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archives push me to post webmail :: xenii mail the hive :: for trading and raiding polymorph :: a cosmographia universalis chrisnelson.ca :: chiefwagonburner has a blog fortune cookie distro :: x's distro
Fun links Chief! In the day of DNA, it'd be fun to see how many white supremicists would turn out with more than "a single drop!" Might change them. If not at least they'd have to bare their own shame! Self-hatred can be cleansing, Heh! From all that my Mom can find out geneaology wise, my ancestors were mostly European. But there is at least some possiblity that I have some Native American blood. At least I often use that when people ask if I am Asian, Har! Nothing wrong with being Asian, nor Black nor anything that you are! I only mean that as far as public records show, my family has no Asian ancestory, at least in the past 100-200 years. Yet, I do have some Asian characteristics. In theory, so do Native Americans, so maybe that's it. I have no idea! Nor does it matter to me. I am interested in that sort of thing. Histrory is a good way to see the present. But whatever the results, I am who I am. I have recently (though before the recent blog postings), considered declaring myself Black. On all applications mark the Black race box, maybe go as far as to see if I could take it to court, to be officially declared Black. I believe in the assertion of all of our equality strongly enough, to believe that it'd be better if everyone considered themselves Black. Then maybe we'd get over some of the ignorance. Alas, it probably wouldn't change much. The visce-reality of it would probably still divide us. Funny, I mentioned the book, "Black Like Me" just today to a friend at work. An interesting read, though a bit dated. Might be revealing if someone did a remake, in today's world, to see how things have changed/how things are still the same. Eddy Murphy did a funny take on it, by dressing-up and acting White. Of course every where he went he got preferential treatment, because he was now seen as White. It was on a early "Saturday Nite Live." Hilarious! Speaking of Halloween, I missed an friend's annual Halloween party because we had Monthend at work. I didn't get away until 2am. I hadn't come up with a costume this year so no big loss. But the guy always lays out a huge spread of food! I did get to gorge on all kinds of candy. Each department at work had seperate candy displays, laid out for anyone passing by. I passed by several departmenmts! I even set out some strawberry flavored mini-Twizzlers! I also set a bag of Jelly Beans in our window for passersby. Funny, not many people ate them, so I had to finish the bag, Heh! Then there were Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Tootsie Pops (I actually got to the center without biting it, though it took way too many licks to count), mini-Milky Ways, Sweet Tarts mini-rolls, Twix singles, A&W Root Beer hard candy barrels, cinnamon hard candy and more! My teeth would be rotting out, if I had any left, HA! That was a very informative read about the traditions of Halloween and where they come from Chief! Though it was ironic at the end, about teaching people's children Christian superstitions! Like "Our God is better than their God(s)!" Huzzah! Happy Pagan Rituals, Halloween, All Saints (and not so Saintly) Day! Awwa \A/
Aw Jimmy, don't do it. Thats how they get you! Hah! I love it, x. Its not even 4 and my teeth are probably completely rotten. Here's to the best diabetic coma, EVER!
chiefwagonburner My friend Elana used to go to a prestigious private school in the New England area. At her graduation, everyone was required to wear a white graduation gown, because it symbolized purity. Graduation day, she's standing there, shaking the principal's hand with a bright orange graduation robe with matching orange cap on.
x Interesting about the DNA tidbit, Chris. I had planned to send for cheap version of the DNA test next week.
jimmy I've wondered about that before. All over our culture (bible for example), white is used to mean good/pure/clean/etc. How much does that fuck with our heads as we are growning up? Maybe you arent really black, Jimmy. ;) Anna Gosselin and I carved two pumpkins each last night. I do believe they are the best pumpkins, EVER! Interesting. Thanks for the info! Halloween is bad.
