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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You hear that, Roger?"

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

Dieter stared at me.  I grinned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

to be continued.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or Kill Me.

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

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

"Hold up the sign, he'll be here in a minute."

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

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

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

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

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

"I wouldn't do that until we're on the mountain," I said, "You will probably need it."

"But why?  I have cleared customs, yes?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh?  OH."  I watched as poor Dieter's hair more or less stood on end.

"Of course, the people in those busses aren't going to be gassed," I said.

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

"Why are they on those busses?"

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

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

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

"Can you tell him to pass me his papers?"

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

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

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

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

"Why don't you stop it?"

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

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

"The Nation?"  Dieter looked confused.

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

"And we are safe from your strange fucking police here?"

"Sorta.  Almost."

"Where ARE we safe?"

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

"Oh, here he goes..."  Danny said.

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

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

"See?  Better already."

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

to be continued, I am reasonable sure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or Kill Me.

   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then we crawl back up the mountainside to the truck.

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

I don't rightly recall what year this was, but it happened about the time Henry the Fifth (so-named on account of he always seemed to be finishing one) got killed mansplaining to Big Ma about the difference between chances and odds.  You do that, your chances of making it thought the day face some pretty long odds.

Anyway, Richter and I had been running a protection racket, taking the top 10% of everyone's privilege.  Didn't matter what kind of privilege, but we liked the white male sort the best.  This was Richter's idea, and the sheer genius of it was that if the cops tumbled us, we had all that extra privilege and we got let off with a warning. Of course, this meant everyone else got beaten up or shot more often, but it's a rum old world and you have to look out for yourself.

It all went fine until we came back around to shake Nephew Twidddington and Villager down for the third time.  Richter had been into the stuff, and kept making comments about how we should have people to do this for us, right until we parked the Flivver in front of Twiddington's Green Grocers/Bait & Tackle/Methamphetamine shop.  This was the Irish kind of privilege, but it was the end of the week and you take what you can get.

As we're getting out of the car, a cop walks up on us.  A new guy, I don't know him.  As I start to tell him that we're the reason he and the boys have an extra $20 in their envelope each week, I see that he's staring at Richter.  Who is blowing a line of privilege as long as your arm, right there on the dash of the Flivver.  The cop opens his mouth to bellow something, and Richter pulls out his heater and plugs the guy right there.  The he drops the gat and hauls out the heavy artillery, the Thompson we kept around just in case LMNO's boys tried making a move on our turf.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" I screamed, but Richter just stared at me and smiled, the barrel of the trench broom wandering in the general direction of my chest.  He'd overdosed, and was in the throes of affluenza. 

"Bitches ain't nothing but hos," he mumbled.

"Put the gun down, okay?  It's me, Sam."

"And these hos..."

"Come ON, man, we gotta get out of here!"

"These hos..."  He seemed confused, like he was waking up from a bad dream .  Good.  Maybe the stuff was wearing off.  But just as I was thinking that, two nuns from the convent of Saint Mary I Told You So's came around the corner.

"...THESE HOS AIN'T LOYAL!" Richter roared, his eyes bugging out of his head.  I hit the dirt like I was back in the trenches, as Richter emptied his typewriter into the nuns, Twiddington's place, the corpse of the cop, and that stupid one-eyed dog that the orphans over on Bleak Street used to have.  I mean, used to have right up until then. I popped back up while Richter was changing magazines, and bopped him one on the head with my gat.  He fell back into the car, and I drove off. 

Which made us late on our pick ups, but I'll get to that after I've had some more bathtub gin.

to be continued



 

 

It's a rough old world out there, and it's often easy to forget that things could very obviously be worse.  So I thought I'd mention a few things that we can all be grateful for.

You're not in Syria, dodging bullets (so far), but instead watching the faces of your children grow gaunt with hunger.  You're not living under a bridge, though you may have come close enough to see that once or twice.  You didn't die from lack of - or incompetent - medical care, though maybe someone you know has...But not you.  You aren't laying in a broken, bleeding heap, watching Nazis torment your children in the yard of what used to be your house.  You're not in the cancer ward, watching the nurses pretend you're a thing and not a person, because Jesus, how they do come and go.

All of these things did and do happen to people, but not us.  Not because we are right or strong or in the special favor of a deity, but because we are lucky.

Fortunate.

Golden.

Holding aces, because the worst things we have to ponder are debt, the erosion of our government, and the fact that "having friends" is now somehow a method by which to get PTSD, as one by one, they stop being as lucky as we somehow continue to be.

