ZOMG theft!

[Cain]

Thanks to Rev Smeg the Kilted on POEE for bringing this to my attention:

6. It's a fool-proof escape plan.

"Modern life is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief."

—Ernest Hemingway



Your life is a prison. You, sir, live in a cage.

Hold on, you say. I love my life. I have a swell time! I wouldn't trade it for anything!

Well, sure. I'm not saying it's not a gilded cage with amenities galore, and I'm certain you've learned to play all sorts of delightful tunes when you artfully rattle the bars.

What I am saying is you are trapped in a prison of conformity and routine: you must go to work, you must pay your bills, you must feed your pets, you must be at certain places at certain times and if you aren't then you're going to have to find a new cage to live in.

The first thing getting drunk does is make you aware that you are in a cage. Fuck that job, you'll think. It's a fucking drag. And fuck going to your in-laws' for Christmas, like you do every goddamn year. And you sure as hell don't want to go to church tomorrow.  Suddenly you can see the bars, and I don't mean the ones you're drinking in.

The second thing it does is make you forget the cage exists. You get so wrapped up in the good times everything else seems a distant blur, a vague childhood memory where nothing much happened. Drink enough and you'll have a hard time telling the cab driver on which street your cage is situated. Whoever said alcohol won't drown your worries didn't fill up the bathtub with enough booze.

Of course, employing alcohol to escape reality is vilified these days. Somehow it's a terrible thing. The bars of the cage are there to protect you, they'll tell you. What they don't understand is that the thing you're trying most to escape is right there in the cage with you. Namely, you.

From Modern Drunkard Magazine's "10 best thing about alcohol" article

[Cramulus]

Shit! 
that's really kind of uncanny. The BIP pamphlet is Kopyleft, correct?

Here's the original article, just so people can compare and contrast

Hey, kid. Welcome to Prison.


You think you just woke up here one day, right? Think again. It was your whole life that brought you to this. Fact is, you were born to be here. Go ahead, look around. I’ll be here when you get back.


Looks smaller than it is, don’t it? Sometimes, it doesn’t even feel all that bad. But still… You look through those bars, and you see all that you’re missing. Hopes. Dreams. What could-have-been. Here, put your palms up to the Black Iron, grab the bars, let me show you something.


Feel that? That’s all the books you’ve read. And that entire wall over there is your adolescence. Look up: It’s your CD collection. The floor you woke up on? Your parents. Like I said, you were born to be here. It’s your life, it’s the cold trap of your own existence. You painted yourself into a corner.


So, now you’re wondering why you feel trapped here, in your own life. Why now, why today, can you see the bars of a Black Iron Prison that you made for yourself? Because you stopped reacting, and took a couple of steps forward. You thought you could do what you wanted, you tried to be self reliant, and bang. You smacked your head against the wall.


What’s that? Yeah. That’s when the claustrophobia sets in. When you didn’t know you were trapped, everything was fine. But now that you know, you can see your entire, tired, monotonous life stretch out before you, trapped in these 4 walls, these 6 sides. Breathe, kid. It’s just abject panic that you’re feeling right now. Some even say that this is what death feels like: An unchanging life, immune and unfeeling to what you really want.


Look around you. Look at these cold, black bars. The colorless ceiling. The hard ground. That’s your universe. That’s the world you’re going to be living in for the rest of your life here in Prison. You’re going to live out your life in quiet desperation. Or, not so quiet if you decide to take the rife/bell tower route. Either way, long or short, it’ll feel the same. Dead, unchanging.


So, if you’re interested, I’d like to invite you to a jailbreak...


Just turn around.

[Cain]

It is, but we should have made it copyright.

http://www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com/issues/54/54_10_Best_Things.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Kelly_Rich is the author of the article and, strangely enough, owner of the Magazine.

[Payne]

Maybe Frank Kelly Rich is Roger, on some long running and convoluted troll.

It couldn't be any of the actual alcoholics here. We can't type articles that long...

[Requia ☣]

It is, but we should have made it copyright.

Does the BIP actually *say* it's copyleft?  in any meaningful manner?

Though I'd worry about this guy taking credit for the work, even if you don't care if he uses it, cause eventually a lawyer is going to come after someone distributing the BIP for infringing on what he thinks is modern drunkard magazine's IP.

[Cain]

I doubt it.  It was only published this year, for starters (check the copyright date on this, and the previous issue).  Plus we have the posts leading to its creation all on site, with date stamps and everything.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Since no two sentences are significantly alike, I doubt any lawsuit could hold up. It absolutely reads like a derivative work, but derivation is not plagiarism.

[barumunk]

cant we all (ie: you all) just send him a cazilion hate mails, not that it will change anything, but twill make everyone feel better 

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

The concept of "prison as metaphor for life" existed long before it was written on this board. I'm not saying that they aren't related, only that assuming they are related may be a bit of the LAWOFIVES....

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

What Rat said.

[Requia ☣]

Yes, well, I only read the drunk guys and not the original right then, and I thought that they were identical without the comparison.


Can we please forget I ever said anything?

[East Coast Hustle]

this is probably my fault.

one of my friends was one of the first subscribers and apparently knows the guys who founded the magazine pretty well.

I turned him onto the BIP about a year ago and it's entirely possible that he passed it along to those guys.

AFAIC, if other people want to spread the meme for us, more power to them.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

AFAIC, if other people want to spread the meme for us, more power to them.

That's kinda how I feel about it too.

[Cainad (dec.)]

AFAIC, if other people want to spread the meme for us, more power to them.

That's kinda how I feel about it too.

3rd'ed