chiefwagonburner I got a new Progressive magazine today. This was in the "No Comment" section. "The conservative Montana Family Coalition is launching a media campaign against the new television show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, reports The Billings Gazette. "To me, that's not a reality show about gay people," said Julie Milliam, the group's executive director. "A really good reality show for gay people would be five gay men dying of AIDS." It just seems like family values people are actually time travellers from the 1950s, employing flimsy pseudo-scientific cultural stereotypes from the 1980s to help release the steam built up from supressing urges from 300,000 BC. In a completely unrelated incident, I was at Target today and overheard a kid in the costime section telling his mother what he wanted to be for Halloween. "A Ninja!" "Well what do Ninjas wear, honey?" "I dunno. Black I guess." "Well, why don't you be a good ninja?" "Huh? You mean wear white?" "Yes!" I think she heard me mutter "good ninja's wear black too you stupid bitch, it's fucking camoflauge", because as soon as I said it she bailed. I made sure the kid didn't hear me. Yes I was out of line, and I feel awfully about it. I didn't tell Mytila. She'll find out from reading this post, of course. She just had this "I'm bigger than you and smarter than you and more fucked up than you and I am going to protect you from the world by making you just like me" attitude with him. A few more ingredients would have made him a future serial-killer candidate. (You had to be there.) You could argue that she wanted to coerce her kid into wearing white so that he would be safe while Trick or Treating (visible to cars)...but if she wanted him to be safe, she would bring him in before sunset anyway. If she is just manipulating* him into wearing a color she feels more comfortable with then she's a shitbag for not just saying "I don't want you to wear black". 'I'll bet she's a Christian', I thought, and if she responds to what I'm about to say I'll kindly inform her that priests where all black too, the bag. All of this went through my mind AS I was muttering the obscenities...so I dunno. I dunno. I've been sick lately. I was grumpy because I was starting to go into fever mode again and Mytila wanted to shop for devil horns. I got a little pissed off about the demonization of a harmless shade. One can only imagine how the kid is trained to react to lime green. God, it's unthinkable. Could it be..."a black thing"? Thang? Perhaps. But to admit it's a black thing would be to admit that my own cultural identity, my perception of what I am has been predetermined, nay, hijacked by a majority, and I won't be admitting that anytime soon. "Oh my god, can he really say 'hijacked' in a blog??" Ah. It's a mystery. I should be drinking martinis and watching Indiana Jones. *A long time ago I posted in some club (maybe ours?) something I'd been working on at the time. It was called "How to Lie (A Mechanistic View)". One of the first points made was about what I called the "Shaitanic Goad". Satan used Eve's own ego to get her to do his bidding. We can save a lot of time manipulating people by appealing to their egos...say, by leading the person into a discovery in such a way as they feel they'd discovered it. Most people do this naturally. I find it disgusting, but useful if skillfully applied.
jimmy "Stab the Pig! Kill the Pig! Eat the Pig!" ~"Lord of the Flies"~ I'm also reminded of an experiment with rats, where the researchers intentionally created an over-crowded, under resourced habitat, full of rats. As the population grew (rats procreate at an amazing rate), many social abnormalities were observed The eating of feces and the dead were not of the least. Normally non-cannibalistic rats turned to eating each other alive, in order to survive, fighting for each scrap of anything. It became not just survival of the fittest, but also of the brutalest! Speaking of research, the CIA's MK-Ultra experiments are notorious among conspiracists. A part of the story can be found from searching the web for "MK-Ultra", "Frank Olsen/Olson", "The CIA and LSD", "The Lida Machine", "Brainwash Experiments", "HARRP", "Watergate" may have even been a part of their reach, in as much as some conspiracists say that it was a cover-up to divert attention away from a "Sex for Secrets" operation that the CIA was running nearby. I've thought of GW's father's connection (being a former head of the CIA), and have no doubt that some tactics devised by the CIA are being used on the public today. I even draw the conclusion