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Messages - Q. G. Pennyworth

#31
Or Kill Me / Like A Bad Wolf Eating Chips
July 12, 2023, 03:00:52 PM
I see you
Curled up in blankets for the weight not the warmth
A million projects floating and nothing complete
Grand dreams getting further every day
As you wear the rut that is becoming your life
Headphones on to make bearable the day
All that driving music you listen to, what is it driving you towards?
That epic sense of meaning and accomplishment you chase
To the detriment of your rent and stability
That feeling you cannot shake that you were made for more than this
I see you
Consuming revolutionary media
Eyes wide ears open
Lost in worlds you cannot inhabit
Post apocalypse, post peak, crumbling concrete bombed out aesthetic
Your heart yearning for endings
And the new beginnings that follow
Loss and sorrow so real you can taste it
Sucker roots spreading out from your toes and fingers into the fertile soil of someone else's fantasy
The world is on fire
Now
The villains are already here
And still you sit
Like a bad wolf eating chips
Body paralyzed mind screaming
DO SOMETHING but never a clue what something is
Only the unbearable pressure of intolerable conditions
I see you
I see you
I see you

This is not going to be forever
But you know the longer you wait the worse it will be
Everything you ever procrastinated on the same story
Scream
Even a little
Even if you have to put it in a pillow
Even if you have to couch it as a song
Scream
Before you forget how
Before the pipes rust away forever
You have so much in front of you
And you must to it

You are going to have to vote,
And you are going to have to talk about who you're voting for
You are going to have to show up
To call and complain
And it still might not be enough
You might have to march
You might have to put your body between a motorcycle and a crowd of kids
You might have to drag someone back from the shield wall line
You might have to man the molotov craft table
You might be the one at home cooking post protest pasta
You might be the one with the vehicle on call for extraction
You might end up bringing pizza to the police station for the ones getting bailed out
You might end up washing pepper spray out of someone's eyes
Or blood

I see you
Your fears so founded
Your icebergs looming
Your moments of heartbreaking clarity
Your moments of resentful rest
#32
I came of age during 9/11. Quite literally. I graduated high school in 2001, that Tuesday was the first month of college for me. This is Important Context.

A think tank is a group of Very Smart People who devote themselves to strategizing for political causes. Churning out "what if" scenarios and 20 year plans is their bread and butter. It should come as no surprise then, that there were contingency plans written up long before those buildings fell for how to take control in the aftermath of a national crisis. 9/11 Truthers always bother the shit out of me, because they're too focused on WHO DID 9/11 and not focused enough on WHAT HAPPENED AFTER 9/11. Because what happened after is the shitshow we're currently living. Sure, the 80s did a fucking number on us, and the 90s were not on a fantastic trajectory, but this Endless War shit? The bald faced nazi shit? This was not in the cards until those planes got hit and those contingency plans got pulled out and followed to the letter.

When you let THEM Immanentize the Eschaton, you are letting the forces of Destructive Order call all the fucking shots. If you let them make all the plans, if you let them set the tempo, if you abdicate your role as agent of Creative Chaos, they will continue leading the dance, and you will just be left sitting there trying to figure out what the fuck happened.

You need to DO things. You need to DO THINGS WITHOUT PERMISSION. They don't need to be explicitly political, they don't need to be about borders or property lines or poverty or war. But you can't sit there and do nothing. And it can be hard to figure out which things are worth the time and the energy, it can be hard to figure out when the wagons need to be circled and when you need to be opening lines of communication, of mutual aid. You won't get it perfectly right.

And maybe, maybe, there will be times when it will be on YOU to participate, in whatever way you can, in the sacred right of turning the cycle from Bureaucracy to Aftermath. But if you are letting THEM make all the plans for what happens after, if you are acting WITHOUT ACCOMPLICES and WITHOUT CONTINGENCIES, you might just be doing their work for them.
#33
Quote from: Betta Fish on July 09, 2023, 04:41:40 AM
Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on July 07, 2023, 01:24:05 PM
Quote from: Betta Fish on July 07, 2023, 07:34:15 AM
I found this via my pineal gland by the guidance of Eris. Hail Eris!

My beef neck recipe will never be released.

Beef neck is easy, just tug canoes with your forehead.

