blah blog blah

I advocate burning down the government...

2011-02-28T15:52:00.000-08:00

Even the part that I mooch off of.

The VA will never cease to be surprisingly frustrating.
Even when they make things better, they're dicks about it.

Today I got a note saying I needed to schedule a visit with my VA PCP. Fair enough. I've got nothing better to do most days, and it's been a couple of years since I've seen the guy.
Traditionally, when the scheduling operator asks, "when do you want your appointment," you give them a time of day that works for you, and they say something to the effect of, "OK, your appointment is three months from today at the time of day you requested (+/- 4 hours)".

So I call today, tell the guy what I need and when works for me and he gets all fucky, wanting to know when I want the appointment.
"Dude, I just said 'mid-morning'. What's the problem?"

"I can't get into the calendar with 'mid-morning' as the date, sir," he starts to get petulant.

"Since when do you guys have a calendar? I thought you used a Magic Eight-ball or something!"

To his credit, he doesn't directly rise to the bait, instead attempting to sound high-minded and superior in a breathy, nasal whine, "I need a date to check the calendar so that we can serve your needs as best we can."

Glancing at the wall calendar, I rap off the first date I focus on: 10 March 2011.

"What time," the operator asks.

"What's the first one you've got?"

He tells me 0700.

"No, that won't do. Next?"

We eventually settle on 0830, pausing to haggle over 1030 for a couple of minutes -no, I don't know how we got that far, either.

Anyway.
The point is, the Portland VA Medical Center seems to have stepped up it's game, splitting off into a handful of clinics in the metro area rather than trying to keep everything packed into the big morgue on the hill.
The price, it seems, is having to work my way through people who probably define 'repartee' as "the barbecue the day after the SuperBowl".

This one's for Sony!

2011-02-10T16:43:00.001-08:00

erk: C0 CE FE 84 C2 27 F7 5B D0 7A 7E B8 46 50 9F 93 B2 38 E7 70 DA CB 9F F4 A3 88 F8 12 48 2B E2 1B
riv: 47 EE 74 54 E4 77 4C C9 B8 96 0C 7B 59 F4 C1 4D
pub: C2 D4 AA F3 19 35 50 19 AF 99 D4 4E 2B 58 CA 29 25 2C 89 12 3D 11 D6 21 8F 40 B1 38 CA B2 9B 71 01 F3 AE B7 2A 97 50 19
R: 80 6E 07 8F A1 52 97 90 CE 1A AE 02 BA DD 6F AA A6 AF 74 17
n: E1 3A 7E BC 3A CC EB 1C B5 6C C8 60 FC AB DB 6A 04 8C 55 E1
K: BA 90 55 91 68 61 B9 77 ED CB ED 92 00 50 92 F6 6C 7A 3D 8D
Da: C5 B2 BF A1 A4 13 DD 16 F2 6D 31 C0 F2 ED 47 20 DC FB 06 70

A tragic end of an era

2010-10-01T03:16:00.000-07:00

I very much fear that Sir Terry Pratchett's affliction of Alzheimer's Disease has begun it's inevitable and lamentable onslaught.

I just finished reading Unseen Academicals, and I regret to say, I don't think Pratchett wrote it.
I have no doubt the story is his, and that he was involved with the book's writing, but the book itself...

It didn't feel right. It didn't read like Pratchett's previous works. It lacked some... spark, some infusion of wit that used to lead to the smallest pune (or pun, possibly) being worthy of laughing aloud.

The satire was there; the keen observations of human nature, of the peculiarities of society, but the book as a whole lacked Terry's uncannily deep and lively touch.

I think I shall now begin a period of mourning that will last approximately the rest of my life.

The human mind is a puzzling thing

2010-09-29T12:50:00.001-07:00

And this even a "zomgwtf is wrong with these people" post.

So, I glanced a the headline for the most recent post from my friends @ Davis House News and all I saw was a jot about the last trombone class for the year. I had to stop and purge my brain before I double checked.

2010-08-26T11:36:00.000-07:00

Huh.

2010-06-08T20:57:00.000-07:00

Looks like I flubbed the html on that last one.
Maybe I should have just used youtube's embed code.
Oh, well.

So... apparently, I graduated today.
I'm not entirely sure what that means.

I can tell you for damned sure it doesn't mean I'm done.
All the classic cliches about endless struggles? The others about being one's own worst enemy?
Yeah.

But it's cool. For a given value of "cool", anyway.
I haven't got much else to do most days but kick the shit out of myself. ;)

Missed out on a job opportunity today. Turns out they interviewed internally first, then hired one of their receptionists on the spot. From answering the phone to IT. The American Dream, I guess.
Oh, well.

Don't read too much into it...

2010-06-07T22:49:00.000-07:00

it's just a song I liked enough to share.

Oh, it stings at times, but it's just a song.

hm.

2010-06-06T12:50:00.000-07:00

…
What to do with myself?
I’ve got a strange skill set, to say the least.
There are plenty of things I’m good at, but none of the stuff I enjoy really works as a way of life.
At the moment, I’m afraid, I’m having trouble finding true enjoyment in anything; understandably, I think.
I spend much of my time these days examining the things flitting, oozing and blazing through my mind. Trying to excavate parts of me too long calcified.
Some of it, I’ve come to terms with. Other things, I’m still processing, still exploring. Some, I might never understand. I think that I’ll be able to accept the bits that elude me, once I have some idea of what these things are. I may be able to accept riddles with no answers, but first I need to find out exactly what those riddles are.
I think I understand where I’ve been these past years. I’m quite certain that I understand the better part of how current events came to be. I regret it, and it shames me, but I’m trying my best not to get sucked into it. That’s no way to live.
An (un)healthy part of my mind wants to do just that, though- just curl back up in my hole until I’m emotionally dead again. To be honest, it’s not that it hurts any less in that hole- but at least the pain in there is familiar.
Instead, I breathe. I try to relax and let the feelings move like waves- coming in, then receding. Admittedly, a lot of the waves are still crashing in, but I try. Day by day, breath by breath, I work at it. In some things, I think I’ve enjoyed some measure of success. But I know there is so much more ahead. I know the fight is far from done. Some days are so much harder than others. Sometimes it feels like too much. Sometimes it’s all I can do to hang on to what I’ve gained, to keep hold of the clarity I’ve gained, the clarity that is, frankly, my only hope as a human being. So I keep breathing. I put these thoughts down in writing, hoping to alleviate some of the pain, hoping to draw some of the venom out.
I’m not sure what I want out of life, and that anxiety is added to everything that’s going on. I’m afraid of the future. I try to keep things day-to-day, try to keep myself grounded and keep things immediate enough to focus on things without the anxiety, without the fear, but that’s hard, too. But I cannot avoid the future. It descends inexorably- a mountain grinding down on all of us moment by moment. And I don’t know how to face it alone.
Oh, I know the mechanics of how to survive out in the wide world. It’s been a while since I had to worry about that stuff, but I know how it’s done. But between having no idea what I want, without a tangible rudder and starting from pretty literally a backward-moving starting point, the future seems more than daunting.

heh. Not bad, I guess.

2010-06-01T20:07:00.000-07:00

Something occurred to me today on my way… home… from my emo-moshing at Kaiser’s East Interstate facility:
I’ve been driving through downtown every day for the last week or so!
That may seem like a really odd thing to be excited about or proud of, but not so long ago it was a huge trial for me to even ride in a car downtown, let alone drive.
This realization led to another- other drivers don’t bother me so much anymore; at least, not like they used to.
Oh, I admit that other drivers still frustrate the hell out of me sometimes, even piss me off. But there have been times over the last few years when they would absolutely enrage me.

This all came to me as I was sitting on the raised Burnside Bridge, waiting for a ship to pass beneath. It suddenly struck me that I had never done that before. I’d never been on any of the bridges here, waiting for a boat. Not that this is actually a banner accomplishment or anything- it was just a thing, but a novel thing. Something I had not experienced.
As small as it may seem, it was sort of cool.

Journalism without Sensationalism

2010-04-12T17:52:00.000-07:00

Huh.
I didn't realize anyone did that anymore.

NPR

I got bored at about 2 this morning.

2010-03-18T12:21:00.000-07:00

So I rented a movie from On Demand.
I watched a scifi/horror flick by the name of Pandorum.
It starred this one guy, one of the Quaids and a German chick. And a couple of other people, but whatever.

It was ok.

The ship (LOVED the exterior design- very unconventional), was more believable than, say, the Event Horizon (inside-out porcupine was just too Hellraiser-ene), offering the dark, tight tension of the colony on LV426 (Aliens) on a much grander scale (again- ref. Event Horizon).

So, it's got a running thread about Hibernation Psychosis, Hibernation Instability, whatever. Cool- psycho-thriller aspects, but it doesn't hijack the scifi/action/horror core of the story. I can appreciate that- I didn't rent this hoping for The Usual Suspects- I don't need a mystery-thriller trying to take over my spaceship-in-danger movie.

It's also a race-against-time-to-save-the-ship movie.
That works, too. All things considered, the ship probably could have used some maintenance, anyway.

It's also an origin story of super-Reavers. Or something.
The monsters are kind of explained- just not satisfactorily. For me, anyway.
I mean, I understood the explanation, and I can even accept it within the realm of suspended disbelief- I'd have liked to have seen a little more crunch, though. Just my thing.

Now- the HUGEST thing the movie has going for it is the guy that plays the protagonist- you know: that one guy.

He can act pretty well, I suppose. I've got no real complaints.
But what he does brilliantly is this... well, it's like the sudden-pain "o-face".
He doesn't grunt, or scowl or grimace like a traditional action hero when dropped on his spine, oh no- his whole face widens with shock, his eyes bugging, mouth gaping like a fish as the air is knocked out of him.
It's perfect.

oh- completely forgot!

2010-03-13T17:22:00.001-08:00

I'm an internet hooligan!

I got banned from CNN's comments section on Thursday!
It all started with an article about suicide.

It was a pretty good article overall, if a bit narrow-minded for my tastes in certain areas.

Some cat commented that the nature of the individual must be considered, the situation, and above all, the individual's rights.
He didn't write well, and his opinion was fairly ill-received, but I felt his position had merit, so I stepped in to support his ideas.

