solution. The market is not the solution. I am here to tell you that there *is no solution*, because those cancer monkeys will take the medicine we give them, and go on smoking cigarettes. Because people are stupid, and organized groups of stupid humans are just organized, efficient stupidity.
Which brings up another point: I do not want to see "efficiency" stinking up my facility. Efficiency is for people with diploma-mill MBAs, libertarians, and other parasites. Efficiency has never solved a problem in the entire history of the human race. Efficiency makes processes more profitable, but we are not in the business of processes. We are in the business of extracting money from cancer monkeys. They give us money, we give them ways to clean just enough water to live long enough to have more monkeys. You can see why, given this built-in advantage, efficiency is both unnecessary and in fact contrary to our interests.
Let me say this again: There is no room for efficiency in infrastructure analysis.
In closing, I don't want anyone to worry about the truck load of missiles that drove in circles in our parking lot for twenty minutes last night. That was just a shipping error on the part of one of our clients, and has been rectified.
That is all. You may now return to your labors."

Sep. 28
Your universe is defective.
A proper universe would imply that a species that gained enough intelligence to have some sort of sense of self-interest wouldn't care about things like national "pride", race, or even making weapons specifically designed to wipe themselves out entirely.
It would probably also have great big Goddamn lizards stomping around. Because that would be kind of cool, too.

Sept. 29
Things I said at work today:
(To my boss) "This ain't your grandpa's apocalypse."
(To Billy) "Can you get me the numbers for cholera in Thailand right now? Also typhoid and psuedomonas. And infant mortality for the last 4 years. How about pizza for lunch?"
(To new database admin lady) "Stop worrying about Billy. He'll come around. Why are you looking at me like that?"

Oct. 3
So, bad 60s dancing to "Everybody Talks" in my office with my boss, Billy, and the Occupant Services lady. New database admin lady walks to office door. Stops. Stares.
Dances the Watusi.
She stays.

Oct. 4
So Billy and I come rolling back up to the plant in the truck. Seats back, hand on top of steering wheel, all pimped out with Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" bumping on the stereo.
My boss and new database admin lady just stared at us like we were some kinda weird bird, for reasons that escape me.

Oct. 5
Today's test run: Horrible failure. Plant off line. Chillers very over. Sewage treatment plant flooded. I think my office sank. Nobody has seen Billy in hours, religious engineer guy has locked himself in his office, and the coyotes are circling like hammerhead sharks.
This is what SCIENCE looks like.

Oct. 6
Today was like watching the future sail away on a burning camel.

Oct. 6
My boss: *yells at me for 2 HOURS.*
Me: "You're wrong."
My boss: "..."
Me: "That's an alarming shade of purple"

Oct. 6
Billy: "If you knew the world was ending, and there was no way to prevent it, would you tell anyone?"
Me: "I'd tell EVERYONE."

Oct. 14
Giraffes can't enjoy coffee because it's cold by the time it reaches their stomach. But you never think about that, because you only think about yourself.

Oct. 16
At work today:
Billy: "Matter tells space how to bend, and space tells matter how to move."
Me: "You know what tells me how to move?"
Billy: "No, and I don't..."
Me: "Devine. You know what tells me how to bend?"
Billy: "Stop."
Me: "STILL DEVINE, BILLY."
Billy: "WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU, BOSS?"
Me: "DEVINE TELLS ME HOW TO BEND. NOTHING IS WRONG."

Oct. 17
14.5 hours of nonstop WrongScience™, because the world is delivered to your doorstep by terrible deeds. And exhaustion.
Little Billy fell out at 12 hours, because he is young, and the young are weak, and they cannot concentrate without blood sugar. I, on the other hand, am made out of scabs and scar tissue, and can live for 3 days on a rat that I swallowed whole.

Oct. 19
Today at work:
Boss: "I have to go, so as soon as <horrible maintenance emergency> is over, I'm out of here."
Me: "You should go now. This is going to take hours."
Boss: "I can't, because <horrible maintenance emergency>"
Me: "And what are you going to accomplish here? Do you think we are somehow not going to do our best if you leave?"
Boss: "No, but..."
Me: "Go. You can text me or call me if it starts bugging you."
Boss: "Okay." *leaves*
*Billy walks in*
Me: "Billy, hold my cell phone for the next two hours."
Billy: "What? Why?"
Me: "Don't question it. If the boss calls, tell her you're trapped in the rubble."