How ... How could you know such secret information?  :eek:

Don't question it, I have tentacles for a face
#34
Quote from: Betta Fish on July 07, 2023, 07:34:15 AM
I found this via my pineal gland by the guidance of Eris. Hail Eris!

My beef neck recipe will never be released.

Beef neck is easy, just tug canoes with your forehead.
#35
Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: Curbside Pickup Only
July 07, 2023, 01:23:04 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on July 06, 2023, 11:33:29 PM
Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on July 05, 2023, 10:58:19 AM
I got a job offer that is absolutely covered in red flags but has enough potential to be legitimate that I can't ignore it, the pay is ridiculous and it's completely remote, and I won't be talking to cops or fielding phone calls WHILE listening to the radio WHILE monitoring text messages WHILE checking for camera alerts WHILE... which means I will be less goddamn tired all the time and might actually have the energy to exist again. It's scary though. I've never had to give notice before. And not knowing 100% that this isn't a scam and I'm not being spearphished is... well it's sure as fuck not helping.

If you PM me the details, I can work the old google fu on it.

I also have access to D&B now.

I've got people on it. If they don't make them rue the day sufficiently I'll send you what I've got but right now can't have any toe stepping. They picked *THE* wrong bitch to try this on.
#36
Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: Curbside Pickup Only
July 06, 2023, 02:50:11 PM
Quote from: Scribbly on July 05, 2023, 02:36:52 PM
Lol okay it was about as obstructive as I expected.

I got very excited when I signed up to the new GP and they suggested to me that they would recommend a shared care agreement with Gender GP rather than me asking and getting rejected again.

Got all that set up, got a blood test done, got reassurance that all I needed to do was put the prescription request through the app...

... and that has now been rejected and they've pulled all shared care agreements with Gender GP for all their patients whooooo

Conversation basically went:

"So you asked me to do this and now you've pulled it?"
"Yeah we can't work with them."
"Okay no worries, that's fine, can you tell me who you can work with?"
"No. I'm not allowed to make suggestions about private care."
"Okay so, what're my options?"
"If I were you I'd google something. Just try and find someone reputable."

Note: The process of even getting in the door at a private clinic is likely to run £100 or more. Then more to actually get treatment set up to the point where they could then ask about a shared care agreement. And after going through all that they could then decide that whoever I've picked is not 'reputable' and I'd need to start over.

I think I'm just going to ditch all this extra expense and self medicate. It is significantly cheaper and whilst I'd feel better with regular monitoring at this point I feel like I'm just pissing away money.

May I offer a Molotov in these trying times?
#37
Or Kill Me / Breaking Point
July 06, 2023, 02:30:10 PM
There are few things that loom larger in our cultural consciousness than the idea of a breaking point: that someday it will all just be Too Much and something will SNAP and suddenly it will be RADICALLY DIFFERENT than the day before. There will be riots, there will be fires, there will be government officials dragged out of their offices, there will be something Shiny and New and we will celebrate and topple statues and cheer. America, especially, dreams of breaking points.

When I was a kid the term we used was "going postal," as the most well known office shooting at the time was located in a post office. This was before Columbine, before schools were *the* destination for seemingly spontaneous mass murders. At the security company where I work now, there are calls every few months from companies that have let someone go and want someone to keep an eye out for them coming back armed.

You don't often find people connecting these threads.

Accelerationism is a political philosophy that espouses the idea that things are bad, but not yet bad enough for people to act towards necessary change. The idea that society is hesitating at the cliff's edge and just needs a little push before it tries to flap its little wings. Maybe, if we just make conditions intolerable *enough* it will be enough for change.

There's math people don't know that they're doing in their head all the time. It's economic theory kind of math, but it doesn't have much to do with money. The question being posed is always the same: is Doing Something worse than Doing Nothing?

There are, as you might expect, lots of moving parts here. What is the benefit of doing the thing? Is there a future on the other end that seems possible, and better than current conditions? How much does it cost? In lives, in money, in time and effort? What are the chances we will succeed? What are the costs of failure? And how bad, really, how bad is it now?

Accellerationists try to move the needle by making "how bad is it now" even worse. If you're just doing math, it makes a kind of sense. If you don't like the idea of people dying because of something you did, it's kinda less appealing.