Keeping things civil, I participated sparingly in the ensuing... conversation.
I was surprised how few religious-right "abomination against God" replies; but overall, no one seemed to be willing to consider the notion of a consenting adult's right to order their own life- or death.

No one was willing to accept the notion of choice.

So I tried one last tactic (as it turned out, one last post before everything I said was deleted and I was banned)-
I asked (more or less), "If you can support a woman's right to choose to abort a pregnancy, whether the choice is based on convenience or anything else short of medical necessity; how can you not support the choice of a 40 year-old severe chronic pain victim when he decides to abort a life of continued and increasing pain?"

Apparently CNN's got an allergy to my version of liberal ideology.
Not as severe as Fox News, perhaps, but still...

...just what the FUCK was that?!

2010-03-13T16:00:00.000-08:00

Look- I don't usually blog about video games... hell , I don't usually blog at all, but shit, man!

Right, so here's the deal- last fall, a pretty sweet FPS (First-Person Shooter) by the name of "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" (henceforth, "MW2") was released. It was the sequel to the equally sweet CoD: MW released a couple of years ago.
The opening of MW2 was pretty intense, from this vet's perspective- 'urban' Afghanistan looks a lot like urban Eritrea or Somalia, or Iraq, for that matter. I've got an Iraq vet's testament for the... striking verisimilitude of the setting, as well.

After the opening of the game, though, with the Russian invasion of the US and all that stuff, the story becomes... fantastic enough that the stressors of simulated combat aren't really an issue.

Great game- graphically and technically astounding, great gameplay, far-fetched but entertaining story. However far-fetched the invasion might be, it was at least justified by the ongoing tread of the story.

More recently released is what is thought of as the prime competitor to MW2, "Battlefield: Bad Company 2" (BC2 from now on). It's gotten the same rave reviews from the same media sources as MW2.
And frankly: it sucks.

Graphically, it's far inferior; making out-of-date uniforms on 'near-future' US soldiers look like they're woven from coarse wool and poorly dyed, weird geometries slashing across characters' flesh instead of fluid movement, et cetera.
The mechanics of gameplay are old and outmoded, and the voice acting and characterizations are pathetic.
The player's team throughout the whole game consists of a crusty black sergeant on the cusp of retirement, a hillbilly Texan, and a techy machinegunner with acne scars from Jersey. Oh- and the civilian hippy chopper pilot that ferries the team around. WTF is that all about?

The story... hooooo boy... it started well enough, I suppose- a fictional Japanese superweapon towards the end of WW2- then sort of fell apart and oozed along. The superweapon is lost and forgotten as we drop the Bomb(s), and history moves on.
I'm still not entirely sure why my four-man team has anything to do with any of this- it's stressed over and over that we're not 'special ops'- so what in the wide, wide world of sports are the four of us doing in foreign countries waging small wars? Conventional units aren't that small and don't do that sort of shit.
But here's the real kicker: the thing that made the whole story a weak, derivative piece of coprolite: after all the shit you go through in the campaign, the game ends with you being informed (by a lieutenant general [the same asshole that got you into all this shit to begin with]who conveniently happens to be nearby when you crash a plane near Nacadoches, Texas) that the Russians are invading the US! Nowhere in the story are US/Russian tensions or hostilities mentioned- we save the day, get back to the US and then: "lol u n00bs- all ur base r belong to Ivan lolomgwtfhax!" Like I said- fucking pathetic.

A single huge credit to BC2- as you unearth certain parts of the Japanese superweapon history through the game, various cut scenes give you a little insight as to wtf is supposed to be going on.
What makes these cinematic intermissions frigging awesome is the musical score- it's straight out of the Indiana Jones movies. The softer, slower orchestral pieces as Indy examines a prize? Yep. That's the stuff.

I've got to try out the respective games' multiplayer functionality next- I can only assume that's what the comparative reviews are based on.
If they are, though, why are devs wasting their time making singleplayer campaigns? If good multiplayer excuses all faults in singleplayer, why waste the extra development time and effort?
If the BC2's multiplayer is so good as to rate the same overall ratings as MW2, then they should have just made a mp-only game with an sp tutorial.

well, bugger...

2010-02-26T13:51:00.000-08:00

Chris linked me.
I suppose that means I'm obligated to do one of my notorious biannual posts. :p

Right... So.
Um.
I really don't have much to say.

I've been put on and gotten off Methadone now; no, not detox- chronic pain therapy.
That was some nasty shit; sorta like a two-month blackout. I was a complete dick the whole time and entirely unaware of it. Long story on how I figured out what was up.

Working on re-sculpting skulls for casting/production right now- always best to avoid trademarks and all that shit. Only eastern Asia manages to throw all international copyright laws out the window and get away with it.
Once I finish in the next few weeks, it may very well turn up on the frogblog.

Like I said: I've not got much to say. Everyone else that blogs seems to have most of my topics pretty well covered.

Say what you will about the church

2009-08-10T23:44:00.001-07:00

(I'll almost certainly agree with you, after all)
I will grant, however, that Francis of Assisi was a pretty damned good poet.

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

Leaving out the 'lord' and the 'divine master' bits, I think it's a pretty damned nifty phrasing of the golden rule- just taken to a wider scale.
Sort of a step beyond doing unto others and so forth.
Help- because you can. It doesn't have to be because you're trying to do God's work, as it were, but because... well, because you can.

My brain chemistry is pretty screwed up right now. Everybody who needs to know, knows. The really short version is, I tried something to make a thing better, and it only made other things worse.

Anyway.
I stumbled across this little ditty as performed lyrically by Sarah McLachlan, and it really struck a chord with me.
I'm not entirely sure why. It probably hearkens back to a time when I believed I could make the world a better place.

/end quasi-emo gush of the night.

You'd think they could have found a trainer...

2009-07-02T17:04:00.000-07:00

How is it, that in 7 years as Buffy Summers (the Slayer), Sarah Michelle Gellar never learned how to throw a punch?
I mean, I've never had much use for punches myself; I'm more of a knees, elbows and boots kinda guy, but at least I know how it's done.
I mean, sheesh- just because your character is superhuman, it's ok to punch like a girl?

As a side gripe- why bother fighting all those bad guys? Hunt them down and slaughter them, then go have lunch at a nice bistro.
Don't fight on the enemy's terms, when and where the enemy is strong; have a wholesome breakfast and then napalm the Big Bad while he's in bed.

You're the slayer, not the scrapper.
'Buffy the Vampire Boxer' is closer to the truth.
I'll grant, it doesn't have the same ring...

I am not an individual.

2009-03-08T14:36:00.000-07:00

And neither are you.
Think about it- if you wanted to get really simplistic, you could classify 'self' as the voice in the darkness behind your eyes.
But that 'voice' isn't a voice, is it? It's a chorus of voices, even if most of us give no thought to subtle refrains and variegated threads of that chorus.
What about the parts of your brain that track the demands of your body? Your body which is always too hot or too cold, too hungry or too full, too uncomfortable...
Sometimes you listen, not even realizing you are- you think it's your idea to eat... and it is- but it's not just 'your' idea.

I am a committee, and so are you.
Freud, Jung and all of those prats would natter on about the ego and the id, the conscious and the subconscious.
But there is only the committee. It is all one thing, yet the components wrestle for dominance constantly.

The parts that communicate with the body have the ability to override logic, compassion, everything.
Why? Because those are the members that are most closely related to the oldest members of the mind- the dark, red, entirely uncivilized parts that coil in the hindbrain, waiting. The parts that joined up before civilization, the parts that were there before we were properly human.
And with the occasional exception, the parts of the mind that end up running the show when the world crumbles under your feet.

Amazing species, humanity. Until it all goes pear shaped, we never know if we're predator, prey or other. Those primal voices from our brain stem are all the same- we all come from the same origins- so why is it that he is predator, she is prey and I am other?

What part of the committee... taints, dilutes, those old voices?

Why did he wet his pants under fire, even thought he continued to fight? Because he is prey, but training allowed him to function, to some degree, regardless. Why did that one go nuts- nearly berserk- fighting back? Maybe he's predator, or maybe he's just particularly dangerous prey... I don't know.

And why did the world slow down for me? Crystal clear and perfect, I'd swear I could see the disturbances in the air from passing bullets, I had nearly been killed, might still be, and the world... was... perfect.
I felt the broken ceramic back-plate grind against me as I shifted target to target, the blood running from my nose and split lips, soaking the cravat tied around my face against the road dust...
Shit.
This wasn't supposed to be a war story.

The point is, people often talk about your mind playing tricks when it thinks it's gonna die, and maybe it does. But I don't think that's what was going on.

I was calm because the the deep, feral things and the rest of the committee were in perfect accord. The mind cannot be allowed to anticipate death if it's going to destroy it's threats most effectively. Does that make me other?
And it never failed me. Heh. It's probably the last time in my life that my mind wasn't messily fragmented. Maybe that much... integration isn't good for your brain.
That was probably the best time of my life, for all the horrifying shit I saw... Me and my Beast, all of mind, focused...
The Beast sniffed them out, and the rational mind dealt with them- the Beast's aim is, frankly, shit.

It's not paranoia...

2009-02-16T14:08:00.000-08:00

How can you know if you can trust someone with your death?

It's remarkably easy to trust someone with your life- you do it pretty much every time you step onto a crosswalk.
Most folks won't bother with your life, especially the strangers waiting on you at the stoplight.
But your family... your family's statistically more likely to kill you, yet, perhaps perversely, they're also the ones who will fight to the bitter end to keep you alive.
Even if you don't want them to.
Who can you trust with your death?

See, some of the cases are silly- lady's got the mind of a gourd but you're keeping her alive through artificial means? Absurd, but it's your money, mate.

But what about the coma patient that shows brain activity? How long do you wait? How long do you leave your loved one trapped in their own mind? IF they wake up, will they be the same person? Will they even be sane?

How about Cancer Dude? The guy with the slow but excruciating and untreatable cancer eating him alive? Who can he trust to understand his desire to punch out a little early?

I'm sure you can see where this is going.
This is not an e-suicide note. My readership isn't wide enough for it to be effective. ;)
This is just something that has nagged at me now and then, as the years pass and the pain grows worse and more frequent, as my mind frays just a little more.
No, not a suicide note.
Just pontificating a bit.

