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[I prefer my beef thoroughly cooked.]

Your pun is foiled sir. I prefer my beef thoroughly cooked. I dont want to get worms or anything.

Are you saying there's something wrong with that? next you'll be telling us not to put oil in the pasta water!

Im not sure if my thought process is tainted from thinking about typifications so much lately but...

There lies a danger in mentally getting stuck in a role in the sense that you cannot be anything else...

It would be like self-stereotyping... "I am X, so i must do Y, because of Z; this is what i am and this is what i must do"...

A person can choose to be a one-dimensional entity which becomes the one and ultimate point of reference to all they do and think...

Maybe this has to do with "duty" and "responsibility"... certain roles demand certain things of myself... but is doing that role correctly betraying myself?

To what point does the role become an imposition instead of something one assumed itself?

I think that the key is to disrupt the role you play in minor, innocuous ways. Don't BECOME it, keep yourself aware of it with the little tortures that keep the parasitic memes away.

Construction workers don't quote pop songs out of context, rephrased ever so slightly to sound like sage words of wisdom. Not even only once in awhile. Office workers don't keep an Einsturzende Neubauten symbol scribbled on their post-it notes that are important.

It's those small subversions that keep the parasite from getting an internal hold, I think, while seeming like harmless quirks to the ones who are already part of the botnet.

Then it was on to CA177, which is difficult to describe to anyone who hasn't had the wrong kind of near-death experience.  I have pictures, which I will post as soon as possible.  The point at which the highway meets the horizon never changes, and the scenery around you recycles like in a Scooby Doo chase scene.

We have places like that around here, except the horizon bobs up and down every twenty yards in a disconcertingly artificial fashion. Eventually I realized that it wasn't bobbing anymore and turned my head to the side to see what the fuck happened. And there it is again like a crowbar to the kidney, nearly making me want to puke. Turns out I had taken to headbanging subconsciously just because of the rhythmic nature and the horrible sickening feeling the shit gives you.

I'm willing to bet the special hells you have out there and the special hells we have out here are connected to the same dimension of condemned trailer homes and disturbing mechanical monotony, like everywhere is made up of stock footage from the Twilight Zone.

Much thanks all around.

I'm immersing myself in some of the most horrifically stupid places on the internet currently because I feel a properly polemic OKM being birthed deep down in my interdimensional portal to the poomp plane.

I fed your cats to your cats.

I apologize for the resulting non-Euclidean geometry.

[gamey and silicon based]

On the off chance that its not a troll...

For awhile I was a regular practitioner of 'magic'. I had some very interesting experiments and experiences. I also found it useful for rewiring bits of my brain.

I didn't continue simply because doing the same thing, placing yourself in one specific mindset/model/belief system is (IMO) a bad idea. When I find a situation where I think magic would be useful, I still use it. I don't however, use it as a regular or daily practice.

Okay but did you do anything reality-shattering, like summoning demons?

There was this one time I summoned Astaroth but he was offended by MY breath and decided to leave. It was too bad, because I really could use some hidden treasure for the strip club.

Lucky bastard, all I ever got was nameless gibbering horrors from beyond the vasty deeps.

It's really hard to command something that doesn't have a name at all, let alone one that can be enunciated with the human mouth.

No see, the problem is you're summoning alien things. What you want to do is summon things that can actually assist with human affairs like giving you the cure for dropsy and such.

But what if the human affair I want assistance with is the hunt for alien life?

This is so complicated! Is there a user manual I can read? And maybe wipe my ass with the next time i accidentally summon something eldritch and rugose?

No! You don't hunt alien life, it's far too gamey and silicon based. Hunt deer like a normal person. Here, throw a spear at this painting of a deer first though, it will ensure success in the hunt.

I LIKE EATING VIDEOGAMES

On the off chance that its not a troll...

For awhile I was a regular practitioner of 'magic'. I had some very interesting experiments and experiences. I also found it useful for rewiring bits of my brain.

I didn't continue simply because doing the same thing, placing yourself in one specific mindset/model/belief system is (IMO) a bad idea. When I find a situation where I think magic would be useful, I still use it. I don't however, use it as a regular or daily practice.

Okay but did you do anything reality-shattering, like summoning demons?

There was this one time I summoned Astaroth but he was offended by MY breath and decided to leave. It was too bad, because I really could use some hidden treasure for the strip club.

