nothing funny to say

need to move, real soon like. not fun. need sleep, need food, need job security at either job. bah. on the plus side, some new stories are up, and the webpage looks pretty.

Goe, needs a nap like he needs to exhale.

busy busy busy

in three and a half days last week, i had a total of eleven hours of sleep. so busy, so tired... :( haven't written anymore of the new story but i've come up with an ending.

Goe, gotta get going.

Stories

There's yet another storyblogging festival up, full of fictional goodness.

Goe, taking another gander.

Greatest show within 20 feet.

went to see the circus this afternoon, missing hours of valuable sleep time for what promised to be a very memorable show. turned out to be mostly musical numbers, with fewer than 10 performing groups (the clowns were just lame). the horses did nothing but go in loops (they didn't bother even setting up rings) while riders did stunts on horseback, the elephants mostly just stood there, the only other animals were birds, dogs, and housecats that were part of a rather cool display (and highlight of the show) by an animal trainer. way too much time was spent on dance numbers, and the 'circus singer' spoke more than the 'ringmaster', a pretty lame thing for 'the greatest show on earth'. turns out that ringling bros is broken in three, and i got tickets to the show put on by 'disney on ice' producers instead of one worth paying for. so i squeezed in a few hours of sleep and it's off to work in a few.

Goe, not waiting for 'Anne Frank on Ice'

Today

While waiting for the bus to go home from job#2, i look up and see three eastbound cars waiting for green lights. two in normal lanes, one in the left-hand turn lane. all three drivers were women, and all three were talking on cellphones.

Goe, happy they weren't on his lawn.

still tired

got an idea for a new story, will write it when i get some time/energy. many relatives in town, including and because of a new nephew born thursday.

Goe, will buy his little nephew noisy toys.

Keeping up

tired, so very tired. sore, too. i'm an information junkie and i've been mostly unaware of what's happened in the world the past week. gave up on reading the corner two weeks ago. don't have the time to keep up with instapundit anymore, and i can barely keep up with cuteoverload. at job2, i was mostly an errandboy last night, and job1 sent me home early because i had hit the hour-cap for the week. my feet hurt because both jobs mostly involve standing or walking while holding boxes of varying sizes and weights, so i stopped off at a store and bought some gel insoles. they've a great fondness for 'memory foam', but i didn't want something that will squish down under my feet and stay squished, so i bought the gel ones instead.

Goe, waiting for the weekend postsecret update.

guilty pleasure

it annoys me when i'm doing any sort of work that has customer interaction and i'm expected to be supercharming, but i like it when i'm the customer and cs women act flirty.

Goe, gots two paychecks, yay.

Energy drinks

I'm frequently exhausted (more to do with relatives annoying me at all hours than anything else), but i've never tried an 'energy drink'. so tonight, being annoyed by relatives, i bought and tried a red bull. didn't give me wings, actually made it harder to stay awake for about an hour. meh.

Goe, wishes he could be as rude to people as they think he is.

work

finished training at job #2 to find out that the person who made up the schedule didn't know i'm working there and left me out. still good chance of being able to do both jobs.

update: turns out they did know, did schedule me, and i either missed my name or read the wrong schedule. yay for bigger incomes.

Goe, usually likes customers.

life is pain

of course, i'm not selling anything. going to see if i can work two part-time jobs. don't know if i can since they're not next to each other and the commute time may be greater than the difference between shifts. didn't feel well when i went to work this afternoon, and now i've a headache as well.

Goe, hoping for a good night's sleep.

teamwork

my manager is very big on teamwork. if we're low on stuff to do, we help the people on either side. it turns out that his managers don't like that. they want us to find other spots to work where there isn't someone already. it's strange that a company with such a high turnover rate would discourage comraderie, but it does help explain the high turnover rate.

Goe, not turned over.

So please have a heart, Hollywood. If you can accept the wife beaters, wife killers, child molesters, gerbil lovers, gays, lesbians, transsexuals, undecideds, party animals, party sluts, coke addicts, alcoholics, gold-diggers, casting couch sleepers, Oprah couch jumpers, and washed up singers who troll for gay sex in the public park – then maybe you could find a little place in your heart for someone who doesn't always like Jews.

Especially when he's been drinking.

- IMAO

Goe, is none of the above, so will never be a star.

Stuff

There is yet another storyblogging carnival up full of blogged story goodness. There's also more Nordlinger, who's not quite so fictional but still something you should read regularly.

Goe, telling you to go forth and read stuff.

generic story

still haven't got the big problem totally fixed, but there will be more adventuring coming soon.

Goe, working on it.

owie

sustained minor injury at work through no fault of anybody (including me) who works there. kinda of annoying that the first bunch of gauze didn't stop the bleeding, but the second bunch did, so all is well. la di da.