Would my family understand?
If not, what would it take to convince them?
Dare I risk them not understanding? Do I dare risk their betrayal of my trust to their misplaced faith- whatever that may be?

Who can you trust with your death?

Like tap-dancing on a landslide

2009-01-25T15:25:00.000-08:00

"This is the hand you were dealt..."?
So, can I fold?
I mean, it may not be a losing hand, per se, but it's no damned fun to play this one...

Stubbornly persisting on playing out a questionable hand is gambling addiction.
Holding because you expect the hand to get better- that's insanity.

I really hate going to the VA hospital...

2008-12-10T23:40:00.000-08:00

and have to get it off my chest.

See, it smells there.
It smells like sickness and suffering... it smells like slow death.
The VA hospital is not a place of healing- it's a place for soldiers (and sailors, Marines and airmen) to go to die.
It's a nursing home for terminal cases. Some of us just take longer than others.

Going there makes me feel sick and sad and unworthy.
The clink of the gas cylinder, the rasp of the lungs it supports; the shuffling click of the walker or cane... they are reminders of stoic suffering. Little snips of stories far more horrific than mine, riffs of ballads far more heroic.
All of these heroes, come to this dismal place to die.

Some have family there to help them, friends to prop them up. Some have nothing left but pride in comrades long dead.
I lament the multitudes that are yet to come- those yet to join our ranks. Yet to contribute to the miasma of broken hearts and minds, broken bodies and spirits. Those yet to rage and weep in frustration and pain- but never at the hospital.
There, we bear it stoically.

Because whether we acknowledge it or not, we're all there to die.

Heh. Heheheh.

2008-12-01T21:08:00.000-08:00

My brain's sizzling. It's gonna be one of those nights.
The question is: do I dope myself into a coma, or do I just roll with it?
See, it's not necessarily a good fizz I've got going. I'm feeling a bit irritable and belligerent.
As I put it to my brother and sister earlier: 'the cosmos is lucky it doesn't wear trousers, or I'd kick it right in the fork.'

~sigh~

So. What are you doing tonight?
I'm toying with all sorts of ideas- most of them require power tools, which I can't do here, so I'm also toying with the idea of going over to the shop.

Of course, that indubitably lead to people running around, shouting, 'What's the meaning of this,' or maybe, 'WTF?!?!?' Admittedly, the second is much more likely, even from friends that are at least as well-read as myself.
Anyway.
When people get all excited like that they get annoying. And inconvenient.
I'd rather not be inconvenienced by anyone I'd regret killing later. My brain chemistry's just not right for casual annoyance.
I toyed with the notion of running down a bicyclist earlier because he was riding slow and wobbly, and that caused the red blinker on his seat post to bob and weave in a way that I found off-putting.
The prospect of the much larger annoyance of coppers dissuaded me.

See? Even with my crazy-eyes on, I can maintain a modicum of control.

The doctors with the cattle prods would be so proud of me.

MWAHAHAhahahahaha!!!!

2008-11-18T22:35:00.000-08:00

...because more than two exclamation points are a sure sign of an unsound mind...

Right.
To date, I've jabbered about Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles via mass email to my geek friends. I'll do it here this time at least, to avoid spoilers for my lazy, Tivo-ing geek friends out there.

DIVERGENT TIMELINES!
Ha! See- I advanced the possibility last season against arguments of history scrambling, retcon-ing, etc.. As more and more operatives from both sides get sent back, the future a given being came back from may not be the same as the next being's future.

Derrik theorized as much in "Complications"- Monday the 17th's episode.
Sure, about half of the episode was given over to Sarah's fever-tripping, but *shrug* whatever.
Of course, Derrik and I could be wrong, but when I'm in agreement with guy from 90210, I'm almost certainly right. It's the 2nd Law of Bassification, I think.

Right. Y'know- this is much more fun with alcohol. I'll have to do this more often.

OK- what's the effing reference from last week's title? "Mr. Ferguson in Ill Today"? WTFBBQ is that? If there is no reference, it's even better. Inspired, certainly.

"The Tower is Tall But the Fall is Short" was an obvious allusion to the temptation of suicide, regardless of the origins of the phrase. Because it's so true- no matter how many steps you've taken, you've only got to take one more...

Um... what was I talking about?
Jesse. WTF is up with her? I trust her about as far as I could toss one of the tinmen, but then again, she seems to have genuine emotional investment in Derrik. Aaaand she's fucking psycho... Still, she's a hot Austalian with Asian ancestory, so she's welcome to stay.

John finding the photo of Sarah (originally taken at the end of the first film) at Ellison's house is a nice detail, too- that's the polaroid that sends Kyle Reese to the past the first time around.

's all for now. I'm gonna wander off to bed, I think.

I've gotta move to Australia...

2008-11-14T11:39:00.000-08:00

and I don't even like beer.
See, I've known about the rabbit problem down under for years. It's always raised Australia's esteem in my eyes that one could get a blasting permit there to deal with rabbits.

But I just learned today that they've got a feral cat problem as well. Make no mistake- I like cats. I don't much care for strays or unmanaged indoor/outdoor cats, but I like cats.
But these friggin things are like... land-based Great Whites- they just cut a swathe through anything in front of them.

And I really want to move down there and kill the damned things for fun and profit.

I'm bored.

2008-10-23T10:03:00.000-07:00

Obviously, part of the problem is the fact that I'm had limited mobility due to my back for, oh, two months now.
Another part is the fact that I'm not working.
But even then... you complete the work they pay you to do, and you've got four hours left in the workday.
This is where people always pipe in with "Show some initiative," or somesuch.
What initiative?
Shall I start doing in the janitor's work when I run out of my own? Do I get their pay for that (under the table please- I may not be an illegal, but I want their benefits, too)?
Shall I do your filing? Do I get a cut of your pay for that?
*sigh* It's immaterial, really- I'm not working- but the principle remains.

Pratchett claims that boredom, rather than intelligence, makes us human. In all the world, only a human could wake up and think, "Oh, how dull- the world's the same as yesterday. I wonder what happens if I take this rock and bash that head?"

I mean, I probably spent twenty hours, all told, on the goggles I made for the Halloween party, but my art is so often a temporary diversion- I can only work on something so long before I need to step away from it. Granted, sometimes that step away can last for months at a time a some projects, but *shrug* that's how it goes.

Anyway. I'm sure the goggles were meant to illustrate a point, but it eludes me now. Huh.
Fuggit.

I don't casually kill people these days...

2008-10-08T19:11:00.001-07:00

...not that I ever did, really...
My point is, I don't kill people- not because it's wrong to kill people, but because of how inconvenient it is.
I mean, I don't see any reason to go through all the effort to conceal the act, which means some guys with loud cars and lots of bling (yeah, that's right- I mean the cops) would want to talk to me about it. Probably for a long time. This would inconvenience me.

Does that make me some sort of... bureaucratic sociopath? Or just a lazy one?

I lack a pithy headline. Sue me.

2008-10-05T20:29:00.000-07:00

so... I was thinking about chemistry, electricity and politics earlier...

Anyway- gun control.
I was thinking about the whole pro-control argument that holds that the framers of the US constitution intended the 2nd Amendment to cover state militias, not the private citizen.

Er... what state militia would that be, exactly?
The National Guard, you say?
But the National Guard is, and has been, a federally controlled entity for at least the last century. The last operation of an honest-to-gods militia would probably have been the Mexican-American War, give or take a few years.

Besides- if the the National Guard were our state militia- that is to say, a body of armed men mustered at need for training or the defense of it's home state- where then, have massive quantities of these formations been for the last ten years?
Deployed (arguably offensively) overseas.
So much for the defense of the states and the rights thereof.

So. Who's your militia?
Who would be the last option, the final sanction, if the federal government went rogue.. er, any more rogue?

Yeah, Yeah- I know

2008-09-10T08:17:00.000-07:00

Get bent. I haven't really felt the urge... for roughly a year... or so.

Last night, though, I casually generated some ideas that were rated "fucking brilliant", so I thought I'd go ahead and throw them out on the web so I could call dibs.

1) Political Singularity: a point in space/time in which idiosyncrasy causes a (usually political) idea to have infinite density, creating a black hole within a polity.
ex.: Fat-free Pork-Barreling; a sugar-coated proposal to ban sugar; free health care

2) Dogma Implosion: an event occurring when an individual's or institution's rhetoric structure becomes so dense (often due to high hypocrisy load) it collapses upon itself, resulting in a super-dense mindset that acts as the foundation for the next dogmatic structure.
ex.: organized religion; George W. Bush

So, anyway... yeah.
Those were some concepts I tossed out while on the phone with Daniel, simultaneously playing soccer with Lex in the back yard.
Somebody go copyright that for me- like the man said, "I want a quarter every time somebody says it!"
;)

Maybe we didn't hug it enough...

2007-06-24T15:48:00.000-07:00

Y'know, when a relationship goes bad, or parents feel like their kid has gone bad, the folks involved can -and usually do- ask, 'What went wrong? Where did we go astray?'

How do you go about that for a whole nation? Is it even worth asking? I suppose so, else we're doomed to do it again.
But even in a relationship of two, there are innumerable variables.. he said/she said; what he/she never said but always thought/felt; what her mom said/thought about him that influenced her... yeah.

How do you unravel the decline of a nation-state that's not a thousand years safely dead?

I read the headlines today, I think back over the last, oh, decade and I just want to vomit. I want to cry. I want to scream and flail and throw a fit, not because life sucks, but because there's not a damned thing to be done about it. We're well past the therapy stage.

I used to sneer at the whacko survivalists and the closet-revolutionaries... and still do, for that matter. Sadly, I've come to believe they're right. For the wrong reasons, sure, but correct all the same.

I used to believe. With all my heart. I was a patriot. I was a soldier, and I believed in my calling.
But what I served then was already becoming a self-serving, consumptive monster, rabid with power and lusting insatiably for blood/money/more power. I served a nation which has become a berserk animal, and needs to be put down.

WTFighter Pilot

2007-03-25T15:07:00.000-07:00

I'm jonesing- craving something fierce. But what I'm craving can't be swallowed, smoked, shot-up or snorted. At least, I don't think so... see, I'm not sure what it is.
There's just this... need.
This need for something I don't seem to have.
This vague but insistent notion.. a hint, a flavour, a flash, a scent- of what, I'm really not sure.
It's driving me bursar. It's not something that I can sate by gorging on junk food, or drinking, or.. I don't know what.

