Messages

-- these sound like very useful metaphors you're forging.

Thanks.  I'm thinking of diagramming the various relationships that can be mapped this way.  Obviously, the tether (anchor <---> anchor) is the most desirable, and (shackle <---> shackle) is the least desirable.

And it's important to remember that someone can be one, two, or all three of those things to you, or vice-versa.

There's that too.

I am also of the opinion torture should be banned simply so bed-wetting pansies like Bruce Anderson keep needing to buy new underwear.

That's an added benefit.  Also, watching O'Reilly and Beck cry is always a hoot.

BUT ITZ NUKULUR!
   \

"The only physics I ever took was ex-lax."
- Founder of the Peoples' Lobby, a CA-based anti-nuclear power organization.

I used to have a strong fear of nukes, sort of an irrational impulse, I suppose.

Nukes aren't the cleanest power in the world, but they are the cleanest power that can be placed anywhere.

The minor risk of an accident vs the certainty of freezing to death in the dark.  Choose.

Traditional hardpoints, church, country, cause, I haven't seen any solid ground, just a lot of tangled human wreckage.  I can't tell them, "I have found security here, try it too, it works."

Those are lies, they're not even shackles.  They're ways in which you can speed up your progress toward the rocks.  

Who tells us to honor our churches and our countries?  Yeah, the people who have a vested interest in us doing so, and they are not on our side.  They want what's best for the bottom line, not what's best for us...elsewise, why would any responsible church outlaw contraception?  Remember, kiddies, a spike in donations in 20 years is worth the whole planet in 50 years.

And those who tell us to love our country usually say that when they want us to get maimed or killed for the bottom line of no-bid contractors.

It's all a pack of lies, Richter.  All the anchors you need are already around you.  Your family, your friends, the people that love you.

Well, after two years of serious illnesses, my great-uncle Bill has passed away.

Uncle Bill was a 5'5" giant of a man, who wasn't afraid of anything, and never - to my knowledge - ever made a shitty compromise in his whole life.  He spent his youth destroying Nazis in Africa and Europe, including the horrible Falaise Pocket battle, in which his artillery unit spent a night in a circular formation, direct-firing their 25 pounders into hordes of Germans, to keep them from escaping.

When I was a kid, he would only tell me that he was a cook.  He didn't tell me the whole story until I had enlisted in the infantry...He knew that war is blood and shit and death, not the lie they call "glory", and he didn't want to put ideas in my head, until after I had failed to heed his advice, and the advice of his brothers (ie, don't go in the military).

He later told me about the men he fought with, and he also explained that the Nazis actually won WWII...just not the German Nazis.  He was referring to people like Curtiss Lemay and "Tailgunner Joe" McCarthy and Ronald Reagan (he offered some Canadian names, too, like Big Joe Clark and his bunch, but most people in the states have never heard of them).  People who slithered into power while we weren't looking.

When I last saw him in person, about a year ago, he was having a chuckle at what America is doing to itself these days, and I asked him what he thought should be done about it.

"First you tell them 'No'", he said, "Then if they keep doing it, you make them hurt really bad, and repeat your answer."

I firmly believe that if he'd been here, and maybe a little younger, he'd have been doing just that.  He wasn't afraid of police (He and his brothers had the scars and the police records to prove it), and he wasn't afraid of what they could do to him. 

We used to have people like that, and if you make the mistake of reading what those people had to say, you'll spend the next year seething with hatred at the complacent shits all around you...and maybe even at yourself, because you know what's going on, and still you do nothing.

No, his kind are a vanishing breed, and I have this weird feeling that when they're gone, the Nazis will be back.  They may not wear black uniforms (maybe), but they're Nazis all the same.  Nazis don't ever actually leave, they just wait in the wings until the hard men and women are all gone.  It happened in Germany in the 1920s, and it's going to happen here, mark my words.

So goodbye, Bill, you ornery old son of a bitch, and I hope that you're now giving God a red ass about the state of affairs in heaven.  We'll try to muddle along here without you, and I hope you get a good laugh about it all.

- Dok

Yeah, that Discovery series that looks ubercool on HD has a segment where you watch this poor polar bear hunt seals, but he's so exhausted and famished he fails and ends up dying in a stretch not far from his prey.

It's really pathetic. 

Unless you're the seal.

I think my final analysis is this:  Torture is never acceptable under any circumstances, because any nation that would tolerate torture in their name isn't worth saving, by any means.

You know, Jim, if you don't find some way to secure yourself, you'll drift off like a derelict ship.  It's true...The currents are strong, these days, and the rocks are never very far away.  They're all covered in the wreckage of those whose anchor lines snapped, and they're so soaked in blood that the beachcombers have forgotten what it smells like.