Goe, thinking alcoholism isn't an option.

hmm

been reading the bible a bit lately, and it seems that, in the old testament, the jews kept getting in trouble with god because they wouldn't wipe out the people living there but kept making peace deals instead.

god: kill them all!
them all: please don't.
jews: okay, live over there please.
them all: okey dokey.
god: bad jews, i said kill them!
them all: god says we should kill the bad jews!
jews: uh oh.

Goe, cause it's funny in a macabre way.

potterheads

i noticed something on mugglenet a month or so ago that apparently nobody on the mugglenet staff noticed. rowling said that she was killing off two more characters than originally planned, and giving one a reprieve. to the various potter website and the 'respectable' media who've talked to them, that means that there are two people dying, instead of the original number plus one that i take from what rowling said.

Goe, rooting for neville to get some payback.

not quite a zen moment

on the way home, i watched the lights outside, reflected off of my eye, reflected back at me from the window. not very relaxing, but it distracted me from the cramps in my back and the babbling teens who should have been home already.

Goe, would shake his fists at the kids these days if he had any energy left.

water

drinking so much water at work to stay hydrated that i'm getting sick of the plastic taste in bottled waters. at least it's not so hot now.

Goe, happy about the cooler weather.

tv guide

the tv guide is pretty useless now. big blocks of time are 'local programming' without saying what the local programming actually is. there's several pages dedicated to pointing out product placement so that people know what they're supposed to go buy. most of it is hyping actors/actresses while donwplaying the shows. it's not a tv guide, it's a celebrity gossip rag. i wanna know what's on, damnit!

Goe, flippin' channels.

stories

now that my job isn't crippling me with pain and fatigue, i'll try to write more of The Generic Adventure.

Goe, stretching.

myspace

was told by a relative to get a myspace account. told them i'd think about it. i did think about it, and i'm going to pass. they said that they have one and i've been trying to find it with google, to no avail as of yet.

update: was sent a link by his wife.

Goe, will keep trying.

conversation at work

crazy guy: "it says scantron, i thought it said scat tron."
me: "scat is never wrong."
crazy guy: "that's right."

Goe, gonna go help kitties in the morning.

overheard

i overheard someone today telling someone else that jesus was crucified by the romans because he had walked on water. lesson here: if you're going to try telling bible stories, read the bible first!

Goe, nothing follows.

alkeehol

i've been invited to go out drinking after work with some of my coworkers three times now, tonight being the first time i had any cash with me and accepted. having trouble typing even though i only had half a bottle of something called "black butte porter", a horrible drink i wouldn't recommend to anyone. tasted like rotten fruit with a strong aftertaste of bitter apples. i didn't try anything else, but my manager was drinking guiness, one batshit insane guy was drinking the porter stuff (the reason i decided to try it), and two people were drinking something else. i didn't have more because i didn't want to get so drunk i couldn't get myself home, or start vomiting or anything. i don't think i'm drunk, but i know my coordination is a bit off (still typing 75wpm or faster though). one weird side effect is that my mind seems to be clearer now than it normally is, but was like that before we even got to the bar. the crazy guy and myself got rides to the bar from a hispanic guy we work with (the crazy guy carpools with him) and crazy guy kept giving him directions in sort of a mock-spanish that the driver had trouble understanding, and the crazy guy didn't even know where the place was. drove past it three times.

trying to be responsible, i left at 11:30ish, made my way home (there now), to find out (cellphones not allowed where i work), that i have a second interview at a place i interviewed at last week. they want to schedule a time this weekend, but i've got a family reunion tomorrow, and i don't know if they'll be open to sunday or not. may have to stop by on the way to the reunion. lower pay but more hours and less backbreaking work.

Goe, at least makes his money honestly.

Bus stop

So I'm waiting at a bus stop with a bunch of other people, and a bus pulls up. one person gets on the bus, the second person in line stands at the door asking the bus driver questions, not getting on, not letting others get on. that bus was running late, so the next bus (frequent service line) pulls up behind it. the crowd blocked my path to the second bus, and it was gone before the person asking the first bus driver questions made up their mind about whether or not to take that bus. everyone else there just stood around, oblivious to the second bus which, due to the indecisiveness of the second boarder, wound up in front of the first bus. is being aware of what's going on around you really that difficult that a bus is hard to spot?

Goe, cause they're not smaller than a breadbasket.

Space Age

a upi headline, repeated on drudge

NASA to use Space Age 'droid' satellites

Wouldn't any artificial satellite be "space age"?

Goe, needs a disco nap.

Bank of America

Bank of America, it turns out, doesn't honor checks written on their accounts unless you have an account with them also. told me to go to a check-cashing store instead.

Goe, grrrrr.

writing

had a dream last night in which i started writing a whole new long story. need to finish up the ones i've already started though.