But that's the sort of thing you worry about later, when you're somebody else entirely.  Specifically, when you're the person standing alone, wondering where the other hell raisers went.

[What do you do?]

Question #1:  So, just for a minute, pretend you're ECH.  It's 2005, and Lauren has been run off into the hills, Hugh is writing magickle thoughts to himself at the Obsidian Mirror, and Eldora is stuck in Flint, Michigan.  The server trembles at your merest whim, and noobs shit themselves in terror as you absentmindedly ratchet the action on your automatic pistol.  Scantily clad young ladies with white residue on their noses tiptoe around, posting grainy pictures of the needle tracks on their emaciated arms.  You are the new face of Discordia, blisteringly mad, unpredictably violent, and very much in control of the uncontrollable.  What do you do?  What do you do?

What is your plan for Discordia in the post-911, pre-facebook world?

Question #2:  Okay, it's 2015 again, and the Discordian horde has been gone for nine years.  Nine years.  The titans you remember have all fucked off, some out of butthurt, some just because they aren't who they used to be, and some just got really, really busy.  There was no "cancer that killed PD", it's just that the format is old, and doesn't attract any new blood.  There is a feeling that Discordia really has nothing else to say, that it has all been said and done.  All that is left is the edgy posturing of validation junkies on Facebook.  It is the darkest time for Discordia as a worldview since the Reagan/Thatcher days, and there you are, sitting at ECH's weirdly-crusty computer desk, brushing cocaine residue off the monitor and wondering if there's any life left in the old girl.  What do you do?

So, you have to ask yourself, "Is there anything TO be done?" 

Obviously, I have some opinions on this subject.  First, pour all the old stuff into two subforums. One for the kooks, and one for everything else.  That's right, just jam all the past glory into a massive, searchable pile of fun.  Maybe even make the whole damn thing read-only.  Tie off the stump, break the funeral parlor continuity of the joint.  Make a brand new area for posting...BUT.

But maybe change the format.  Forums as a community have had their guts slashed out by Facebook and Twitter.  There's no changing that, because Forums are by definition a closed system, and Facebook is worldwide, largely unmoderated, and - here's the killer - designed with "taste tribes" in mind.  I have trolled and thus seen everything from Star Wars cosplay pages to goldfish fancier pages (WTF, Britain?).

So maybe something else.  Maybe we do this:

1.  Apple Talk.  Chat/socialize.  Starts empty, gets emptied once a year, on a rolling monthly schedule into...
2.  The Archive.  Read-only collection of the awesome old stuff.
3.  The Kooks.  Peanut gallery.  Maybe as a subforum of #2.

Then, the meat.  A 'Zine-type format, comments enabled & moderated, with the pick of the litter being shoved onto the site's front page.  Politics, activism, fiction, science, you name it.  But all in one forum, with the "best of", again, going to the front page...Sampled and linked, of course.  There's only so much page.

I think this is workable.  The beauty of it is, it's something you link to social media sites.  Feed off of them, instead of the other way around.  Push the message, whatever you believe that message to be.

Or Kill Me.

I need some advice.

Is this okay?  White people doing spiritual blues well?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iAYhQsQhSY

Nobody alive was in World War I.  Get over yourselves.
\

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsZMbs5PC64

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/phil-collins-plotting-comeback-i-am-no-longer-retired-20151028

[LMNO]

As you all know, October 28th has been celebrated by Discordians since 2015 as a day to take a break from all this shit.  You can relax and be normal for 24 hours.  As your Holy Man™, it is my duty to assist you in this, so here are your assignments.

LMNO - You will go - alone - to a sports bar after work and watch a game of something.  Football, maybe.  You will chat with the bartender about the trivialities of your life, ignoring the hatred in his eyes as yet another small part of him dies.

Queen Gogira - You will spend all day talking about your projects, but not actually work on any of them.  Discuss with your significant other the advantages of owning a minivan.

Nigel - You will be white all day long.  And not Orkadian, either, that shit is weird.  Your ancestors for the day all came from the English Midlands.  If you must slice brains, wince all the time and discuss with others how you'd really rather be at Starbucks, drinking a nice Pumpkin Spice Latte.  With skim milk.

Paesor - You will stand right side up and make fun of British people, Australians, and of course Americans.

Senora Paesor - Yoga pants.  No superhero tee shirts.  Ugh boots.  Pick a side in the abortion debate and fly right off the handle.

Cain - You will spend the day accepting the fact that Western civilization isn't in any way responsible for how those horrible people in Middle Eastern nations live or how they behave.  They're just naturally terrorists, and always have been.  Consider being a Tory.