that these are the men who killed Kennedy. Coming up from the base of the cover-up of that assassination, there are many questions which can be raised. No questions have a satisfactory answer, what happened nor who was actually involved. Were the CIA off duty that day? Have they not been privy to the evidence? When the leader of the free world has been killed, was the CIA left out of the loop? No, no! They know, and they are still hiding the truth from the American public. Forty years later, who cares if it was a payback from Kruschev, or against Mobsters angry at John F. and Bobby! Communism all but squelched worldwide, what secrets of National security could they still be concerned about... if not for their own complicity? On another tangent, southern California's rain of ash plight rerminds me of Virginia's brush with Isabel. People act different when their environment has changed. Sometimes it's a little like shock, walking around half dazed, half lost, helpless. But in particular your plight reminds of the book "Dhalgren" by Samuel R. Delaney. It's fairly long (600+ pages) and a bit of a ramble. But that enhances the strange, out of normal time, other worldliness of it. So they're blaming some of it on a couple of guys throwing flaming material from a van... CIA operation perhaps? So might have been the Snipers in Virginia and Maryland from last year... and the one(s) this year in West Virginia. The Anthrax scare, 911 for that matter! Even if September 11th wasn't their plan, it sure served them well, building the terror factor enough to wage war against two seperate, equally sovreign nations. Explaining how they pulled off Isabel is a different puzzler! Off on a another tangent, some people, Artists among them, believe that struggle is an important part of the creative process. I suppose I agree with some aspects of the notion. But struggle for the sake of struggle is pointless, even in the face of nothing great to create. I can/have suffered for my Art, but struggle for its own sake makes no sense to me. Perhaps it's the victim in me that is abhored by the notion. I don't mind jumping through a few hoops. I'm just not much for the hamster wheel of death! Course if my textures take-off, I may become one busy little hamster! "They haven't grown-up", now that's the best explaination yet! But if immaturity is the skinheads' excuse, then what is Bush and his gang's excuse? Sorry again about your friends' bang-ups, Speck! I hope everything will work-out! Very sad! Be Well All! Awwa \A/
Aw Jez, speck. Tell him get well from us. "makes people more crazy" That is an understatement. It is finally starting to clear up here.
chiefwagonburner thanks for the words of condolence and concern everyone, it's nice to know that SOME people in the world have hearts. sheesh. BUT the weird saga continues for me. so I got home from work last night and right when I walked in the door my friend Pie called to tell me that he was at the hospital because our friend Joel got hit by a car. !!!! Apparently he was crossing the street in his neighborhood in a crosswalk and this woman stopped to let him go, but some other woman came barrelling down the street with no headlights on behind her and smashed into the back of the first woman's car and subsequently knocked down Joel and shattered his knee. So he had to stay in the hospital last night and hopefully they'll be able to do surgery today. They want to do it sooner rather than later because his knee is pretty messed up. !!!!!!! what the hell is going on here? And apparently Jason the drummer from the Haskells who got beat pretty bad by the skins has some eye damage from getting booted in the face, but they don't know how bad it is yet because it's too swollen for them to tell. And Jason wants to sue the club owner because she refused to call the cops when all this was going down because she didn't want to get a $3000 fine which is what you get I guess for having a fight in your bar that the cops have to bust up. And when everyone was trying to get back into the bar to get away from the fight she wouldn't let Jason back in even though he was getting beaten. She was yelling at everyone not to call the cops, but luckily this is the age of cell phones so there was a resounding "fuck you" to her on that one. Blah blah blah. I'm not going to talk about this anymore today. I'm tired of having a lump in my stomach about how mean people can be. everything will die down I'm sure and be fine, it's still just a bit upsetting. And I think everything is worse because it's really hot here right now and that always makes people more crazy.