Lucky bastard, all I ever got was nameless gibbering horrors from beyond the vasty deeps.

It's really hard to command something that doesn't have a name at all, let alone one that can be enunciated with the human mouth.

No see, the problem is you're summoning alien things. What you want to do is summon things that can actually assist with human affairs like giving you the cure for dropsy and such.

But what if the human affair I want assistance with is the hunt for alien life?

This is so complicated! Is there a user manual I can read? And maybe wipe my ass with the next time i accidentally summon something eldritch and rugose?

On the off chance that its not a troll...

For awhile I was a regular practitioner of 'magic'. I had some very interesting experiments and experiences. I also found it useful for rewiring bits of my brain.

I didn't continue simply because doing the same thing, placing yourself in one specific mindset/model/belief system is (IMO) a bad idea. When I find a situation where I think magic would be useful, I still use it. I don't however, use it as a regular or daily practice.

Okay but did you do anything reality-shattering, like summoning demons?

There was this one time I summoned Astaroth but he was offended by MY breath and decided to leave. It was too bad, because I really could use some hidden treasure for the strip club.

Lucky bastard, all I ever got was nameless gibbering horrors from beyond the vasty deeps.

It's really hard to command something that doesn't have a name at all, let alone one that can be enunciated with the human mouth.

On the off chance that its not a troll...

For awhile I was a regular practitioner of 'magic'. I had some very interesting experiments and experiences. I also found it useful for rewiring bits of my brain.

I didn't continue simply because doing the same thing, placing yourself in one specific mindset/model/belief system is (IMO) a bad idea. When I find a situation where I think magic would be useful, I still use it. I don't however, use it as a regular or daily practice.

Okay but did you do anything reality-shattering, like summoning demons?

I had a few unscheduled reality excursions. I blame all the ghost chilis and the loose bathroom fixtures.

The only thing I'd question is the idea of drones and the self being different. Were all on programming, but some of us are dedicated to rewriting it. Though I think you've implied as much. Good rant.

We may be all on programming, but you can think of certain memes as malware that puts us into part of a sort of wetware botnet. This came up regarding a certain user's actions in certain threads: certain societal memes like, in this case, "talking about the Holocaust to say anything more in depth than 'it was bad' makes you a Nazi" are drone-behavior, and are proliferated by the Machine.

Thank you agent double oh dusk.

That was a fucking harrowing tale and I am glad you are in (I am assuming) a better place now, it really sounds like you had to learn about life the hard way and I am hoping that circumstances have improved since then.

They have, but I'm still in what would be considered by most a "bad situation". But when you're so far into the margins you're off the page, every step you can claw yourself back up is a tremendous feat.

Well done, you faced the kind of test that most never have to or would die trying and you came out coherent. You have my respect. So where do you see yourself going next, and what are your plans for when you get there?

I want to live the starving artist for awhile. Jobs just don't do it for me, and I can live on less money per month than most folks sink into their cars after that particular adventure. I want to CREATE and get paid for it for awhile. Even if it's just three bucks a month.

After I do that for awhile, I might think about comfort. I think I'll be moving the hell out of this part of the country, or maybe out of the US altogether. There's still a bit of an old fashioned bottom-rung support system in some of the EU that provides what little it can for people who sunk as low as I did, and I want to support it however I can.

Oh, it's WAY worse than that.

I worked there once for about 2 months, just so I could sell weed out of the drive-thru window (before they automated all that shit). It was enlightening and informative for all the wrong reasons.

One thing I took from it: NEVER EVER EVER FUCKING EVER eat any "chicken" products from McD's.

This sounds like a story I want to hear!

On a reread, it turns out my own personal coming of age IS misery porn. What a surprise.

And also that this changed direction a couple times. Damn. I need to hone my rant skills!

TGRR I MAED YUO SUMTHIN

Consider it an apology for the shitty time I gave you when I was here before, and for joining in the DRUGZ N DRUGZ N DRUGZ

Some of you might remember me from my last go around these parts.

No doubt, you remember me as a whiny attention whore. And that is absolutely correct.

I'd like to talk to you about an earlier time I was here, even before that -- as a half-hearted 15 year old lurker. I almost joined, but decided at that time it wasn't for me.