Of course, there are various ways to secure yourself, which I'd like to briefly detail. 

1.  Anchors.  These are the people and things that keep you steady.  Maybe it's your wife or your kids, or maybe it's your job or your studies. 

2.  Shackles.  These are the things that keep you stationary in an undesirable way...the things that hold you back.  Maybe they're that friend who drags you down with him, or perhaps a job you hate but can't leave.  They still keep you off those rocks, but in a way that make the rocks look more attractive every day.

3.  Tethers.  These are like anchors, but you are also anchoring them.  This may be a friend who helps you, and receives help back, or maybe it's a devoted spouse that sticks with you, and gets back everything they give.

Note that many people or things may be in more than one catagory.  Take my case, for example...My daughter is both a shackle and a tether.  Her schooling requires that I stay in a city that I loathe, but she also looks after her old man, and of course I'd do anything for her.  Maria is both an anchor and a tether, because most of the time, she's holding my head above water, but on the few occasions she's needed me, I've been there.  Nurse Mayhem is definitely a tether, because she and I spend an awful lot of time laughing (much of which is directed at a shackle she happens to have).

My problem is that I'm running awfully low on securing devices of all kinds.  There's Keelin, Maria, and Nurse Mayhem, and that's currently about it.  Three points of contact aren't a whole lot, in fact they're the bare minimum, and you can believe me when I say that no matter how strong you are, you can't find your way without being able to see where you're going.  Without those anchors, you'll drift off into places I'd rather not describe...you may do that anyway...I know I have, but I've had those three lifelines to help me find my way back out of the nightmares and paranoia that lurk around in my skull.

I seem to remember having more, once upon a time...a friendship that went sour (the person is still my friend, but more in an acquaintance type of way) because I was a shackle to that person rather than a tether...Other friends that moved away, or died, or said things in a moment of anger that wound you so badly that you can't ever look at them the same way.  One major anchor chain snapped the other night, when my great uncle Bill died.  I'll be writing a separate piece about him, because he rates it.

Obviously the thing to do is to gain more anchors and tethers.  Pick myself up and start rebuilding my life, and maybe spend a bit more time being a tether and a little less time being a shackle.

Well, that went a little longer than I intended, Jim, but time is short, and I wanted to get that out in the open.

Okay for now,
Dok Howl

....it wasnt exactly posted as something to respond to.  you were pretty much telling us the way it is, as you see it.  

You've responded to a bunch of other stuff that was pretty much him telling us the way it is, as he sees it.

Not sure how else you're supposed to start a debate.

Vex has the power of beard.  Those are actually HUNDREDS of tiny legs.

[ruin]

you know the worst thing about the gungans was that they were actually a pretty cool design.  it was just their choice of voice/accent that made them suck ass....
honestly lucas should redub the gungan voices to not suck, in the same way that he added effects to 4,5,6 to improve ruin them...

Fixed.

ruin?
i thought the effects were good. different strokes...
but i'm not a star wars purist.  i think they could be improved.  i think he did improve them.
i also like the idea of layered media.  i think more people should pick up movies and layer new shit onto them to make them different/better. 

It was mostly just the Jabba's palace scene which pissed me off massively. Oh my god. I can't even think about it without gritting my teeth. Hate hate hate.

What, you didn't like the roles the women got to play, or you didn't like the fabulous music...or perhaps it was the dialogue and fine acting skills?

So tell us, TokinGLX, is it true that smoking pot results in the permanent paralysis of your Shift key?

no, but it does flip my question mark upside down and for some reason i dont think this keyboard has an apostrophe.  oh well, somehow i learn to live with it.

Interesting.

For your enlightenment, these are "capital" letters:

>>ABCDEFG<<

They go at the beginning of sentences and proper nouns, as well as a few other places. When used, they inform the reader that the person who wrote that sentence is not a fucking illiterate, and that they know how to use their own damn native language. In other words, they are essential to any written communication.

QUIT HARSHING HIS HIGH, YOU CALLOUS BASTARD!

Damn, and there I was trying to contribute more than fluff.

Also stupid phone won't let me see Scouse spag's links

Also neighbours son here at my dad's is dealing and trying to hide his consumption and the paranoid look on the boy's face whenever I see him up to no good is priceless! Ah the memories!

Just tell him "We KNOW what YOU'RE up to, my lad."

I got pointed towards the comic Cathy the other day (http://www.gocomics.com/cathy/) and it was so bad, I could not stop reading the delicious unlol horror. I. read. the. whole. thing. Tokin's posts are looking a bit like that. so. I. keep. looking.

I think I may have a problem.

Oh, Goddamn, who did THAT to you?  That is the 2d worst comic in American history, right after Peanuts.