Miss Speck and the Giant Librarians Aaah, fucking skinheads. I don't think the lot of them ever grow up, if 'growing up' means renouncing your violent ways. Their errant belief-system would hardly be an issue if they didn't reinforce them with violence. I've had my fair share of run-ins, but that was before I was 18. I had run-ins with everyone before I was 18. The apathy thing...wow. You know, the sad thing is that I can see myself walking away from the woman if it appears that she's being helped. Of course, everyone else is thinking the same thing. We're so accustomed to having things work out without having to lift a finger. "Someone will come by and get that sofa out of the street." And sometimes we're right. "Aar, he probably has AAA." And sometimes we're right. "One of the other neighbors will hear and call child protective services." And sometimes we're right. I guess Human Beings are stranger in groups than they are as individuals. Take the Milgram experiments for example, or that time (oft repeated) when dozens of people stand by and passively observe a person being brutally stabbed to death. Stalin and Hitler didn't act alone. Hundreds and thousands of people had jobs making people's lives miserable. They shot, maimed, raped, buried alive, gassed, stripped, defiled, stabbed, beat, and burned millions of people. It was their job...and some of them did it out of fear for their families. All over the web, apologists say things like, "you have to understand what was going on in Germany at the time...there was this depression, and like..." Yeah well like FUCK you. There is no excuse for not stepping in and defending humanity when it is within your power. People and their idle banter on the side of being impartial. I did it once. I hoped that someone else would take care of it. There was this girl and her boyfriend who lived beneath me. He looked like someone the local newspaper would call a "nice Christian boy", or more accurately, any antagonist in a John Hughes film, and she was the same. Every once in awhile, I could hear her body being slammed against the wall accompanied by a great exhalation such as when you fall out of a tree as a child, and then the sound of his voice and his fists beating down on her. She would scream and cry and he would yell vulgaries at her. I thought about calling the police and I never did it because I knew he would come upstairs and kill me. He had guns, and tons of sketchy people dropped by his house for pot. I rationalized the fact of my not calling the cops by turning my anger toward the victim (actually I realize now that the victim was both of them). I was really angry at her, because she was intelligent, and capable, and not at all incapacitated. Of course, I'm not qualified to make a call like that. But my fear made me judge her harshly, like, "fuck you, use your head, you should have gotten out the first time he ever layed a hand on you". There were tons of other rationalizations, even relativism was called into play. As a relativist, you can live your life without ever having to lift a finger to help anyone. Female circumcision. Ho-hum. Arg. I'm ranting.
jimmy "Horror! Horror! It's either your friend or it is truly your enemy!" Okay, bad Brando impersonation! That really is terrible Speck! I've been thinking along those lines lately. With a scumbag thief/thug President, it's hard to think about anything else. What is it in the human condition that spawns such behavior? I grew-up being one of those non-violent types, usually beaten-up by the bullies, though I would take a stand when I could. I believe I was fortunate, having a relatively safe home, food, medical attention when needed (rarely), an education, and a respect for learning. My family was only mildly disfunctional in the Archie Bunker/All in the Family sense. Our needs were met. We didn't have a lot, but we had a little more than what we needed. Most of the bullies were from poorer, lower class families. But that's not wholely true either. In fact some of the more abusive (though usually less physically violent) bullies were from wealthier families, the big-time Jocks and socialites, the status seekers. But then that isn't wholely true either. From all of these backgrounds there were exceptionally nice people as well. Kinda hard to pinpoint, but some of the causes are obvious enough to go without saying. Abuse and neglect at home, any home, often leads to abberrant behavior. Then there're the exceptions to that rule, where a seemingly normal home spawns violent behavior in a child, or an extremely abusive situation spawns a great humanitarian. What I was thinking about recently is how someone like GW can go on committing treasonable, at least impeachable offenses, and yet, even as these acts are slowly picked-up by the media, no one seems to be alarmed. Well, except for those of us who were screaming from the beginning. Violence certainly begets violence. Most of us know that well enough to avoid that cycle. So slow to anger is possibly a weakness preceived by this kind of bully. Coupled with a hive mentality, "someone else will handle it, it's not my job" (as in the subway incident), and those who work really fast at raping and pillaging, get away with it before we can react to the situation. Their control of the money/power/resources keeps enough people in lower class/status seeking situations. This breeds the greed, lust, envy, jealousy, etc, raising the general level of stress. Those with a proclivity to violence add to the boil. Now even level-headed, normally nonviolent people become aggitated, more worried, less rational. People who know how to take advantage of these circumstances (often the same ones who cause them), thrive! There are some people who see other people as "prey." Serial Killers come to mind. But in the general demographic, there are some who respond in the same manner. I'm not talking about self-preservation, where you'd rather not have someone drive, who drives like a total maniac. Even "control freaks" are not inherently of this school. They just don't want anyone else to mess things up. But the people