Y'know who I was at that point? I was Tupac L. Porker, or a less bizarrely interesting hirley0. I was the all-dreaded Earnest Pinealist. I thought I was both intelligent as fuck and insanely hilarious, that anyone I talked to would be in fucking TEARS from the sheer torrent of gushing intelligent and witty patter, and that I should probably be an objet d'culte for everyone I ran into. Online, that is.

In real life I had just begun to recognize that hey, America! isn't all it's cracked up to be. I was smart as hell, make no mistake. Hell, I was capable of reading the newspaper at the age of 4 and had coherent conversation with my family 3 years prior to that -- yeah, that's a 1 year old speaking in full sentences. But smart young people, I find, tend to be most vulnerable when they're smart enough to understand adult ideologies and inexperienced enough to not realize that everyone has something to sell them -- at gunpoint if need be. Not to mention that among their own peer groups, they become targets.

I was 15, and I was JUST waking up to the fact that folks have a uniform they want me to buy and put on and never take off, so when the time comes that hey, I'd like to try something else, you find your flesh has grown around the fabric like trees grow around fences. Discordia very likely saved me from becoming a countercultural rube by stepping into my life and telling me that hey, these people can sell you expectations as sure as they can finely tailored suits. And helping me come to the realization that I'd already bought enough of those expectations to have really fucked myself up, because I bought them at the age level where an eyedropper full of ethanol will both get you drunk and ruin your ability to grow in a healthy manner for the rest of your life.

And yeah, that's where all the horrific shit I'm struggling with mentally comes into play, but that's a story for another OKM at another time. This is about my own personal "coming of age," not misery porn.

But to get back to that fourth paragraph up there, waiting patiently for its continuation. The summation of the nature of my knowledge and life at that time meant that I felt myself to be like a god online, while I realized that the people around me in real life were drones -- but far more dangerous for BEING drones. Because they'd have the canned responses that everyone would listen to and nod in agreement with and forget that the drone responsible for what-the-fuck-ever was ever involved. No doubt, the combination of the "stay unnoticed" and "HEY LOOK AT ME" bullshit led to some serious cognitive dissonance that is probably with me to this day.

And on the ass end of 15 years old, having already found and read the "Gospel" according to Mal-2, the information I had gleaned in my life meant that when I found PD.com, I lurked for a bit and decided (quite reasonably) that it wasn't for me. It wasn't a conscious decision, either. I'm sure i wrote it off with some silly rationalization, but what really happened was that my subconscious had assimilated the relevant info and, while it was still putting it together piecemeal with painstaking care, realied that I was NOT READY for PD.com. There were tiers above 15-year-old me in the world, and this was not a place for the careless or the young.

So I never joined. Never participated. And thank fuck I didn't.

Skip ahead -- what was it, 3 years? 2008? Somewhere between 2007 and 2009, whenever Cait M.R. joined the forums. Feels like a decade between 2005 and whenever I popped up, though.

Anyway: I run into PD.com again. And this time, I join.

In the intervening timespan I'd realized a few things.
1: Everyone is a potential drone.
2: Most of them aren't harmful, not even if they're drones.
3: Drones are preprogrammed to deal with situations in highly specific ways, and will never deviate from that behavior. To wit, they do not make exceptions.
4: I am an exceptional person, but (as per no. 3) when I try to discuss the Nazi genocide in school, to dig down to the root psychology of the whole thing, the teachers get scared and I get an in-school suspension.
5: Your family is not going to stand by you if you start acting against the societal programming they've grown up with.

Most of these are the building blocks of what PD.com has come to call The Machine. For the most part, I was still coming to terms with them, especially 5. And I was still misinterpreting 4 -- I considered myself "exceptional" in the special snowflake sense, not as someone who exceptions should be made for. (Which is every human being -- not all situations are equal, and most people will be put in an extremely unfair position at least once in their lives.)

As a result, I was not at all ready for PD. Not that I realized it, because I'd figured out a lot of the stuff these guys were talking about. Not to such, depth, of course, but I was on the right road. And I never really paid any attention to anything that veered from my viewpoint, so it's not like I was going to learn.

Some of you may remember that I contributed nothing, started a ton of IRC drama, then came to the forum freaking the fuck out and begging for help when the floor I'd relied on as a given (shelter, food, hygiene) got pulled right out from under me (learning point 5 the hard way, always good fun!) and then disappeared when I realized the true interpretation of point 4 the hard way from the folks here.  That is a perfectly accurate representation of my time here.