There are trolley car arguments, of course. There are always trolley car arguments. The real villains are the ones who tied all these people up on the tracks in the first place, the ones who deregulated the trolley construction which led to the failing breaks. We've all heard it. I'm not going to try to convince you one way or the other on this.

What I do want you to chew on is the idea of that breaking point. That moment where conditions are so intolerable that literally any action is better than doing nothing and continuing as you are. That's the core conceit, isn't it? If we just get enough people there, revolution will spontaneously arise.

Now, back to the second point. Do you see where we're going here? We have an abundance of people who are already at the point where conditions are so personally intolerable that they are willing to end their lives ending the lives of others for no more reward than simply not dragging themselves through another day like this. Add to that number the "deaths of despair," the people who are numbing themselves by any means necessary to get away from the conditions they cannot tolerate. How big of an army do you really think you need to run the guillotines?

And there's the thing: they're not an army. Even the ones who think that their death is going to be The Spark that convinces everyone to finally get off the couch and start organizing, they're just dead bodies.

We consume a lot of revolutionary media. In that media there are really only two common paths from Intolerable Conditions to Outright Revolution: a charismatic lone individual inspires others to spontaneously rise up with no prior organization or coordination, and a charismatic lone individual is exploited by an existing organization to swell their ranks to a functional number. When that's all people see, it's no wonder that they think of revolution as something they can do on their own, or at least start doing on their own, but the evidence is right in front of our faces: if you act alone, you will not have any meaningful impact. The Machine is designed to absorb aberrant individuals.

Acquiring accomplices is hard. It's probably the hardest part of getting anything done. Building trust is not easy in a society that raised us on Stranger Danger, building community is hard in tract housing and car-centered design, every ounce of effort put into organizing is effort not being spent on the tasks of keeping yourself alive in a world that is ever more expensive just to breathe in.

But if you are pushing people, or yourself, to the breaking point, without laying down the groundwork? That's not the Revolution. That's just getting people miserable and dead. Stop doing The Machine's work for it.
#38
Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: Curbside Pickup Only
July 06, 2023, 02:07:08 PM
Quote from: Scribbly on July 05, 2023, 11:03:15 AM
Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on July 05, 2023, 10:58:19 AM
I got a job offer that is absolutely covered in red flags but has enough potential to be legitimate that I can't ignore it, the pay is ridiculous and it's completely remote, and I won't be talking to cops or fielding phone calls WHILE listening to the radio WHILE monitoring text messages WHILE checking for camera alerts WHILE... which means I will be less goddamn tired all the time and might actually have the energy to exist again. It's scary though. I've never had to give notice before. And not knowing 100% that this isn't a scam and I'm not being spearphished is... well it's sure as fuck not helping.

Definitely do as much research as you can (obvs) but I'll keep my fingers crossed. Sometimes good things do happen.

The odds of this being legit are shrinking rapidly. I have already mobilized the resources needed to absolutely end these people if it does turn out to be a wire fraud scam, which will be a nice consolation prize if it goes the way it's looking.
#39
Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: Curbside Pickup Only
July 05, 2023, 10:58:19 AM
I got a job offer that is absolutely covered in red flags but has enough potential to be legitimate that I can't ignore it, the pay is ridiculous and it's completely remote, and I won't be talking to cops or fielding phone calls WHILE listening to the radio WHILE monitoring text messages WHILE checking for camera alerts WHILE... which means I will be less goddamn tired all the time and might actually have the energy to exist again. It's scary though. I've never had to give notice before. And not knowing 100% that this isn't a scam and I'm not being spearphished is... well it's sure as fuck not helping.
#40
Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: Curbside Pickup Only
June 29, 2023, 06:07:33 PM
Just came back from my audiology appointment.  Mild mid-range hearing loss sloping into profound on the high ranges, and my word recognition is complete soup in the left ear (along with that slope being much steeper on that side). Nothing I didn't *know*, but it's on paper now and really-real. They also said I'd be a good candidate for hearing aids, but since I can function day to day I don't need to rush in.
#41
does that apple have a butthole?
#42
Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: Curbside Pickup Only
June 29, 2023, 02:33:48 PM
Quote from: altered on June 28, 2023, 06:22:33 PM
Quote from: Q. G. Pennyworth on June 28, 2023, 02:18:42 AM
Quote from: altered on June 27, 2023, 05:23:31 PM
I've been pushing through a very upsetting (but not bad) breakup by, uh, working on a remix and some trance synth leads for the Memorrhage guy. And crowdfunding my home-recording setup so I can contribute vocals. (Isolation shields worth a goddamn are PRICY.)