This whole episode is starting to taste distinctly metallic. Mostly iron with copper undertones, shaded with chordite. I take that as a sign of great frustration. It tastes an awful lot like a pistol in the mouth.

Evidently, my brain's not cycling normally at the moment.

Thank you, Christianity!

2007-03-11T23:42:00.000-07:00

Never thought you'd hear me say that, eh?

Anyway- I only go to movies at noon on Sunday from now on. Hence the thanks to my archnemesis, organized religion.

Maybe three dozen people at an opening-weekend screening of 300. Heaven.

Good flick. More fleshed out than the source material, with characters that are, more or less, worth giving a damn about. A bit melodramatic at times.

Sadly, nary a moment may pass that I do not wish to beat some member of the puplic to death with a breadbag of Jello.

Some complete tit was complaining about historical accuracy as well left the theatre. See... sigh. What the hell can I say? Once again, I hate my people, and I hate my species.

That'd be a damned good gun...

2007-02-08T21:15:00.000-08:00

'Flesh wound? Flesh wound? They're all flesh wounds! No one ever says "Ooh, look! I've just been shot in the bones, but it missed my flesh completely!"'
-Ayanti Zweil, Chaplain, Tanith First-and-Only

ParaNoirmal?

2007-01-23T19:49:00.000-08:00

So here we are again. Just me an' the world. Just me against the world.

Well, you know the world. You know how it can be- even if you try not to think about it much.

Me? Me, I'm just a guy, y'know? Any old guy you see on the street- that's me. I've saved people, but I'm not the good guy. I've killed people, but I'm not really the bad guy, either.
Just a guy. But when the world breaks down, when reality itself gets kicked in the teeth, I always seem to get left holding the bag. But that's alright. I don't mind- I've got a killer set of tools.

Just me against a broke world; like the Spartans at Thermopilae, like those cats at the Alamo. Standin' because there's nothing else they could do. Taking a stand and damn the consequences. Not because it's good, not because it's right. Because it's the only option we can see. Because some things are black and white. I know that for sure- I'm the place where they meet up.

Thirty six years ago, I was christened Francis Cole Rook. Some folks know me as Frank, some as Rook. Those who know me well sometimes call me Purgatory.. but rarely to my face. Like I said- I'm the place where dark and light bump into one another like icebergs and unsinkable ships. I've been almost killed so many times, Death now has near-me experiences. I've got more scar than skin these days and more mileage than any three Cadillacs. You might say it's part of the job.
What the hell is all that supposed to mean? Hell, I dunno. Look.. it's like this: the priests and the imams and them have got it wrong. Sort of. See, 'good' and 'evil' are Man things. They don't exist outside humanity- sort of like boredom, I guess. What does exist is more like.. like, Order and Chaos, maybe.
Chaos isn't 'evil' per se, but there are.. entities, intelligences within the whole, ones that want to directly interact with mankind for whatever reason, and let me tell ya- some of those guys are sick. Well, by human standards, anyway. Likewise, some of Order is no more good than Facsim on a cosmic scale.
It's the tension of the relationship between these two forces that makes up the fabric of reality. Sometimes one side is a bit more dominant.. or prevalent, maybe, but it's part of the normal ebb and flow. But when one side.. overcomes the other in a concentrated area, it's my job to help balance things. It's the.. localized activity, the spikes and jaggy bits in the sine wave that concern me. There's other folks like me, of course- hell, there may be folks on other worlds that are like me, I don't know.

It's not really accurate to say that it's my job. It generally don't pay a damned cent.

If I'm not careful, this could become habit...

2007-01-20T00:23:00.000-08:00

Posting twice in a 24 hour period. Don't think I've ever bothered to do that before.

Anyway- here it is, gone midnight, and I'm hitting my stride. I just wish I had somewhere for that stride to take me.

I've been suffering from tics pretty badly today. Part of it's just shivering- I've probably mentioned it before, but my.. 'shiver reflex' has been rewired into a Tourette's-like spasming tic of the head, neck and shoulder.

I was feeling.. uneasy earlier. Watched- even haunted, perhaps. The cat's sleeping peacefully. Since animals and children are thought to be much more sensitive to weird shit, I'll take his word for it. Just me and my tortured imagination. Such is my life.

Old dreams torment my waking mind, and painful memories prey on my sleep. The Dream is back in the forefront of my thoughts. I can see Her eyes if I but close my own, and it hurts.

Sheesh- get a load of me: all maudlin and morose when most of my brain is actually going 'wingwingwingwingnyarnyarnyar WOOP!' Not to be confused with 'IckyIckyIcky Pa'Tang Zwooop BOINGGG!'

I'm gonna have to commit the 'Gundog' story premise to paper -er, type anyway- one of these days. I don't feel like going into it at the moment, but it takes the idea of Military Contractors and Citizen Soldiers to a somewhat different place.

VROOOOOM!

2007-01-19T16:09:00.000-08:00

Oh, man, am I ever in a bad way.
I've been a bit ill this week, nothing major, but I'm glad campus was closed the first half of the week. I've barely been able to stay awake during the day, and barely able to sleep at night.
When I got up at about eleven today, everything clicked. And then dropped into gear. I'm in a manic cycle that took a week to get a run up. Fuck, man.

I'm so amped, the only thing I can think to do is go to bed. I have to edit everyother word, because my brain and my fingers, while moving at about the same speed, are moving perpendicular to each other. I'm probably cursing alot, too, but my fingers aren't paying attention.

I've been in my office moshing to Nirvana, Wycleff Jean and Clint Mansell most of the day because I can't figure out what to do first.
Um. Where was I? Fuck. Anyway, my nightcap @ about 11 last night was my usual battery of meds + x2 Tylenol PM + x2 shots Cuervo Black Medallion. I finally got to sleep at about 4 in the morning. Yeah- it's like that.

I feel like... like the birth of Rock and Roll, man- I want to kick down the walls and ascend to the heavens on stairs of fire. I want to pull out all the stops, throw all the switches and plug myself into the electrical outlet of the cosmos just to see what happens next.

Maybe I oughta start drinking... lubricate the machine before it seizes. At least I don't have the shakes yet.

Optimists are tits.

2006-12-08T20:45:00.000-08:00

See, here's where I could really do with an angel.
Once one has made a complete muggins of one's life, they get an angel, right? An angel shows up, shows me how bad off things would be without me, shows me how to find the path of righeousness, yadda-yadda. Right? It's a Wossname Life, A Xmas Thingy, all that jazz, right?

Where's my friggin angel? Where's my friggin flying car? What the hell has a fella got to do around here to get some relief?!

My spine is... in remission. Sure, I had a bad couple of days this week, but pffft. No big. Pain is my body telling me to go fuck myself.

In theory, my brain-chemistry's not bad. I mean, how the hell do I know? I have to second-guess 75+% of my emotions nowadays. 'Am I just feeling this way because my meds are off?' 'Did I just say that because I'm at a manic peak that I can't feel?' 'Why the FUCK didn't I off myself back when I had a good excuse?!' 'Why is there a stick of butter there?' You get the point.

I wanna ask if there's something wrong with me, but that'd just be silly.

Just because I'm medicated

2006-10-31T19:17:00.000-08:00

don't think for a moment that the pain's gone.

Ahh, nevermind. There's some things I've learned better than to say.

Gods, I'm tired.

2006-10-27T22:55:00.000-07:00

Well.
's been a while. Not that I've got any kind of regular readership, nor do I see this thing as my journal, so... who give's a shit?

I've been working on Halloween for about six months, and now Halloween's here, and you know what? There's still more work to be done!
Fuck it. I quit. This gig has never paid worth a damn anyway.

My body-chemistry is all fucked up right now.
Ah, Hell with it. I'm going to bed.

I write Creation myths when I'm bored.

2006-08-12T00:58:00.000-07:00

Just like everybody else does, I suppose.

Um.
Anyway.

It is entirely incorrect to begin this tale, this remembrance, with "in the beginning," for it was not the beginning. A beginning, certainly- but not the beginning. There is no "the" beginning, anymore than there is a starting point of an orbit.

So, in the beginning of this tale, everywhere -and everywhen- was in one place. This one place was the Seed, the Source of all energy, matter and time to come.
And then there was the Creator. An intelligence perhaps of the Seed, perhaps external of it- perhaps both.
The Creator nourished the Seed and caused it sprout. The Creator unstopped the Source, and let the universe spill out. The Creator took the raw essence of reality and spun the threads of Space and Time, then wove the together, forming the warp and woof of all that is.

With the foundation laid, the Creator fragmented.
Score upon score of new, if lesser, intellects formed from the fragments, and these spread into the vastness to continue the Work. These entities were the Starfounders, the Worldsmiths. And once the heavenly bodies were wrought, and set in their endless dance through the great night, the Worldsmiths fragmented, just as their Creator had.

The next generation becomes more complicated.
This generation gave rise to the Lifebringers. The Lifebringers tinkered with chemistry and energy and conspired with circumstance to make something more from base components.
And where possible, Life blossomed. Where ideal, it flourished.

At the same time, the Custodians formed. These beings gave themselves back to the cosmos, reinforcing the careful chaos laid out by their predecessors. The Custodians ensure the growth rate of the great endeavor, monitor the onset of entropy, and generally keep rocks on their curved paths through space.

This third generation also allowed for the realization of the Elementals. Earth, Air, Water; 'Energy' would be more correct than 'Fire', but nevertheless. Also Slood, where appropriate. Things to be shaped, warded and embodied.

And because all things were set in motion, this generation did not splinter and spawn- did not need to give of itself to propel the rise of successors.
Time passed, and worlds turned and stars burned. The Lifebringers spent untold ages coaxing their charges through evolutionary process, the Custodians shepherded their rocks along the solar winds and the Elementals settled into their primal niches.
More time passed, and the universe found it's stride. Functions once meticulously watched over became automatic, became natural, and the grandchildren of the Creator... dwindled.
They merged with the purposes they once warded, and their energies bled away, unspent.