Now comes the fun part. I wanted it to be a story, but you can't tell this kind of story. Sometimes, the truth is too hard.

Some of you might think that Tucson is the worst spot in the US, followed closely by Florida. You're wrong. No, those are just the places that do the worst job of pulling a blanket over the dry rot and horror. (For the record, Tucson's dry rot is still around 169% more worser than anywhere else's, and they didn't even bother finding a blanket to try to cover it with, they just used their own feces and the corpses of homeless folks.)

Wanna know where the worst spot in the US is?

It's below the poverty level.

And I'm not talking about anything so quaint as the ghetto, or even the rescue mission I was in for awhile, or the time I got mugged in Pittsburgh.

I'm talking about hiding in the corner of a mudhut about 5 hours walk from the nearest gas station, hoping I don't get raped, robbed, or catch tuberculosis. In the middle of a room full of filthy alcoholics and junkies. The real pariahs. The ones that don't even have programs left to help.

I'm talking about writing myself a 201 so that I'd have a safe place to sleep and the luxury of daily showers. And then attempting suicide when the discharge notice comes so that I get to stay a little longer. (Your tax dollars at work! Thank the gods for free insurance for the poor folks, it's probably why I'm alive.)

I'm talking about finding a way to make phonecalls every day, and begging my family to let me at least pitch a goddamn tent in their yard so I can be somewhere familiar and safe. And getting told I'm insane and a sexual deviant, so no. And calling back the next day anyway.

I'm talking about nearly 2 years of being at THE bottom of THE lowest income bracket. Roger's Horrorology posts are amazing, they're the closest I can come to describing The Place, the proverbial bottom of the abortion clinic dumpster, the place where being a career criminal is an improvement because that keeps you alive and -- perhaps even more important when you're that far down -- noticed.

I wasn't guilty when I went to jail, or even when I got out. But I sure was guilty a year later. Of a lot more than I ever want to admit to.

And that brings us to the present day. When I came back to PD.com.

You don't go through harrowing, life-or-death experiences and come out the same person. You don't do it over and over constantly for a period of months on end. You CERTAINLY don't cut yourself open nice and big just so you can have a hot meal the next day and come out a whole, healthy human being.

I'm not sure I can describe how I've changed, this time. It's a bit of a "paradigm shift" -- there's nothing comparable to it in the rest of my life. But suffice it to say, I feel now I can finally say this is where I belong. Before, I was a stupid kid who thought she knew the way the world worked. Who was trying to fit in, as horrible as that might sound, treating the forum like TGRR and Nigel are fashion designers whose clothes only the cool kids get to wear.

Before that, I was an even stupider kid who didn't care how the world worked because I Was Special.

Now, I've been through the War. Not the War with guns and trenches and tanks, but the secret War for survival still raging below our radar. More importantly, I survived it. The war where there's no rules of engagement, and if you commit war crimes no Geneva Convention will have anything to say about it.

When you go through that, like I said, it changes you. It twists you. Some call it PTSD, some call it a disease. I like to let them think that, if it makes them feel more comfortable. But I know which one of us is going to be alive when the system goes up in flames and down in smoke.

Now, some might be inclined to say: "but it's not a war!" I'll answer them in a roundabout way.

Urban primitives think they want to go to where I was. I want to see them last ten minutes. I met folks who actually collected the bones of the guys they killed.

To expand on that a little: Ronald Poppo could have been even less than a goddamn statistic. If the attack had been under the bridge, no one would have ever noticed. The fellow was already believed to be dead, it's not like anyone would have ever known he'd even been in the area to begin with. And we modern monkeys don't remember that surveillance can't see through walls. It can't see under streets, or in sewers or storm drains. There are, I'd guess, around a third again as many murders as are ever counted, all among marginal folks so removed from society that they're practically already playing in the ashes of our empire.

If that's not a war, I don't know what is.

I don't have stem cells anymore, Roger, I used them all when I had to repair my organs on a daily basis in order to combat the ravages of sheer eyeball-swelling horror in the underground of the Last Bastion of the Free World.





I can, however, send you Enrico Salazar.







All 32 of him.