I think this is the most involved I've ever been in music. Almost daily I'm discussing with actual successful underground musicians my opinions on production and songwriting, and they're taken seriously. I can commiserate over EQing synth organs to sit nicely in dense mixes* and the other person will nod sadly and say "the decay..." because we've both been there.

It's really nice to be taken seriously by musicians who are legendary among "Thinking Man's avant-death metal" elitists and have done everything from chiptune grindcore to Bay Area screamo to nu metal. It's times like this I know my faith in my musical abilities is not Dunning-Kruger shit.



* Seriously, have you tried to do this without having to automate every band of an EQ to shift note-by-note? it's a fucking NIGHTMARE, and if you're gonna tell me to break out the comb filters I'm going to tell you to put that shit on some Scriabin-ass synthetic chords so you can hear the pan-pipers of Azathoth for yourself. It is an Incontrovertible Fact that organs, even basic ass synth organs with 3-oscillator formants, are made for filling every frequency above the fundamental with pure clean tonal bands and you had just better hope your tits that you have the headroom in your fucking mix to pull that off.

Do you take very dumb music requests? Because there is a very dumb thing I want

Depends. I can't record vocals yet (the crowdfunding was just finished thanks to one of you wonderful fuckers, but it needs to be ordered and arrive) and I can't do physical instruments, but I have production expertise and am pretty good at electronic music -- especially simpler stuff like trance, DnB, goth-industrial.

When I do have my bedroom studio setup done, I specialize in harsh vocals, but I can sing okay. Nothing special, poor range, lacking power, but it's something.

I'm looking for a "dramatic movie trailer" downbeat cover or remix of Billy Joel's My Life that fits the overall vibe of the Andor soundtrack. I'm very normal.
#43
Bring and Brag / Re: I am Falling
June 28, 2023, 09:24:07 PM
:mittens:
#44
Apple Talk / Re: Open Bar: Curbside Pickup Only
June 28, 2023, 02:18:42 AM
Quote from: altered on June 27, 2023, 05:23:31 PM
I've been pushing through a very upsetting (but not bad) breakup by, uh, working on a remix and some trance synth leads for the Memorrhage guy. And crowdfunding my home-recording setup so I can contribute vocals. (Isolation shields worth a goddamn are PRICY.)

I think this is the most involved I've ever been in music. Almost daily I'm discussing with actual successful underground musicians my opinions on production and songwriting, and they're taken seriously. I can commiserate over EQing synth organs to sit nicely in dense mixes* and the other person will nod sadly and say "the decay..." because we've both been there.

It's really nice to be taken seriously by musicians who are legendary among "Thinking Man's avant-death metal" elitists and have done everything from chiptune grindcore to Bay Area screamo to nu metal. It's times like this I know my faith in my musical abilities is not Dunning-Kruger shit.



* Seriously, have you tried to do this without having to automate every band of an EQ to shift note-by-note? it's a fucking NIGHTMARE, and if you're gonna tell me to break out the comb filters I'm going to tell you to put that shit on some Scriabin-ass synthetic chords so you can hear the pan-pipers of Azathoth for yourself. It is an Incontrovertible Fact that organs, even basic ass synth organs with 3-oscillator formants, are made for filling every frequency above the fundamental with pure clean tonal bands and you had just better hope your tits that you have the headroom in your fucking mix to pull that off.

Do you take very dumb music requests? Because there is a very dumb thing I want
#45
Or Kill Me / Re: There's No Such Thing As Too Late
June 26, 2023, 10:49:31 PM
Quote from: altered on June 26, 2023, 07:17:08 PM
The key of the fictional work I've been doing is that the protagonists CANNOT win. They will always fail, no matter what they do. But they fight anyway, and yeah, they didn't win. Most of the time it wasn't even a Pyrrhic victory for the antagonists. But they made the antagonists have to pay /something/ for it, rather then getting it for free, and the cost is never trivial.

You never lay down and give up. You can do it for short times, to recover, but when you CAN stand up, you DO stand up.

I think there's something to chew on for the difference between resting and giving up