ECH - You will spend all day talking shit, but if anyone gets upset, get all passive-aggressive and remark that you were "just saying".  When they leave, explain to everyone how you were this close to kicking their asses.

The Wizard Joseph - You will not shave on Wednesday, and explain to everyone that you're growing a beard to demonstrate your independence.  You will drink deliberately shitty beer and claim that it's just as good as the expensive stuff that poseurs drink.

Muenster - You will listen to Metallica.  All of it.  Argue with those around you as to the merits of old Metallica vs new Metallica.  Also insist that anyone who listens to pre-1990 Aerosmith is a complete philistine.

Cainad -  You will wear a ball cap, jeans, and talk endlessly about economics, blissfully ignoring the fact that you are not an economist.  If anyone talks about politics, you're thinking you're an "independent", but you find you simply must vote republican this time around because Sanders is too radical and Hillary personally killed those diplomats in Benghazi.

TheWake - You just keep doing your thing, man.

Richter - You will spend the afternoon and evening on the couch, playing video games until your eyes bleed.  Nothing will be sharpened, and you will respond with grunts to anything anyone in the house has to say. 

Waffle - I'm at a loss, here.  I don't know if Norway has a mainstream.  Act German or something. 

If I've forgotten any active members, pipe up and I'll hand you something suitably beige.

I am a fan of Warren Ellis, despite his seeming inability to finish sixty percent of what he starts (anyone waiting for Doctor Sleepless #14, don't hold your breath).  The reason I like him is that, despite his often melodramatic dialogue, his characters are three dimensional, flawed, and believable.

I had decided, after exposure to Ellis, alongside Hickman, Morrison, and Ennis, to give some other writers a try.  Some were good, others not so good.  I've had to fly blind on this, because going to a comic shop is of no help.  You tell them "I don't want to read about men in tights wrestling in the streets", but that's what they try to sell you, because they are hopelessly mired in the direct marketing schemes as dumped on them by Diamond and Marvel.

Anyway, I had read and enjoyed Ellis's Stormwatch and later Authority, despite the superhero content, because it wasn't endless continuity.  It had a beginning, a middle, and an end, and the superheroes don't always save the day.  The second Authority left some room for a sequel, but that was okay, because the story was finished.

Before I get to the awful bit, let me tell you why I liked these so much.  Two of the characters, Apollo (think of a slightly more pragmatic Superman) and Midnighter (Bat Man without the gizmos and angst, a man who truly loves his work and has a bit of fun with it) are Gay.  This is, as handled by Ellis, a thing that slowly dawns on you, until Apollo almost gets killed (late in the story) and Midnighter kisses him.  The other characters Holler at them good-naturedly, and that's the end of the bit.  They then go back to kicking bad guys around.  The Engineer is a physicist who wound up with 9 pints of nano-machinery instead of blood, who doesn't understand her abilities yet.  John Hawksmoor is a UFO victim who has been designed to survive in cities, and in fact gets sick outside of them, which was an interesting character idea.  Jennie Sparks is a 100 year old woman who is the spirit of the 20th century and controls electricity.  And drinks way, way too much.  Oh, and they live on an abandoned alien ship locked in orbit around Earth.  All the Earths.   

Now, the problem.  Ellis no longer has control of the franchise.  And the people who do thought it was sequel time.  This is how I found myself reading Stormwatch volume 3, expecting Ellis because I saw the title and not the artist...And Nook doesn't give you dates unless you poke at it.

SO.  Someone went through and took an iron to the characters, flattening them right out.  Apollo and Midnighter spend an entire issue talking about how Gay they are, and Apollo stops believing his boyfriend is Gay because he talks to a woman at one point.  No shit.  This includes the immortal prose "It's okay if you're straight", spoken by Apollo.  Instead of the comic containing two characters that just happen to be Gay, the two characters are now Gays who happen to be superheroes.  It's blatant pandering, and it's offensive as hell.  They don't get to be ass-kicking scary guys anymore, they instead must talk in angsty voices about their partner's "true feeeeeeelings" and orientation.  And they made Midnighter a psychotic and nobody ever shuts up about it.

Oh, and Midnighter's sensible leather armor and stomping boots turned to spandex, and they turned Apollo into a stripper.  I can't stand it.