Some- Elemental, Custodian and Lifebringer alike, devolved- became degenerate. What had once been pure and primal intelligence became personality, and the Titans arose.
Their memory of brotherhood and purpose eroded and the Titans did what personalities do, soon or late- they clashed.
At first, these contests were almost animal, with tooth and claw and power the Titans struggled, rending the earth, boiling the seas and burning the sky.
In time, they for more entertainment in pitting proxies against one and other. Man, newly risen from the ape, and other races on other worlds.
So much more fun, so much more cost effective to make mortals slaughter each other in the name of their Titan masters.
Unknown to the Titans that ruled them, these mortal minds would be their undoing.

The mythology of the Greeks of Earth -among others- held that the Gods were the children of the Titans and that they rose against their parents and took man under their sometimes dubious protection.
The Greek belief, like all myths -even this one- was not entirely correct.

As Man emerged from the dark of the cave, and laid the foundations of civilization, he dreamed. He imagined, longed to create something bigger than himself, to belong to something larger than his tribe. In the perpetual nightmare of the Titan wars, Man needed something to look forward to, something better beyond the horizon.
The raw energy that had bled and trickled away from the third generation began to coalesce, to accrete around these longings. Through hope and.. wishful thinking, Man unwittingly created the Gods to carry him to this new era.

And so began the last Titan War.
The gods were ephemeral things at first- vague and unformed.
As time passed and they proved themselves to their creators, belief firmed and so did the gods.
Pantheons formed as Man's belief defined and shaped roles for the gods. New duties and responsibilities were assigned as Man grew and changed.

It has often been pointed out by theologians and laymen alike that the gods seem inconsistent, contrary, capricious and sometimes downright crazy. Countless theories have offered, countless arguments started and innumerable hands smacked with rulers over these observations.
The truth is simple- the gods were creatures designed by unwitting committee.
They are the spawn of a racial hope, a sort of collective subconscious dream of something bigger, something better.
Following their ancestry and the nature they were given, the gods, in their own way, turned on their creators. They demanded worship, and sacrifice and fealty. They developed grudges and rivalries amongst themselves only slightly less vicious than those of the Titans.

Eventually, Man's counterstroke was beyond effective.
Man developed religion in accordance with the gods' demands, but then shackled the gods with Dogma.
Dogma allowed the belief and faith of the masses to be channeled in such a way as to rob the gods of their power, their very nourishment, and thus, their influence over the world.
And in the fullness of time, the gods became figureheads; no more than the idols that they railed against in earlier days.

So the gods have dwindled to whispers on the desert wind, or remain barred in their heavens, just as they helped Man chain the Titans beneath the earth and the wave.
Prophets have come and gone, sometimes changing the nature of 'their' god's imprisonment, but never breaking it.

...

2006-07-11T08:47:00.000-07:00

Moo.

Bitches.

Christ, I hate moving. I need enough money to just burn everything in place and buy new stuff.
Or, I could just hire movers, I suppose. Kind of gives you an idea of how my brain works.

Rants, Raves and just a pinch of 'GO FUCK YOURSELF!!'

2006-06-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

I'm gonna start with one I've been formulating for a few days- hardly comprehensive research, but, hey- that's ok for gov't agencies, so it's ok for me.

Just why the hell are we so concerned about Global Warming when we can't even settle on a weather forecast for tomorrow? Seriously- on Sunday, I checked the forecast 3 times. In the morning, 100 degrees was predicted for the day, 101 on Monday, 95 on Tues.. Later in the day, Monday had changed to 85 with thunderstorms in the PM, Tuesday was Tstorms throughout, high of 80. By Sunday evening, weather.com (The Weather Channel) was offering yet another forecast.
Yesterday's oscillations were not so wild, but the forecast did change, and then change back an hour later.
Why the hell are we so worried about Global Warming? While I don't dispute it's existence, it's emminence seems doubtful, given that we can rarely make a weather forecast last more than a few hours at a time.

On to the Surgeon Gerneral's report on smoking...
Yes, secondhand smoke is a motherfucker. I agree with the fairly recent ban on smoking in resteraunts, and the longer-standing ban on smoking in the workplace. Bars, I don't quite get- after all, if you're already engaged in an activity that's proven to be harmful, what's a little smoke?
There seems to be some rather... unambiguous language about secondhand smoke that seems to have quirky logic, though. Some of the report sort of implies that being anywhere near a smoker under any circumstances guarentees harm to a bystander.
What if the nonsmoker is upwind? Nah- that just sounds argumentative.
How about this, then? How many parts-per-million/billion/trillion are we talking in the smoke-to-air ratio? See, there are levels of ICE exhaust, arsenic, asbestos, argon & morons that the gov't says is 'safe enough' for us- certainly safe enough not to go to the expense of fixing- or that are naturally ocurring. Granted- it's not like we can monitor or control secondhand smoke. It is a very real concern.
Bah- every alternative I can come up with to comprehensive public smoking bans rely too much on the manners and goodwill of my fellow humans. Fucking courtesy, people! I'm a raging asshole, but I still show some fucking courtesy.

I hate this fucking planet, man. Ever since Homo Sapiens moved in, it's just gone to shit.

An Entirely Personal War (pt. 4)

2006-06-21T22:02:00.000-07:00

So.
My dream.

Katherine and I, on a stage of blood-soaked sand baked hard by the heat of our battle. Muzzle-flash-lit smoke and fire and thunder. Hearing and scent long since shut down from overload. But my eyes still worked. Gods help me, for my soul is blinded by what I saw.
It was just as well that I was out of ammunition- I couldn't have shot her. Not after meeting eyes. To my immense joy, and my eternal regret, she blinked and lowered her weapon.
Her.. aura.. flickered as confusion and uncertainty undermined her will.
Then, defying likelihood, my stricken steed exploded, the shockwave knocking the two of us down and out. I regained conciousness quickly enough to observe a time-honored law of narrative- a burning road wheel bounced and rolled away from the wreckage.

The next couple of days are perhaps even more hazy and fragmented than the orchestrated chaos of the preceding battle.
Katherine spent much of the time unconcious- something had struck her when my tank exploded, and she was badly concussed, from my best guess. So I carried her when I could, dragged her when I had to and kept her as comfortable as I could when we had to hide. I had to ensure that we were found by not just the good guys, but the right good guys. I knew that if troops from my own, personal command found us, they'd at least give me the benefit of the doubt.

And, in the end, a squad of my cavalry scouts did rescue us. Apparently, I was listed as missing in action, having decisively engaged the enemy command element. Enough fast-talking and string-pulling later, and Katherine was officially listed as a 'female Protectorate noncombatant' who had aided me at the end of the battle.
I'm not sure that I ever conciously decided to hide her from my own side. She needed help, and I knew she would not find it from my countrymen. She would have been faced with interrogation, observation, hell- more '-ations' than I care to imagine. But I could help her. I could help her find her humanity, help her to be free.
There certainly wasn't a plan. I made it up as we went along. I wondered quite a bit at the time- wondered how this could possibly play out. Wondered how Katherine felt about this. She was.. compliant. Not meek, but willing to go with the flow.
There's so much information to convey here that dreams always take for granted. The rotation of my unit into garrison for reequipping and integrating new personnel. Me being put on convalescent leave for a few weeks. Getting to know Katherine. Baby Buddha- all this, and I've not even described her, let alone recounted any of our conversations. Such is the way of dreams, gods help me.

I'll begin with the obvious. Katherine was not tall- barely topping five feet, the top of her head came level with my collarbone. Her short, rather roughly cut hair was somewhere beyond blonde and brown, like sunlight through a karafe of coffee- too rich a color to be either. Her jagged bangs framed a high forehead and too-large, liquid brown eyes. The kind of eyes poets moan about drowning in, but in this case, that fate might have been literal. Those eyes were deep, and murky in those depths. They were eyes that had seen.. alot like mine, I suppose. Christ, I'm no poet. She had a nose, she had a mouth, and the face ended, predictably, with a chin. She was beautiful, no matter how you care to couch it.

Most striking, and perhaps most sadly, was the incongruity between her smooth, unmarred skin, and the depth and darkness her eyes betrayed. At least with old grunts like me, with years on the line, we wear some of that darkness on our faces and in our skin. Even if you don't know us, you can usually tell we've been there, done that. But with Katherine, she was as fair as when she had been decanted. She had scars, but they were hidden behind her eyes.. but the worst scars always are, I suppose.
Katherine had scars because she didn't believe. She knew it was all bullshit, but she had been smart enough to play along. Apparently, there had been other subjects, other angels, who were not so devious. Those were subject to post-vitro abortion. The fanatic can justify any act, while the rest of us have to pay up, sooner or later. So Katherine paid- the deaths she took responsibility for branded into her soul. Even I didn't have it so bad- I did believe in what I was doing, and so did the men I had lost. That eases the burden, a little.

The Protectorate had designated her "Tceralj" (pronounced chur-ALL-yuh), but she spat the name out disdainfully. She was delighted with "Katherine". You see, it wasn't the designation of a tool, or a name bestowed upon a prized pit-fighting dog. It was a name for a human being. She adopted our name for her with joy. 'Converting' her was not going to be a problem- teaching her to be... well, human, was the task I faced.
Music, literature- culture beyond militant faith and fanatacism.
She wasn't ignorant- she was very well educated in many fields. In all the fiddly little things that make up being human, she was... innocent.

After a few days, I enlisted the help of an old friend. Master Sergeant Amanda Byrnes had led me into battle earlier in my carreer, and had followed me in more recently. Those days, she was in semi-retirement. She had lost both of her legs from the knee down a couple of years before, and while she got around on her prosthetics quite well, she knew that she'd never meet her own standards as infantrywoman. Somehow, Amanda had always seemed the most... well, female of all the female soldiers I knew. How she managed this while still being the most hard-assed NCO I'd ever known is a complete mystery to me.
I sought out Amanda's help because.. well, what the hell do I know about being a woman? If Ol' Sarge couldn't show her how to be a strong woman, well, no one could.

Duty pulled me away for brief periods, but Katherine and Amanda enjoyed one and other's company, and I had no need to worry about her well-being.
What can I say? I skirted around my feelings, trying to be near Katherine and avoid her at the same time. Trying to avoid the guilt of my desire- guilt because despite being my equal, she was.. so very innocent. So I danced, and I tried clumsily to ensure that she- and, ha, probably moreso, Amanda- knew that I didn't feel... entitled.. to anything from her. I probably looked like an idiot.. like a man in love, I suppose. Trying not to crowd Katherine, trying not to be overprotective, while still.. hovering, I guess.