who are "always on the make", always looking for a way "to get over", those who are "always one upping everyone"; they are different. They respond from some predatorial instinct (for lack of a better word), something darker than the most of us have. Then by comparison, are the rest of us sheep? Okay so this is going nowhere, fast! To connect it a bit, GW and his gang are raiding the chicken coop. Some people see what is happening and try to tell the others. But they are ineffective and, or are silenced by the raiders. The rest of the US seems oblivious to the situation. Even when the alarm is raised, many don't fight back. They don't know how. What GW and what many in the current US administration is doing is criminal. There are probably "Rico" laws, which at the least could put them away for conspiring to commit these many crimes against the people of the US, the people of the world, crimes against humanity, predatory crimes; which do more than cause hardships. They destroy lives. And this for little better reason than "because they can." I'm sorry, this is so long a ramble. I know it doesn't help your situation Speck. I'm truly sorry about that and wish I knew someway to help. Perhaps involving the police at an early stage could circumvent some of the violence. But then there's another whole problem, when the police are not as nonviolent as perhaps they could be. Then there're those who say we need "healthy" competition to survive. Perhaps the US has had it too cushy, for too long. That's certainly what 911 seemed to be telling us. And then maybe not. I don't know... it's hard to understand something which is normally not a part of my daily life. Is that kind of violence normal to human experiences? Has civilization lost it's touch with the brutality of living? I don't know. Awwww, I'll be quiet now! Peace! Awwa \A/
Aw That is brutal speck, sorry to hear. Too bad these people can't settle things by singing, dancing, and snapping. I wonder how much of the apathy in those types of situations is a result of us having that sort of thing taken care of for most of our lives? Does it take a disaster before people wake up and realize that someone is not always going to be there to clean it up? PS Cool pictures, Anna.
chiefwagonburner it certainly does feel like the apocalypse lately. I had a really crazy dramatic weekend. ugh. It all started out fine and wonderful and each moment felt really special and wonderful and made me happy to be alive and in love and with my friends, blah blah blah. But then it got all crazy and sad and fucked up. So my boyfriend's band was playing on friday and saturday night, and the show on friday down in San Jose was excellent and fun and everything was wonderful. But then they played in Oakland on saturday night, which I thought was going to be even more fun because all of our friends were there and whatnot, but it wasn't. So we showed up and before we went inside, one of our friends came out and said that there were a buncha dudes from Most Hated, this skinhead gang, inside. Which was very bad news because they were there to kick Cutty's (my boyfriend) ass. The long story-short version of why they wanted to do that was because about a year ago Cutty got in a fight with this dude Ernie who is the kingpin of this other skinhead gang OBHC (Oakland Bay Hardcore. Or maybe it's just OHC, i forget. whatever) and cutty smashed a bottle in Ernie's face. whoops. But three of Ernie's henchmen beat-up Cutty about a month and a half ago after one of his shows, so I had thought that everything was fine and settled. eye for an eye. But apparently not. So here are these Most Hated dudes at the show and all of a sudden everything really sucks. All of our friends were there, but we're not brawlers. We don't have "thug for life" and "violence is my passion" tattooed on us. I have "fragile" tattooed on me. Good god. So I spent a coupla hours stressing out about what was going to happen. And it was all really tense, but we came up with the plan of getting Cutty out of there as soon as the show was over. So as soon as they finished the last song, Cutty walked off the stage and we went outside and our friend was waiting there with her car and we split. So I was relieved because he didn't get beat up and the situation was diffused or whatever. But of course it wasn't because fucking skinheads are evil bastards and they were drunk, so after we left they started some shit and it escalated into a big brawl that involved the guitar player and drummer from the Haskell's (Cutty's band) as well as the singer and the guitar player from Everything Must Go, another band that was playing that night, plus about 2 other friends of ours. It really sucked. Jason, the drummer from the Haskells had to go to the hopsital because they broke his nose and fucked up his face and his eye was bleeding. And Jason is really sweet and quiet and not a fighter. ugh. Anyhoo, about 25 cop cars showed up but all the fucking lame ass skins ran away. so that whole thing really bummed me out. I mean, what the fuck is this shit? the Haskells are not belligerent types. But now we have skins after all of us? And these stupid skinheads are not young crazy kids. They're in their 30's like the rest of us, I mean grow the fuck up. jesus. Suddenly it's some gang warfare thing of punks vs. skins. How retarded is that? So now I'm worried about everyone and it all sucks. Cutty is going to call Ernie this week to try and settle it since this is a bad way for things to be. Anyhoo, so that was my weekend. And then this morning when I was coming home from Cutty's on BART, this woman fell down and had a seizure on the platform and nearly got her head torn off by a train, but people pulled her out of the way just in time, but then she was convulsing and no one's cell phone worked down there because it's underground, so I went upstairs and told the station agent to call 911, but the fucked up thing is that all these people in front of me on the escalator who had seen what happened too didn't stop to tell the agent to call 911. They just went on their way. apathy. violence and apathy.