And to top it off, they retro'd the story line from "group of enhanced humans formed by the UN to deal with threats to the world as a hole, or threats from superhuman bad guys whom local police can't handle" to some gibberish about a thousand year old secret society of superhumans (despite the fact that the original story has the event that created 99% of superhumans happen around 1990), and made a clear Big Bad Guy who doesn't even have the sense to laugh maniacally.  And they put Merlin in it.  And the Engineer betrays everyone just because.  And I'm not even going to talk about Jennie Sparks.  It's that bad.

Whomever was responsible for this abomination took an interesting set of characters in weird situations, and hammered it flat, making it fit into the standard Marvel/DC WWE model of people in tights punching each other while bellowing their inner feelings...AND you can see the straight-jacket of canon already guiding the whole thing.  You can already tell that the slain engineer will be back.  You can already tell that Jenni's new incarnation will be the deus ex machina for any further stories.

I've always hated superhero stories, because they aren't stories, they're never-ending canon or reboots or retcons or whatever.  There is no actual story.  In the cases of Planetary and Stormwatch and Authority, I could suspend my disbelief because there WAS a story and it was excellent.  Then some assholes turned it into something about as interesting as 200 pages of Aquaman vs Wonderwoman.  Planetary has escaped this fate because, as I understand it, Ellis himself owns the content.

In a fit of morbid curiosity, I then downloaded one of the Arkham stories and an issue of JLA.  They were as awful as I admit I expected, but there's something else:  For the main lines of superheroes, you can't possibly catch up on the plot line unless you've been reading them for sixty years and have file cabinets full of this shit filling your basement.  To get the same effect, download Farscape but start watching at season four.

In any case, my hatred of superhero shit has been vindicated.  If a genre can only be supported by three mental writers, it isn't viable.

Now I'm going to go back to hoping that Ellis will actually finish Trees.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9e8_1444455082

Here's two of them, the other one is developing.

http://hiphopwired.com/2015/10/09/shootings-texas-southern-university-northern-arizona-university/

I called this shit years ago.  This is the new normal.

So, I went to some "parenting pages", and the first thing I saw was C-section-shaming.

C section-shaming?  Really?  REALLY?

But I can't.  That was the best movie of the franchise, hands-down, no question.

I also like the idea that it doesn't fit in the series.  It has a old-school Heavy Metal magazine feel to it, where continuity isn't actually a thing.

9.5/10, will watch a million times.

Please tell me of the roads of your wretched, filthy heretical state.

I have need of this information. 

I expect the correct amount of enthusiasm and adjectives.  Profanity will be indulged.

Rain is formed when water condenses on dust particles.

Tucson is covered in coyote shit, which turns to powder within 24 hours, and is swept up, up to 2 miles by dust devils.

So yeah.

It literally rains shit on Tucson.

Thanks, God.

http://americanloons.blogspot.com/

As has been amply demonstrated over the last decade or so, most "discordians" are assholes.  They don't get it.  They miss the point.  From the long-lost days of the Myspace Discordians, to the cheerfully sociopathic arse biscuits on Facebook, Discordianism is basically the last excuse for assholes.  What's more, they feel that they must band together under the fart blanket, to see who can be the worst example of a human being.  If you try to reason with them, then you're doing it wrong, and they will attempt to doorstep you, or make you think they will.

This sort of thing is why "discordian" is a label I no longer apply to myself.  I don't need the label...I am what I am.  If much of what I am fits our definition of discordianism, okay...But I am more than that.  Some of what I am fits the definition of a subgenius.  But I am more than that, as well.  So I no longer identify as either.

A few weeks ago, I got mad because I caught a ration of shit after blocking a racist.  I undid the block.  Other shit happened, and the racist was gone anyway, but I was furious because PD wasn't being MY discordia.  I also spent more than a decade writing here, and often got pissed when something I had enjoyed writing sank off the page like Brittany Spears' career.  Again, I was mad because it wasn't MY discordia, and it didn't bring me the validation I craved.

Then it was pointed out to me that a lot of this was in fact based on said validation, even to the point of doing things for people that hate me.  So much for being a biped, right?  Well, nobody is expected to start out knowing everything, and even an old dog can learn new tricks.

So I do my discordia on my own, these days.  I've dropped out of the local cabals, and have in fact found that I can have a lot more fun on my own, when it comes to shoveling sand into the gearbox.  Or fixing the gearbox.  Whichever strikes my fancy on any given day.  Hell, 10 years ago I said that if you were doing it for the admiration of your peers, you were doing it wrong, and then it turns out I was doing that very thing all along.