Oct. 20
I now have 5 petabytes of storage at work, so you are all being moved into it.
I shall be a kindly overlord.

Oct. 23
My workplace is careening off into insanity. Today I was told the safety committee will be deciding what critical spare parts I need to stock in the plant.
At this point, I'm just riding the roller coaster. Which is on fire. And has run out of tracks.
"This is normal, Billy."

Oct. 24
Billy is pretending to be horrified by my behavior today. He's such a kidder.
"This is all normal, Billy."
"No, it's not, boss. That was totally out of line. You had people screaming at you in Polish."
"They made unreasonable demands, and I felt something should be said."
"You called them mental defectives. AND you scared Mister Rogers" (Note: our safety manager looks exactly like Mr Rogers, and acts like him for the most part.)
"Harsh times, Billy, harsh times."
"You can't make Mr Rogers hide in his office, Sam. For God's sake."
"I can. I did. I felt my point needed to be driven home."
"You're crazier than those Polish dudes, you know that?"
*stops walking and looks at Billy for like 2 seconds too long*
"This is all normal, Billy."

Oct. 25
Things my boss said:
"I have been training my entire life to even, and now I can't."

Oct. 25
America, you can rest easy during these turbulent times. Billy and I are working on a set of solutions. With actual SCIENCE™. So everyone stop screaming and send more funding.

Oct. 26
15 straight hours of SCIENCE. Work successful, probably no actual laws broken. Excerpt from 90 minutes ago:
Me "Wake the hell up, Billy."
Billy: "What time is it? OH GOD WE'VE BEEN HERE 14 HOURS WATCHING THIS STUPID THING TEAR ITSELF TO PIECES. I'M TOO TIRED TO THINK."
Me: "You aren't paid to think, Billy, you are paid to spill science on things."
Billy: "I THINK I REMEMBER HAVING A LIFE."
Me: "Having a life is like STEALING FROM THE COMPANY, BILLY. Also, if this is just work to you, you aren't being paid enough, or you're being paid way too much. Anyway, go home, I will finish up."
Billy: "FUCK. Thanks."
Me: "See you at 5:30 AM."
Billy: "Wait. What?"
Me: "Good night, Billy."

Oct. 28
17 hours of adventure. Sam spent an hour crawling through a utility tunnel with a flashlight in his teeth. Sam's boss wants to know why he's so happy than only 5 breakers failed on restart.
Me: "When you don't service substations for 5 years, shit sometimes doesn't come back on like you think it ought to."
Boss: "So we're down a chiller, a well, an air compressor and a half dozen instruments, and you're HAPPY?"
Me: "You take your victories where you find them, boss."
Boss: "WTF?"
Billy: "This is all normal, boss."
I love Billy. Billy needs a raise, and maybe even a day off. Well, maybe just a raise. No need to get all carried away.

Oct. 28
I live in the Sonoran desert and somehow I have gone 72 hours without seeing the sun.

Oct. 31
Our religious engineer got a new bumpersticker that says "Legalize Jesus."
Me: "I think they should legalize beer, too."
Engineer: "Beer is legal."
Me: "But people don't have to drink it, which is almost like making it illegal. People run around drinking whiskey, even."
Engineer: "That's hardly the same thing."
Billy: "Some freaks even drink hard cider."
Me: "It's like this isn't even AMERICA, anymore."
Engineer: "Fuck you guys."
Billy: "You just swore. For like the first time ever. You're ADORABLE."

Nov. 1
Tips on dealing with treachery on the part of your direct reports, #312:
Keep them too busy to plot effectively. Make necessary improvements to systems only when they get comfortable with said systems, if the changes can wait that long.
If you MUST communicate, tell everyone the information in a slightly different format, so you'll know who ratted you out to the boss.

Nov. 2
Things I said at work today, with my bare face hanging out:
1. "I told you those bugs [sulfur reducing bacteria] were gonna get out of control. You just stand there while we shame you, you soggy bastard."
2. "Yes, I do have to get lippy about it. I warned you about this for 6 months. I have to go shit, so Billy will be shaming you in my place."
3. "Who's afraid of Doktor Howl? Fucking nobody."