Ultimately, Katherine's nature settled matters. She watched me dodge and weave, waited for the opening, and promptly attacked.
Clumsy as it was, it was a hell of a kiss.

Broken Minds Spawn Broken Hearts (pt.3)

2006-06-21T21:47:00.000-07:00

It's after the revelation of the Battle Saints that I enter picture in a concrete way.
My neighborhood of the war was jokingly referred to as the 'Diocese of St. Katherine'. We were certain that there was a Saint in the vicinity, intel suggested a high probability that it was a female, but she'd never openly taken the field against us. My people were there because of our special operations and counterinsurgency experience- we had no intel of any other female Battle Saints.
The theories of what to expect from 'Katherine' ran the gammut from timid to some PMS-powered psychotic savage. She proved most of them dead wrong.

She may not have taken the field openly, but, oh, how we sparred, Katherine and I. From the information I was privvy to- and that was quite a bit- the other Saints; or, perhaps more appropriately, the other Saints' handlers; were fairly straight-forward in their approach to the war. Not incompetent, by any means, but not much better commanders than their.. purely mortal.. counterparts in our ranks.

Katherine, though... Katherine was brilliant- subtle, patient and viciously cunning. Command had begun to doubt the presence of a Saint in my AO, and frankly, I was close to concurring when she showed her hand the first time. In one night, I lost three long range patrols, seven manned observation posts and nineteen passive-sensors-only cybernetic OPs- more than I had lost since being posted to the area.

She wasn't infallible, though. My counter, four nights later, cost her far more lives but much less hard currency. And so we danced- back and forth for nearly six months. I must admit, I was getting frazzled- desperate, maybe a little reckless. During eight terrifying, frenetic hours of fighting, I led an armor raid over Protectorate lines by skulking in under cover of a sandstorm. To be honest, I had only the vaguest idea that we were over enemy lines until one of my flank elements actually rammed into an enemy vehicle. What the troops refer to as 'Blind Man's Brawl' took all of my attention for the rest of the day. As the storm blew itself out, and the sun finally dipped below the horizon, I finally dragged my surviving units out of engagement range, and the Fox's batteries discouraged any pursuit.

Unfortunately, things only got worse from there. The intensity of the war in other areas and attrition on both sides left me more or less commanding Battlegroup Rommel, and Katherine and I were both reduced to the equivalent of brawling gangs. With winter closing in fast on the nothern deserts and mountains that were simultaneously home and hell for her forces and mine, some small respite was certain soon. But not soon enough, I suppose.

Certainly not soon enough, so far as the dream, and it's impact on me, is concerned...
Sweet Vishnu, how to tell the story without.. the truth?
How to tell the story of that last, desperate attempt to break her before winter?

That last battle, that first time we truly engaged one and other instead of dancing, instead of jabbing and flitting away.. Each of us throwing punches in the form of tank platoons, trying to sweep the other's feet with a crack team of heavy infantry sneaking on an apparently blind flank... Handfuls of sand flung out to blind, shredding the electromagnetic spectrum, spitting, biting, and then.. then it was down to she and I. The whole world closed down. My tank had finally foundered, and as my crew unassed it- there she was, in all her radiant psychic glory. Well, her handlers and bodyguard were there, but they were simply obstacles to be bypassed. The blazing firefight on foot, then sidearms and hand to hand... my crew dead, firing my last round through the head of her surviving bodyguard... turning to face Katherine, truly seeing her face for the first time- meeting her eyes, and.. and falling in love. ...Or something. I recognized her- I knew her. If I didn't love her then, well, that would come soon enough, anyway.

I know- trite and contrived, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's what my head says, too. But.. why do I have butterflies in my stomach? Why do I feel like my heart's been torn out when I think about this nonsense? Why do I remember that frigging dream and feel like I've lost everything that made life worthwhile? Why do I not fear forgetting the dream before I have time to write it all out? That one I can answer- because I know I'll never forget it. I'll never forget her.

A day and a troubled night later, and it still hurts. I still feel hollow. This is frigging ridiculous. Is this what comes of education? Self-inflicted madness? Is this some shade of the madness I was born with- the curse of being an empath with no control over the oscillations of his emotions and imagination? Suceptible to phantom emotion, victimized by my own dreams?

The Revelation of St. Peter (pt. 2)

2006-06-18T17:24:00.000-07:00

When the Protectorate first fielded a Battle Saint- The Angel Diamocet, or Saint Peter, by our lights- he.. well, he cleared most of the battlefield personally.
St. Peter knew everything that was going on in the battle, and could process the information. He could bolster his forces where they flagged or weakened, he sent vicious thrusts into our weak spots. TAU Blackjack was supporting this battle, and analyzed what was going on. His cybertronic brain couldn't understand it, but he knew for sure that the enemy's forces seem to pivot and flow around one central point- St. Peter. Blackjack alerted the command element of his analysis, and command launched his entire reserve as an assault on the Protectorate's 'command anomoly'. The assault ripped through the enemy's line, shedding the dead and dying like steel rose petals in a blast furnace. Like an enormous hypervelocity penetrator, the outer units of the spearhead sloughed off, burning themselves out so that the hardened inner core could strike home.
As the survivors broke through, with victory in sight, St. Peter cut loose. The intensity of the attack, the very sacrifice made by our crews to make it possible, and their crews' desperation to stop it, had turned St. Peter into a human fusion bomb. Blackjack's last drone imagery showed Peter's form apparently floating several feet off the ground, and only multiple filters allowed the drone to gain any sort of image through his blinding incandescence.
We broke through, and he detonated, like a charged capacitor knocked of a workbench. We're still not sure whether he did it deliberately, or was overloaded. It hasn't happened since- maybe Peter was a prototype. Anyway, the Blackjack was crippled. Everything within a three mile radius was levelled and fused into a rough glass disk.

A lot of this information was more inferred in the dream than actually experienced. It's a given- something I understood, because as far as the dream was concerned, I had already lived it. This is sort of groundwork I have to lay, or the dream proper won't make any sense.

Honoring the victims of my dreams, lest the fallen be forgotten (pt. 1)

2006-06-18T14:14:00.000-07:00

I dreamt of war last night. Well.. war, and love and pain- but war was the over-arching theme.

I started dreaming of pain.. or maybe my pain was dreaming of me... I went to bed hurting, and was woke by a.. well, a siezure, for lack of a better word. It felt like a terrier the size of an SUV had grabbed me by the left shoulder and was shaking me like a rat.
Between falling asleep and being spasmed awake, though... I wandered hopelessly through a space of some sort. A space that throbbed like a whole-head toothache, while veins of liquid lightning left trembling, twitching wakes in the ether. White-hot strobes of pain flashed at me from all directions, radiating out but never cooling or dimming, before collapsing back into themselves and exploding once again.
At the crescendo of this psychadelic opera of pain, the siezure, or spasm or whatever shook me awake. Good times.

Anyway. My war.

It was an old war- sometimes hot, sometimes cold; always old. But not too old- not old enough to consume the culture; so old that the end is indistinguishable from the means.
The enemy was a.. religious protectorate. Sometime, maybe generations before, a hard-line fundamentalist monotheistic religion (probably Mormons, but the dream wasn't specific), had decided that it was time to bring the rest of the world's population into the fold. A pretty damn spectacular war sprung up over night.
Eventually, the holy rollers' fighting forces were defeated in detail- but, as usual (and probably to our credit), the rest of humanity could not bring itself to fully excise the malignacy in it's midst. So a Protectorate was created. The better part of a continent was given to this religion, a place in which they were welcome to live under there own laws and doctrines, and leave the rest of humanity in peace.
Of course, nothing ever seems to work out that neatly. Gods, but I hate my species sometimes.
Once the Protectorate had had enough time to rebuild it's population, and to establish a covert armaments industry, we were fighting once again. Instead of wielding us like a hammer, the politicos chose to prod us at the aggressors like a housewife using a stick to investigate something revolting. As always.

Anyway. I was a leader in what I can only describe as a special operations armor unit. More or less after the Israeli model- one part: "Why send in a few commandos when a few tanks could do it in such a spectacular fashion", and one part: "If you deliver and extract commandos with tanks, who's likely to notice a few inconspicuous guys slinking around under all that sound and fury?"
Not a commander- just a leader. Best place to be, really. Enough authority to make a difference, not so much responsibility as to be hobbled by it.
I'm not sure how, but I was also involved in changing the face of armored warfare- I had helped create the Theatre Assault Unit. I thought of it as my baby, at any rate, even though I didn't crew one. The TAU was nine-hundred-plus tons of weapons delivery, swaddled in so much armor that only direct fission or fusion bombardment had a hope of stopping it.
The TAU could deliver fire to any target within a five hundred mile radius, line of sight or otherwise- hence the 'Theatre' designation. While a single TAU could not truly dominate an entire theatre of war; it could, and did, act as the anchor for entire armies.
Needless to say, TAUs were enormously expensive, and we only had a few of them.
My armor detatchment operated from under the protective battlesteel wing of TAU Erwin Rommel- more commonly known as "The Fox".
Many of a TAU's functions were automated- on a good day, their millimeter-wave doppler radar could see inbound artillery shells, fire interceptors- proximity-fused minimissles that blasted their victims with tungsten shrapnel- calculate the reverse tragectory, and fire a countervolley before the human crew could be roused from their card games.

But I digress. Well, not really- it was an amazingly vivid dream. All the more unsettling for that, richer in detail- much of it subconcious, I suppose- than real life usually is.

But the enemy had made advances, as well. More momentous, and far more frightening than the TAU. The Protectorate had gengineered superhuman life. The Battle Saints (as we dubbed them) looked human; but were so, so much more. And, as I lament learning, so much less.
They had engineered superhuman quasi-generals for their forces, calling these figures angels and presenting them as sacred beings- a manifestation divine intervention.

The Saints were not exactly psychic, nor quite telepathic, but they could... pull a gestalt, a sort of psychic mosaic from the minds of the faithful, getting a rough idea of everything that was happening around them. A commander with even a rough situational awareness on that scale is a very dangerous thing. They also were like... capacitors of emotional energy. They could store it up, concentrate it, and then be triggered to release it. And they were more besides. I learned only a fraction, and that was more than any other person outside the Protectorate knew. I was staggered by what little I learned of what they were, but is was learning what they were not that broke my heart. But I haven't quite come to that part of the dream, yet.