Miss Speck and the Giant Librarians I can see them and they're gorgeous.
jimmy   not sure if I remember how to get images in here correctly, here goes. Are you guys able to see them?
Anna NASA pics here. Cool tool here. 
chiefwagonburner 
chiefwagonburner We had the apocalypse last Thursday. Ash was falling steadily all day long and my eyes were burning well into the next day. There's still a haze around here, but the ash isn't coming down any longer. The shadows were all cobalt blue. Funny, I've been taking pictures of streetlamps at night, and they sometimes come out looking much like this kind of doomsday sun. Disappointingly however, the human race is still here.
Anna Bah, a lot of my pictures did not come out. But I found out why. My camera automaticaly detects light settings and adjusts its mode. Well, because of the smoke it thought I was under tungsten lighting. So all my pictures just look like it is a normal day. Bah! Thwarted by technology again! I set it manually and it takes the pictures fine, going out to snap some more.
chiefwagonburner From the Geek Philes I've been playing a game called homeworld2. It's a massively multiplayer space game. I like space. It's big. You can design your own fleet logos. This is something which works too well for me.  This is one of my fleet's battlecruisers. Note the "Mc Mortuary" logo. Wherever Mc Mortuary travels, death follows. I mean...my death, as you can tell by the fact that my battlecruiser is smoking. I'm not that great at it yet. Ask me how Mytila puts up with me suddenly screaming between my headphones "three fucking battlecruisers just decloaked at my harvesting operation!!" at 1 am while she lays in bed with a pillow over her head and I wouldn't be able to tell you right away...but I look at her laying there in the fetal position, and I think: "You know what? She's scared too. Who wouldn't be? Just the ion cannons from one of those bastards alone could take out my mothership!". I think she understands.  This is my first Mc Mortuary fighter fleet being destroyed by a guy in China. I could not verify whether or not he had a girlfriend or boyfriend who was laying in bed counting their toenail clippings because the guy wouldn't talk to me. I dunno. He was probably too busy taking out my mothership.  It gets lonely out in space. I find that blasting Blue Oyster Cult's "Veterans of Psychic Wars" takes the edge off while I survey the damage from the first wave of a CPU trained attack. I suck right now, but I'll get better. Right now, Mc Mortuary can only boast "Over 3 served". But who's counting?
jimmy Scripts Ranch and some other stuff is going up in smoke. It is amazing out, it is as if someone put a lense over the world. White is yellow, down town buildings refect blue. I will have to post some pictures, I got snap happy.
chiefwagonburner   I took these just outside my house this morning. When I woke up to Mytila going to work, I noticed the light coming into our room through the curtain was brown/orange. I didn't really think about until I woke up a bit later. Taking the pictures, my nose and lungs became irritated. It was snowing ash. I'm not sure wwhat part of California is on fire right now. I don't care. It happens all the time here. At least it's not being burned by Guerillas.
jimmy 
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