What I need to do is get back to basics.  I don't see the need to start a multi-generational war over a snub, because that's Eris's thing, not mine.  I don't, however, see the need to perform like a circus monkey for people who hate me.  In fact, my subgenius side tells me to ramp it up and hate those people more.  Maybe I will, I don't know.  But I'm certainly not sticking my neck out for them, or writing for them ("I don't like you, but I like your writing.  Sometimes."), or associating with them, simply because life is too short. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow, and I'd hate to think I would go to my maker having not hated the people who hated on me.

Discordians tend to be the most interesting people I know.  This is not to be confused with the healthiest people I know.  I love reading Hunter S Thompson, for example, but I doubt I'd have enjoyed spending 6 months with him.

So I'm flying solo, these days.  It's not for everyone, but it DOES have the added advantage of not getting poop all over your shoes when a "discordian" starts jabbering racist nonsense or starts making threats because you're doing it wrong.  I would say "you don't have to hang out with sociopaths", but the fact is that most of the people involved in all of these things DO believe people are real.  They just don't believe YOU are real.  And because of that, you have to treat them as sociopaths even though they aren't with respect to the rest of the world.

The days of the Cabal are over, I think.  Well, at least they are for me.

...Have independently discovered WOMP.  And they're getting the Holy™ on my shoes.

Once upon a time, there were three cities.  Everyone lived in those three cities, and nobody lived anywhere else, even if they believed that they did.  Those who believed that they lived in Europe or the Midwest or whatever were simply dealing with facts their minds had distorted for the sake of their own sanity.  As it were.

Some were sent to Providence, where the mold grew over them until they were so weighed down that they couldn't move.  They are The Silent Congregation of Eris, and they will not speak until the End of Days.  If you were to X-Ray them, there is a good possibility that they are like the corpses of Pompeii...There's nothing inside the shell of mold.  Not if you are quick, at any rate.  If you are slow or stupid, or try to help them, then the mold will not be hollow for long.

Some were sent to Tucson, where they asphyxiated in the hellish heat.  They are The Tormented Congregation of Eris, and they prowl the airport and train depot (though only at night), looking for new arrivals to welcome.  Things are explained, and the new fish is restrained in place until the pitiless sun comes up and bakes away all the lies and self-delusion that the newcomer had comforted himself with.  Then he joins the others.

And some were sent to Portland, where they meet Her on the bridges.  She explains.  She tells them.  She demonstrates what their reality actually is, she shows them that elephant in the living room which they have learned to look around.  Then She walks off the bridge alone.  Perhaps a bicycle is left behind, perhaps a car with the engine still running and one door left open.  Some walk off the other side of the bridge.  They are The Debased Congregation of Eris.  These are the unworthy, those who were so base as to be mentally prepared for what She tells them.  Others, the worthy, wash up down-river, their sins washed away alongside all identifying features.

What is important to remember in all cases is that this isn't done at the behest of Eris.  Nothing is.  This is just the natural results of LOOKING, of tearing off all the masks and filters and looking around at this brave new world that they built around us while we were sleeping.  This new world isn't healthy for primates whose brains are geared for a limited number of stressors.  The young may adapt; they have their electronics and their social environments in which they block out unwanted stimuli.  The human race will go on.

It just may go on without you.  Or at least the you that is you right now.

<redacted>

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<redacted>

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<redacted>

(Editor's note:  I fucking hate you guys.)

For those of you who got the comic, here's some of the stuff that hit the cutting room floor:

To be added to:

1.  The earlier an engineer shows up for a meeting, the longer he will drag the meeting out.

For example, Mike has been sitting in the conference room for 10 minutes, for a meeting that starts in 5 minutes.  The 30 minute meeting will therefore last 60 minutes.

I met P3nt for lunch at a bistro on Congress Street. Normally, this would be the part where I'd say "things went well at first". Normally.

But he had no sooner walked in the door than he punched the maitre de, kicked him half a dozen times, and then fished the poor man's wallet out of his pocket. All the other diners and staff just looked at the floor and pretended nothing had happened.

He sat down at the table with me, and lit a large panatella. The staff was obviously not going to tell him that smoking wasn't allowed, and the fumes from his vile cigar quickly filled the room with a greyish-yellow haze. He looked across the table at me and then grunted, which was all the acknowledgement of my existence that I really wanted, to be perfectly honest.

A waiter nervously edged toward the table, to be met by a glare from P3nt.

"Get me a beer, ye cunt, ye. And be quick about it."

"Erm...What brand, sir?"

"Fucking BEER brand, you oik." He punched the man in the balls, and screamed at the bartender to "pick up the slack". The bartender, almost tripping over himself, hurried over with an IPA. P3nt looked at him and then, as if deciding the let the man live, turned to me.