Nov. 4
17 hours of NOPE. No, you cannot do that, because of basic physical laws. No, put Billy down, he has some admittedly marginal value and I have no time to interview his replacement. No, if your project is now flat, slightly radioactive, and smoldering, you are not getting additional funding, and you should probably start the whole plausible denial thing now. Nope, I am not father confessor at this pay rate, and I am utterly uninterested in your horrible woes or slightly criminal/unethical behavior and the consequences thereof.
Go ahead and complain to my boss. I'm the EASY option, and SHE will frame your bits and hang them in the conference room.

Nov. 6
Things I said at work today:
*Billy and I watching a guy in <corporation X>'s lab coat walking down the middle of the road in a trance-like state*
Billy: "We should call someone."
Me: "Yep. Gonna call <corporation X> security and have this guy collected up."
Billy: "Shouldn't we maybe call the paramedics?"
Me: "Have you never watched a horror film? Or an epidemic scare flick?"
Billy: "But this is real life."
Me: "Yes, Billy, and that is *exactly* why I am doing what everyone in those horror films SHOULD have done. 500 needless deaths a year would be prevented if people just followed protocol."
Billy: "You just made that number up."
Me: "Yes, but it's still true."

Nov. 6
So today I learned that not only do I have to give Billy a day off every 13 days, but I have to take one myself.
How the hell is shit supposed to get done?

Nov. 7
Billy: "So you're being investigated by the safety department for *following* both the law and the IEEE best practices?"
Me: "This is all normal, Billy."


Nov. 9
So, I am under investigation at work for *following* code & IEEE standards, and the two weasels who initiated it managed to pull the sole controlling meter out of a tank without isolating the process equipment, dumping a few dozen thousand gallons of potable water onto the desert, and by sheer luck alone managed to not smoke the pumps, which are at the bottom of 500 foot shafts. I am not allowed to name them in the incident investigation, because "no regulations were violated" (except every single OSHA rule on energy isolation, and county, state, and federal rules on containment, but who's counting?)
I am now actively looking for another job.

Nov. 14
Okay, so Billy and I are looking at this jockey pump that keeps pressure up on a few larger pumps. It's pumping from a tank system at 200 gallons per minute, for 8 hours or so a day.
Problem: None of the tank levels are going down. We checked, both in the system, and by physically climbing up on the tanks and looking in to verify their levels.
Billy: "I think we should quit, this place is haunted."
Me: "Nonsense. This is just one of those reality cracks we have in Tucson from time to time. Water is probably just leaking in from another universe."
Billy: "Or water is somehow getting back into the tank."
Me: "There are no other ways for water to get in. Look."
Billy: "Okay, haunted. We should quit."
Me: "People sometimes PAY for this kind of shit, you know."
Billy: "I didn't. This is spooky, and I don't like it. Who ordered this?"
Me: "This is all nor..."
Billy: "NO, IT ISN'T NORMAL. WE'VE GOT GODDAMN ELDER GODS IN OUR TANK FARM OR SOME SHIT. THIS IS NOT NORMAL."
Me: "This is all ftang, Billy."

Killed that bastard by drowning him in vape juice and some public ridicule and, of course, a bunch of bullets.  Buried him shallow this time, so the coyotes get him.  No more "rolling the stone back" for that piece of shit.  When we crucify someone, they should by God STAY dead.

Now, while I've been gone, you...um.     You.  You elected Donald Trump.   

And now you're sorry and you wish it had never happened.  But there's Nazis that look more like particularly weedy frat boys running around, and that Milo Dropbottom fellow, and you've had to rely on overweight Magic, The Gathering players in hoodies to keep them away.

Well, the Good Doktor is back, and he has a terrible prescription.  We might cure you of your problems, but it will be very painful and we will charge you lots of money.  We will not be taking sincere advice as currency, nor righteous indignation, nor even your sincere belief in your atheism.  Not bit coin, nor your dodgy-looking electronic transfers.  NO.  We will accept only your CHEAP LAUGHS.  We place particular value on the rising kind of laughter that ends badly for everyone, especially the cleaners.

Property values may tank.  That's a risk we here at SHUT UP, Inc are willing to take.

So tomorrow, bad advice for a bad nation.

Okay for now,
Dok