When the Protectorate first fielded a Battle Saint- they called him The Angel Diamocet, we later dubbed him Saint Peter- our war changed dramatically. Our armor and mobile infantry had rolled against his advance in strength more than sufficient to break his advance- or so we had thought.

ranting and raging

2006-05-06T14:17:00.000-07:00

It's close to the surface, now. It's close, but I don't feel depressed. I feel angry. I feel hostile. I want to take a pipe to the whole world. Fucking club the planet into the gutter and watch the blood drain into the sun. I want to knee the cosmos in the groin, and it's all I can do to not grab a handy substitute.

So close. Just under the skin. If I could flex just right, pull my skin just tight enough, it'd break through. Pain. A lifetime of pain, ripping free in blood-slick boneshards, black barbs and smouldering serrations.
Erupting through me, shredding this paltry vessel, more than a physical body could possibly hold. But something like this pain is not bound by physical constraints. The mainfestation of the pain unfolds like the blooming of a fractal flower, expanding impossibly- bone wings pinioned with rusted blades and charred rags unfurling and flexing around the thickening skeletal form beneath them.

The child of my psyche consumes me, just as I consume it- the pain and I are a closed loop, a Mobius Strip. The pain breaking loose creates more pain, which I feed back into the furnace, stoking the eruption still further.

In the end, the only thing that troubles me about this venting of vitriol is that, while it lessen the pressure some small bit, it is not a release. There has only ever been one release.

Geek Think

2006-03-05T17:53:00.000-08:00

So, I was flippin channels the other day- an activity which I almost never partake of- and Stargate SG1 was playing on SciFi. I've never had anything against the show, but, not unlike the new Battlestar: Galactica series, what I've seen of it has rarely sparked my interest.
So I watched SG1 for a few minutes, and it occurred to me that I haven't watched Stargate (the film) in years. So I popped in the tape and reunited with an old friend.

Immediately after the opening of the movie, my brain starts whirring, like a clockwork Turing Engine cruising the catastrophe curve to self destruction.

The film opens to an archaeological dig in Giza, Egypt in 1928.
The archaeologist (name of Langford, I believe) in charge arrives to great excitement and speaks to his colleagues in a language with distict germanic tones to it. Further research revealed that the language was Swedish- although some people argue that it was very badly-pronounced Norwegian.

So, the Stargate was found by a (possibly) Swedish archaeologist in 1928, and
then shows up in the possession of the US Air Force in 1994. That's almost 80 years unnacounted for.

A little digging reveals that it's generally understood by the fan community that the US picked up the Stargate the same way they picked up a space program- they/we took it from Berlin around 1945.

Here's the part that surprised me most- with all the alledged techno-fetishism and occult tendencies, no one seems to have given much thought to the possibility of the Nazis playing with the Stargate.

So now visions start dancing in my head of the Nazi elite missing at the end of the war- the ones rumored to have lived out their days in Brail and whatnot- evacuated through the gate to an unknown destination, escorted by a battalion or more of SS troops. A bomb falls, a facility is destroyed, and the gate lies buried in rubble until US forces recover it later.

And maybe, just maybe, a portion of the brains of the Third Reich is out there among the stars, doing their damnedest to live Hitler's Aryan dream, and find their way home again...

How do people forget?

2006-02-19T14:58:00.000-08:00

No, seriously- I can't seem to get the hang of it.
I mean, I can forget a phone number, where I set my keys and other petty shit.
But so much of the rest of my life is as real and immediate now as it was when it was happening.

I can remember my grandmother's death- the bewilderment, the struggle to fully wrap myself around the concept. I remember discussing it with my my mom. I was 5 years old.

My grandfather died when I was, um.. ten. I vividly remember crying in my dad's lap, along with the rest of my family. I remember the arrangements for the funeral, the trip back to Illinois, all of it.
It's not a matter of forgiving myself and letting things go- I've got the good memories and everything in between, too.

I remember every race I ever ran, and I can summon the adrenaline from those memories in a heartbeat. The thrill of every prank, every high school-petty-criminal caper. Every insane motorcycle race, every hunting trip, every tranquil day spent ranging the wilderness by myself.

I can't claim that every one of those memories is 100% accurate. There may be.. heh.. degradation of some of the data. But the emotional impact is unimpeded by time. Time has healed few, if any, wounds for me.

Then, a bit under ten years ago, things get really wierd. This is my personal line of demarcation for going crazy. Starting in that border area, disconnects start appearing in my memories.

I remember the factual details of courting my wife with vivid clarity. What I can't remember is how I felt at the time. I know I love her. I just can't remember how I got in that state.

And so goes my life since about '97 or '98. Vast tracts of data, with brief spurts of emotion- of passion- interjected here and there. Ha- the emotion's probably in there, too,- wildly ricocheting off of neurons, going off like forgotten landmines in a schoolyard.

Maybe that's my crazy- unpaired emotion popping out of nowhere like an idle thought or memory. Ghost emotion without context.

Thoughts On Broken Brains- namely, mine

2005-12-28T12:05:00.000-08:00

I'm crazy.
I'm crazy and I want to die.
Now, this is not an e-suicide note.
I have no intention of, or plan for, killing myself.
I was suicidal for so long that I've passed through to calmer waters on the other side.
Heh. I'm 'Super-cidal'.

Swinnyway. What brought this up?
I watched the film Serenity a couple of times recently. I'm a huge fan.
After watching the entire TV series of Firefly (on DVD), I saw Serenity with new insight, and less need to figure out the nuances.
I found myself completely focussed on the character of River Tam- and not because she's played by a hot young ballerina (Summer Glau).
Now, I don't claim to have but the most remotely similar condition to River's. Hers is induced, mine is all-natural. I'm bipolar with a dash of PTSD, she's a semi-delusional, psychotic psychic.

But River and I, we both crazy like... things.. that're.. crazy.. Yeah.
And Summer Glau is a much better actress than some may credit her.
During one of River's 'episodes' in the film, she mentions suicide. In an almost-sing-song, little-girl voice, she says, "Bullet in the brainpan- squish!," before disolving into giggling sobs. This is accompanied by a flash cut to a few quick frames of her raising a pistol to her head.

It was perfect. It was... true.

If you've never wanted to die, wanted it with all that remained of your broken, mouldering soul- and also found it funny, you might not understand how poignant, how powerful that line is.

So, big props to Joss Whedon for writing it, and more to Summer Glau for selling it.
I never really thought about how it might look from the outside. Probably because when my brain is operating like that, I don't care how it looks from the outside.
I'm not holding River Tam as canon- Ms. Glau's performance is not gospel- not even for me, let alone the rest of the loonies. But it was... close.
It was familiar. The anguish, the internalization, the absurdity of everything. Most of all, the giddy relief at the thought of release- of death.

What's a little art between friends?

2005-12-16T10:25:00.000-08:00

I paint.
Well, I paint things. Don't know which end is up on a canvas.
That was a joke.
Here we have Frankenstein's Monster (Frank, henceforth), from Dark Horse's Universal Monsters line. A -mostly- fun piece to paint. It had it's quirks, but no serious flaws to speak of.
Frank's a 'cold-cast porcelain' statuette, about 10" tall by 10" wide. It came in 5 pieces (excluding chains, etc.) and assembled with little putty work.

I painted Frank for my friend Jeff Davis.

To the right, we see a quirk of my technique. I taught myself to paint with 25mm tall miniatures (Games Workshop, to be exact).

One of the tricks I learned painting minis is what I call 'light-keying'. I decide (or find out) what type of lighting the piece is going to be viewed under, and I paint it under that light.
Since Frank was most likely going to be viewed under standard incandescent light, that's how I painted him.

In the first photo, his skintone isn't, well, natural, but it's where I intended it. In the second, under a flash, Frank turns blue! Actually, Frank is blue/grey, with a yellowed-ivory-ish layer over to soften and 'naturalize' the blue/grey. Not a problem, just a little quirk with my style.

Ah, Pinhead.
I painted this guy for Chris Davis, and am happy to report that the manufacturer of this piece may no longer be in business.

Let me wander back an lay some groundwork. I'm not a big fan of the thin-wall PVC statues to begin with. I think it's a rotten media. PVC is for plumbing... and maybe dressing up girls in, but that's not important right now.

Next, the original sculptor fell prey to a stereotypical fanart-blunder. He only really gave the love to 'the important' part. See, this sculpt is really quite good from, say, the nipples up- hence, 'the important part'. The other 60% were not worth doing, evidently. If this were a bust, it'd be great. As it's a 20" (approx) statue, I want to throttle the perpetrating fanboy goober.

The hands, the center of the piece, are merely two mounts for ten sausage-like fingers with no sense of proportion. The skirt could have been acceptably sculpted by a leprotic monkey with cataracts. These apparently, were not. The texture is inconsistent, and- bah. Who cares? The paintjob turned out alright.

Anyway.

I paint stuff.
I'm gorram good at it.
I did these two for my friends, and I was kind of worried about how long it could take- it's been almost two years since I've done a lot of painting.
But, it seems I've got my hand back in, so I guess I'll have to add large pieces like these to my price sheet. ;)

Philosophical Critique with a Wink and a Nudge

2005-11-03T23:13:00.000-08:00

Towards the end of the 20th century, acclaimed novelist and philosopher Terry Pratchett presented to English-speaking world his theory of "The Trousers of Time".
In short, when a person made a decision of sufficient gravity, at a crucial turning point in their life, that person went down a trouser leg of reality, while the other trouser leg remains- a parralel reality based on the consequence of a different choice.
This begs the question of decisions made at knee-level: Does the trouser leg split again? What about a momentous choice right after that?

It goes without saying that the Cosmos summarily dismissed the theory- I'm sure there was a memo or email or something.
Facing a space/time cluttered with trousers that noone could wear -at least, noone who needed trousers- the Cosmos fell back on it's comfortable default, eloquently summed up as, 'Sometimes things just happen. What the hell.'

Pratchett's Trousers had elegance, though, and the underpinnings of truth- namely, that humans make important decisions somewhere between their navel and their groin. Says all that needs to be said about our species, really. We did it all because we were hungry, or because we were horny. Or sometimes both.