"Now, ye wee bastard, Payne and I have had it up to here with you writing slander about us."

I shit my pants at this point. He continued.

"Payne and I are the kindest, most loving people a turd like you is ever going to meet in this lifetime."

I nodded.

"And if you want that lifetime to be long enough for a meaningful comparison, you'll remember that, right?"

I nodded again. P3nt reached over and grabbed my ham on rye, and took a bite out of it. He stared at it, chewing slowly.

"Not bad." Then he reached over and shoved it in my shirt pocket. "Are we clear?"

I nodded again.

"I can't HEAR you. I said, ARE. WE. CLEAR?"

"yesssss"

He stood up and walked out, bottling the maitre de, who was just getting up.

I shat myself again.

Inside every person is a better person looking for an opportunity to express him/herself.  Grab a shovel and deal with that bastard, because he's nothing but trouble, and will only bring you to grief.  Because, despite what people may tell you in this enlightened year of 2014, better people are not exactly a hot commidity...As evidenced by the fact that television "comedies" still rely on humiliation of characters for their laughtrack cue.

Or by the fact that ~ 51% of America sees the population of Ferguson as the problem.  Or that even the "good guys" mostly consist of hateful fucks on tumblr; at least the vocal ones.  And the non-vocal ones are worse than the bad guys, because they give them a convenient mask with which to conceal their bad deeds.

Every time you stay silent about evil, you are voting for it.  Every time you walk past it with your eyes averted, you are giving it permission.  In short, by condoning it, you are taking part in it.  An evil person is, after all, a person that does or permits evil things.

But on the other hand, as I have been reminded of many times in the last few weeks or so, evil people are what people want.  If this sounds bitter, maybe it is.  But Bush/Cheney were elected twice, the second time after most of their evil was out in the open, for everyone to look at.  Reagan, as well...And Obama hasn't exactly been a choirboy.  In terms of entertainment, Jack Bauer.  Nuff said.

I was not a very good human 12 years ago, but I was an effective one.  And though I am told I have been a better person over the last few years, what has it accomplished?  I have stopped no great wrongs, and damn few little wrongs.  A moral stand cost me the friendship of this entire community (and a torrent of abuse)...Which then proceeded to find a roundabout way to make the original problem go away anyway, indicating that it wasn't the action I took, but the fact that *I* took it.  Once I was safely out of the way, essentially the same action was taken on what was largely a ginned-up pretext.

The implications are pretty clear, here.  My efforts to become a more fully-functional human being have led to no good whatsoever, and a whole lot of bad.  As such, I have spent the past few weeks figuring out what needed to go and what needed to stay.  Purging personality flaws isn't easy, and I have no idea how successful I've been.  And I am unlikely to find out here, being more or less constantly talked around, so I guess I'll just figure things out IRL.

There is little to no use in associating with people who do not consider you their peer.  There is NO use in associating with people who actively despise you, or even those who just don't like you much.

So this isn't a return, and I am not ready to rumble.  It is an explanation of why I am not here often, and will be here less if at all, to those one or two people who still give me the time of day.

Thank you for your time.

3 weeks in, arms like painful noodles.

How often do you work out a week, to get the results you got over the last year?

I haven't seen him in forever.

I have temp banned Pope Lecherous and LuciferX for racist insults aimed at another board member (Nigel), although the aiming part wasn't necessary.

The admin group will of course have to decide as a group whether or not to make the ban permanent.

I suggest an open vote, but if ANY admin is uncomfortable with this, we'll take it to PM.

There's no point in talking about the 4th of July unless you're going to talk about where the revolution led us.  And where it led us was a plutocracy...This isn't a perversion of the system, it is the system's natural end.  Certain checks and balances were put in to put this end off, but as we've recently seen, the last of those checks and balances (the supreme court) just failed.

The funniest part is, I have watched various losertarians and other free market retards say that "Hobby Lobby (et al) should not be forced to pay for contraception".  They weren't.  Their insurance carrier was.  And now their rates will actually go UP, because of the increase or likely increase in pregnancy among their employees.  So this was never about economics, you stunted little morons, it is about CONTROL and keeping the poor poor by making sure they have lots more little poor people.  You are idiots, and this sort of shit is why you will always be on the bottom rung, screaming your Ayn Rand bullshit.  Fuckrags.

This decision of course follows the one a few years back in which the SCOTUS decided that corporations can basically have the local government declare eminent domain on your property and sell it to said corporation for pennies on the dollar, if the corporation can prove that their use of the land will pay more taxes than the original occupant.

So happy 4th of July, you fucking mongoloids.  Be PROUD of that flag.  After all, it's what they cover your head with while they FUCK YOU IN THE ASS.  And try not to think too much about the fact that these assholes in mumus are the LAST century getting the 19th century all over your 21st century.  Try not to think about the fact that they take your patriotism and convert it into the gigantic dildo that's probing your liver.  Suckers.

That is all.  You may now return to SUPPORTIN' THE TROOPS and watching your fireworks while you smash your brain with shitty fucking beer.

I hate you all.

More later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0vrsxg0naA&feature=kp

(This may at first glance seem like yet another multiverse story.  It isn't.  It's something else entirely.)

Hi, my name is Hamish Howl.  I'm a private detective.  In the books and the movies, this sort of story would start off with a gorgeous blond walking into my office, crying into a silk hankerchief...But this is Tucson, and we can't have things like that.  No, the woman who came into my office was a bottle-redhead that looked like 50 pounds of codfish poured into a 5 pound sack.  And she wasn't crying.  She looked pissed.

"You're Hamish Howl?" It took me a moment to realize she wasn't shouting, at least not intentionally.  She had the kind of voice drill sergeants dream of having.  I think the word is "stentorian". 

"Yes, ma'am, that's me."  I pointed at one of the seats across from my desk, "Have a seat, if you please." 

It's also worth noting that in the movies, my office would be a mess...And it probably would be, but my partner Friday doesn't like a mess. And we don't make Friday upset, not if we want to see Saturday, if you catch my drift.

The lady got straight to the point.  "I am Abagail Horne.  My husband has been murdered.  I want you to find out who did it."

"Ma'am, if it's a murder, then the police are the people you want to see."

"Hmmph.  The police, that pack of corrupt incompetents, are calling it a suicide.  As if Horace would ever kill himself."

I thought that maybe I'd kill myself if my name were Horace Horne, but then it occurred to me that Hamish Howl isn't much better.

"Okay, Mrs Horne, can you give me some details?  I charge..."

"I know how much you charge.  It is acceptable.  In fact, I will pay you 25% more if you don't take on any other cases until this is solved.  I shall pay you to date every Friday."  She rolled on, assuming - correctly - that this was agreeable to me.  She handed me a file.  "In that is everything that I know, and everything those useless losers at the police department could be bothered to find out.  Horace was murdered in his office at our business."

Horne...Horne...Now I remembered.  Horne Enterprises.  Something to do with machines providing functional immortality.  It was all very hush-hush, but everyone who had the money to look into it apparently signed right up.  And then some of them died anyway, right on schedule, but not one of their estates sued.  Just another bit of weirdness, here in the city of sun and fun.

"I'll need some time to go through this file, and make some initial inquiries.  Can we meet tomorrow, same time, to talk a bit more about it?"

"That is acceptable.  Good day."  Mrs Horne got up and swept out of my office.  She had that sort of grace that only large women can have.  Which is to say she didn't quite take out the door frame.

"You hear all that?" I asked.  To the empty room.  Because of course it wasn't really empty.  The closet door opened, and my girl Friday walked out.  Odd habit of hers, spending her free time in the closet, sometimes for hours or more.  She was dressed today in a black baby doll dress, fishnet stockings, too much mascara, and luminescent blue lipstick.  She's weird, but she's really good at what she does.  She's been working with me since...Well, funny thing is, I can't remember exactly how long.  Certainly since the war.

"I can't see how I'd miss it", she replied, "She has a voice like a diesel engine."

I laughed, but little Lauren Rae Friday didn't even crack a smile.  She only ever smiled at bad car smash ups, train wrecks, and murder scenes.  She was a strange one, but she kept up her end of the partnership, and having a drop-dead gorgeous partner has its advantages when you're dealing with a certain type of client or stoolie.  She sat down across from me and we started going through the files.

Most of what we saw pointed at suicide.  Horace Horne was found in his office, swinging from a rope, with an empty bottle of single malt scotch on his desk.  On the other hand, there was no note, his company was flush with money, and if his wife had driven him to this, it would have happened 30 years earlier.

"What do you think?" I asked.

"I think this suicide stinks like yesterday's sushi", Friday said, "This guy was killed."

"What makes you say that?"

"Intuition."

"Okay."  I'd learned to listen to Friday when she had a hunch.  "I'd say we start by talking to the investigating detective."