When examined more critically, however, the Trousers become a bit more shifty. Let's change perspective a bit. We'll take the upright Trousers of Time, and lie them down on the unrivetted side. Now, at the crux of a life-changing choice, you find yourself in the cavernous waist (that you tell everyone is two sizes smaller) of the Button-Fly's of Your Life. Standing beneath the Zipper of Eternity. Whatever works for you.
So, now what? On the side with the change pocket, you spot destiny, and on the other sits Fate? Now, I don't claim to be an authority, but I don't picture Fate as one to be hanging around a freeway on-ramp with a sign reading, 'Free to good home,' nor Destiny in a stupor on an off-ramp, his sign reading, 'Will manifest for beer.'

Anyway- the point is, life looks a lot different if you ever get a chance to knock it on it's arse.

That's all, folks...

2005-10-31T23:56:00.000-08:00

Halloween is over. I'm gonna go put myself into a chemically induced coma for the next six months.

www.davisgraveyard.com

or

The Davis Blog

You might say, "That's ironic,"

2005-10-06T19:23:00.000-07:00

But I say, "This fucking sucks. And so do you, titface."
See, I'm a disabled vet. I get a pension. Uncle Sam gives me a little money for taking some knocks for him. So I've got that going for me- it's like a sick perk.
The downside, of course, is that I'm disabled. My back and shoulder are all fethed up.

So I've been working on this art project for Halloween- probably the most ambitious piece I've ever done.
Been kinda bummed because I recently came to the conclusion that I wasn't gonna be able to finish it solo. My crew are great folks- they helped me come to terms with that.
I've suffered intermittent artist's block throughout the project, got past that.
Now I'm dead in the water. My bad shoulder (the problem is actually in my spine, but manifests itself through the entire left side of my torso) has been bothering me a bit for the last couple of weeks, and today it went apeshit.

I can't sculpt because my entire left arm is trembling sympathetically with the muscles spasming in my back, shoulder and chest. So my big ol' masterpiece sits here, untouched, untouchable, and I feel like getting completely blotto.

Life sucks. At least I've still got the helmet I jacked from Uncle Sam.

Well, now that I've bitched about it-

2005-10-03T09:22:00.000-07:00

I might as well do something about it.
I've turned on Word Verification for commenting my posts.
If they're able to spam me through that... well, at least they're putting some effort into it.

If it's a problem for you, if it makes your commenting experience less enjoyable, take comfort in this: I don't give a shit. Butch up, stuff a cork in the kid and move on, titface.

I swear by the thousand faces of God....

2005-09-29T14:37:00.000-07:00

Blog spam. For fuck's sake.
You may notice a couple of comments in my Blog have been removed.
That's because they were sales pitches or socio-economical tracts placed by entities with blank profiles. Blog spiders.
I wanna fucking kill and eat these motherfuckers! Not necesarily in that order!! Fucking Fuck!!!

I wanna create the ultimate webspider- a hunter dedicated to finding the people who do this silly shit. It'll dig, and dig, and dig until it gets their personal information, then send that info back for phase II.

Phase II will be my own set of more traditional spiders/trolls, looking for keywords and phrases, looking for ceartain heuristic tags on forums, newsgroups and blogs across the world.

Phase III is sort of a matching service. My herd-culling software will start spamming those people who posses the requisite personality traits- that is to say, friggin psychos- sending tailored emails suggesting that they go kill the bastard spammer at X address.

See- this is the real value-added part of the deal- the spam emails are artistically tailored to the recipient. If the potential exspaminator is a rabid religious-right, uberconservative Champion of God and McCarthian Democracy (and the Michigan Militia), then the spammer is described as a flag-burning, gay Liberatarian who works in an abortion clinic and reads Mao on his breaks.

If the intended spam-smasher is a ultramilitant tree-hugging bull dyke dick-scalper, the message would completely different.

And thus, in three simple steps, spamming would become a much more hazardous proposition.

I'll set up a Pay Pal account so y'all can start donating to the fund. ;)

A scrap of detective-noir, just for fun

2005-09-29T13:36:00.000-07:00

She stalked across the room, slinky, sexy spring steel. Watching her pissed me off. She took a seat across from me, and that really pissed me off. I didn't bother to take my feet of the desk. I waited... waited, as she drew the moment out. Waited while she took a breath high in her chest, intended to emphasize her breasts, waited as she began to part her perfect lips, waited until the split second before the words oozed out of her. Then I burst in.
"Look sister- are we sleeping together, or just dancing? I'm a very busy man- never find time to do both. Quit tryin to seduce me, and offer me a payin' job, or I'll boot your exquisite ass outta here faster than you can say 'Good evening, Mr. Winglo,' in your no doubt husky, melodic voice! Waddaya want?"
I was on my feet, leaning across the desk, nearly shouting by the end, and I gotta
say- that felt better than she could've right about then.
I'd always wanted to do that.

She'd obviously never run into such a greeting before. Watching her gape like a carp was more entertaining than watching slink across my office. She was still gaping when the shooting started.

She moved well enough when the bullets smashed through the front of my office, I'll give her that. When I snatched my shoulder rig and scooted out the side door, she stuck to me like white on rice, but managed not to tangle me up, or trample over me. I started liking her right about then.

We hit the alley and the first goon in the same moment. He shouldn't have stood so close to the door. His buddy, though, standing back a bit, started to raise his cut-down scattergun.
My .45 was faster.
The Colt barked: *BRAAP!*. The goon said something between a gurgle and a splat- didn't scan well, but you could dance to it.
The dame speaks for the first time- "What the hell was that?" she asks, indicating the shots.
I'm likin' her more every minute. "Three or four nearly-half-inch-diameter bullets," I said with a shrug.
"The Colt 1911 can't fire like that! That was like a Tommy gun!"
I shrugged again. "Tell that to my gunsmith. Let's go, toots. It's a bad neighborhood after dark," I say, ushering her down the alleyway.

A rant on Justice- as advertised

2005-09-28T18:48:00.000-07:00

On Justice

I don’t even know where to begin.

I’m sick to my stomach, and I’m mad as hell, and I can’t even add ‘and I’m not gonna take it anymore’. Why? Because Dr. Phil-isms ProzacZen aside, I can’t do a single damned thing about it. So, I am gonna take it. Hell no, that’s not ok- but you know what? I can survive it, most likely. I’ll always have something to be angry about, but I’ll survive it. Probably.

In the immortal words of more folks than could ever be mentioned- ‘there ain’t no justice’. Why? Because man killed Justice with the scales of Law. Just as he slew God with the stone of Church, Man shackled and demeaned and distorted Justice to the point that it is non-existant, save through happenstance.

What is Justice, exactly?

Hell, I don’t know. I can freely admit that. I can say with some certainly that Justice is entirely subjetive, just like Truth, Belief, Freedom, et al.

But nearly any man, woman or child could tell what is not Just.

If a man steals from your home, and is caught, he is subjected to the scrutiny of the Law. Assuming the Law finds him in breach, he may go to prison, and/or pay a fine. The institute of the Law recieves said fine.

But what of your losses? How can the victim be reparated? The crime (against Justice, at least) of Insurance, of course! The victim has been paying against the possibility of such a loss. Assuming the criminal institution of Insurance deigns to return some of the victim’s ‘investment’ to recoup said losses, the Insurors are now going to up the victim’s rates- charging them for the sin of being victimized by a criminal.

Cost so far is entirely assumed by the victim. Any cost incurred upon the criminal goes the coffers of Law, which the victim also pays into in the form of taxes.

‘But I can sue the bastard!’ you cry. True. You could also lose said civil suit. At which point the victim faces further monetary losses. The system of Law can find a person criminaly guilty, but not liable for losses incurred by their crime. The inverse is also ironically true- one can be found innocent of a crime, but still liable for any harm done -not by the accused- civilly. I refer to the OJ debacle, of course.

There ain’t no Justice.

If Justice cannot be found in Law, where is one to look?

Time to pick on religion. I’ll focus on Christianity, because in fairness, I cannot claim enough knowledge of other religions to lay into them as I will the Christian churches.

Look to God for Justice! Divine Justice can be the only True Justice, anyway!

Your mother.

Setting aside my belief that Man killed God long ago, let me say this-
How can this omnipotent and omnibenevolent Creator of yours hold the child responsible for the sins of his father and pretend to even understand Justice?

If you haven’t noticed yet, I hold your God in the same contempt as I do your Law.

How can your all-loving God hold the murderer in the same regard as his/her one-year-old victim? If you can explain that, then explain where the Justice is. If the murderer of a child can find redemption in your God’s eyes, He can never be a source of justice.

How can an organization that rewrote one of it’s messiah’s companions as a whore because influential women didn’t jive with their worldview claim to know of Justice? An organization that builds lavish edifaces and encrusts itself with gold and jewels at the expense of the layman? That allows the hungry to starve, but protects it’s members who prey upon children? What can the Catholic Church know?

I’m spent. My anger has smoldered down, my heart grown too tired of this sordid topic to continue.

But remember- judge me however you like: there still ain’t no justice. Your curses will fall on deaf ears, as will your praise. Best get used to it.

Of all the wierd shit to say....

2005-09-28T16:35:00.000-07:00

...a big shout out to UC Berkeley!
The university has some of the best and most comprehensive information on vertebrate flight that I could track down on the web.

Specifically, Chiroptera- and if you don't know what I'm talking about, you'll find out soon enough. If you do know what I'm talking about, but can't fathom why, well... you, too may find out soon.

Wierd and enigmatic enough? I think so.

The Davis House

2005-09-26T14:17:00.000-07:00

The Davis House

The 'home blog' for the Halloween project, sponsored and driven by my dear friends Chris & Jeff.
Ongoing rennovation (also seen on the above) of Jeff's workshop has made for a bit of a trial - namely, every tool needed often demands a scavenger hunt- but morale is good and we're getting things done as industriously as ever.

Our Official Site

Our official home is still under construction, but as I know bupkis about web design, I'm blissfully ignorant of that process.

So there I was...

2005-09-26T11:05:00.000-07:00

nah, really!
I was commenting a friend's blog, and I signed in on autopilot.
I had completely forgotten that I had this thing.
fuck-a-doodle-doo.