"oooh, I LIKE talking to police."  She smiled her little girl smile, which always sets off my arachnid response.  Weird, isn't it?  A shy smile from a pretty young lady, and every nerve in my body tells me to run, tells me that there's more danger here than any caveman ever faced on the savannah.  I shuddered, and she giggled, like she always does.

Well, City Center is only a few blocks from my office on Broadway, so I figured we'd walk, save gas on the Packard.  It was early in the day and late in the season, so the Tucson heat wasn't too bad.  Call it 104 and no hot wind, for once.  Friday strolled along, window shopping without slowing down, occasionally twirling.  If you didn't know her, she'd look like she was in love or on drugs or something...But she always does this.  I've gotten used to it.

I lit a cigarette while I was waiting for the crosswalk.  "These things are gonna kill me, some day."

Friday gave me a funny look, and then laughed out loud.  I swear, she can be downright creepy sometimes.  The light changed, and we crossed over to city center.  Walking in, I saw my old pal Sergeant Ahmad behind the desk.

"Hey, Ahmad, how's tricks?"

"Hey, Hamish!  Good to see you."

"Look, I'm on a case.  The Horne death."

Ahmad paled, like he was scared.  "Can't help you, Hamish."

"What?  It's supposed to just be a suicide, right?"

"Yeah, it's a suicide.  You take my advice, you pay that wife of his back, go find something less risky.  Like maybe wrestling bears or something.  I'm not kidding, Hamish, back off."

"Where's the detective that worked the case?"  This was Friday, and she smiled her special smile at Ahmad.  He looked like he was going to crap in his pants.

"It's Wilson, and if you gotta know, he's over at the Club Congress getting drunk."

"What?", I asked, "It's only 9 AM".

"Yeah.  Strange, isn't it?  So strange I'm gonna warn you again to back off.  I'm not gonna TELL you, you understand.  This is just some advice.  Some good advice."

"Thanks, Ahmad."

We turned and left city center, and walked back past my office, to the Club Congress. 

Later, I'd kick myself square in the ass for not listening to Ahmad.

(to be continued)

The road to hell is perfectly straight.  Hell is perfect order.  It is what it is, and there is no hope of anything ever changing.

Humans occasionally try to create hell on Earth.  The Inquisition.  Benny "anything for a laugh" Mussolini making the trains run on time.  The US and Canadian governments rounding up Native American children, dressing them just like us, and jamming them into school systems designed to teach them enough to ruin their culture, but not enough to compete.  The horrible conformity of the 1950s.  The stratification of economic classes that are going on today.

What is particularly amusing is that most Hell on Earth scenarios are ended by other Hell on Earth movements (see:  World War II) who have different ideas of what that perfect order should be.  Evil turns on itself, devours itself.  It has no choice.

Something hilarious just occurred to me.  At my job, there is NO order.  All is chaos.  Therefore, it must be Heaven, and ours the work of angels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SbgEYBG-Y8

Finally.  I have found the source of a joke that has both puzzled me and made me laugh here for 6+ years.

I have received an email from one of the big guys in Germany.  It seems that a young American process engineer has shamed himself badly, and is being sent back from Germany.  He is considered salvageable, as he seems to be some kind of genius. 

So for reasons that are murky at best, he is being sent to Tucson and assigned to me.  Fear me, for I am now apparently Father Confessor or some shit.  ANYWAY, I am told by those in charge that I am to mould this embryonic engineer into something that can be allowed out into traffic without offending Europeans and South Africans.  Yes.  He offends South Africans.  Which is sort of like offending a particularly callous Icelander.

My time to prepare for this is "mayonaise", as he is already in Tucson, and I meet him in, oh, 12 minutes.  I've at least had time to read his file and the long list of grievances he has generated.  He does not seem to be a particularly nice person.

I shall update you as this moves forward.  This seems to be the best chance to bray laughter so far this year.

I shit you not:

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/09/george_will_being_a_victim_of_sexual_assault_is_a_coveted_status_that_confers_privileges/?source=newsletter

George Will: Being a victim of sexual assault is a "coveted status that confers privileges"
The Washington Post columnist thinks women are lying about sexual assault in order to get "privileges"

Full article at link.

But...

Further compounding the crisis of people coming forward about sexual assault to stay de rigueur is the fact that "capacious" definitions of sexual assault include forcible sexual penetration and nonconsensual sexual touching. Which is really very outrageous, according to Will. It is really very hard to understand why having your breasts or other parts of your body touched against your will should be frowned upon.

This topic has been moved to The Richard Nixon school of ballet and the arts.

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=36594.0