Goe, maybe will write more soon.

weird bird

a few weeks ago, i was walking down the street and there was a crow on a power line sort of overhead. since lots of birds like to sit on power lines, it wasn't that weird. it got weird when the bird started following me and cawing, almost overhead, for half a block. at least it didn't hit me with anything.

Goe, tired.

storyblogging

there's another one up over there.

Goe, pointing the way.

Vegetable Oil

So I wasn't paying attention and bought some tuna fish in vegetable oil. It tastes funny and probably is unhealthy compared to the tuna in water that I normally get. It's like some sinister tuna company plot. Evil bastards!

Goe, raging against tunaco.

Lawyers

I know lawyers are evil and all, but I want a second opinion on this.

Q. What are the basic requirements for rest breaks under Oregon law?
A. Employers must provide workers with a paid, uninterrupted 10-minute rest break for every four-hour segment or major portion thereof in the work period. OAR 839-020-0050(1)(b). The rest break should be given in the middle of each segment, whenever possible.

- here

would working 20 minutes, taking a ten minute break, then working four and a half hours be discouraged or illegal?

Q. What does "major portion" of four hours mean?
A. The "major portion" of four hours means any segment greater than two hours. Whenever a segment exceeds two hours, the employer must provide a rest break for that segment.

this would imply it was illegal, but i'm thinking that it may be legal depending on how one decides to break out the five hours into a four hour period and the lesser part of a four hour period.

Goe, will probably mail in a complain this weekend unless he hears otherwise.

business idiocy.

i posted once, a while ago and i don't have the inclination to dig it up for a link, about a company who encouraged money-saving ideas by rewarding employees who suggested them. the company bought the reward (a case of soda in most cases) at the company headquarters and shipped it overnight to the person being rewarded, even if they were on the other side of the country. that company threatened to fire anyone who pointed out that overnighting something that could be bought locally was a waste of money. today, i found out that a major financial institution (hence someplace that really should know better) buys paper in bulk at one location and ships it to all their branch offices, instead of sending an assistant manager down to officemax or officedepot to pick up some more. good news: i can barely feel any pain in my arms. bad news: it's because i feel almost nothing but the pains in my feet and back.

Goe, tired.

job security

got a job that isn't likely to leave me anytime soon like some have in the past. it's the closest thing locally to working in a coal mine that i know of (part-time and low paying to boot), but it's a regular paycheck, and regular paychecks are nice. had another interview this morning that went along the lines of 'we don't care if you can outwork every employee we have, you're a loser so go away!'... so since it turns out that i don't really need my brain for anything, i've been thinking of taking up a new vice, alcohol (never touched the stuff previously) being a frontrunner concept. Pesky brain cells! Take that!

Goe, using Rachmeg's link to plan his revenge on you all!

Chapter Seven

It would have been normal for them to reach Ambush Pass in the mid-afternoon, but they weren't making very good time. The dust and noise of the other traffic on the road, sparse as it was, kept them moving somewhat slower than any of them would have liked. Snarky seemed out of place on a horse, and spent a large part of the morning walking rather than ride on what was clearly a very fine mount. The Goon brothers, both better teamsters than swordsmen, kept the wagon moving as smoothly as the roadway permitted. Twice, Selfless raised his head up to check on their progress, scowling at Snarky before sinking back down into the baggage.
They stopped near mid-day to rest and water the horses near a small stand of trees near an equally small village. None of the farmers, merchants, or travellers they had seen in the morning had paid them any heed, and the villagers they saw were likewise disinterested. The village was located where it was because it was about four hours from the city, making it's small pub a convenient resting stop for those going on a long journey, as well as a convenient place for farmers to sell their crops and livestock to merchants out on day trips from the city. Larger towns, usually walled and with their own ruling noblemen, lay another four hours out on each of the roads excepting the one Snarky was taking the party down. The road before them was deemed so perilous that few dared to traverse it, leaving the town of Abandoned to overgrowth and disrepair.
Adolescent, raised in a very similar village, kept gawking at the few peasants he could see, and had to be prodded into tending his own horse by Idiot. Having grown up tending farm animals, Adolescent still took a few moments to discern the canvas feed bag from the canvas water bag. This put him in a more caring position than Snarky in terms of their horses. Snarky didn't even seem to be aware that his horse needed water. He just tied the reins to the back of the wagon and walked to the trees. As he began gathering wood, Stupid and Idiot moved his horse up with their master's and the wagon team.
Selfless sat up in the wagon, watching Snarky gather wood. He barely acknowledged Amiable or Dandy when they climbed up and sat next to him. Amiable dug into one of the bags and brought out some bread and cheese that he shared with the others. Noreach grabbed a few large pieces and went o share them with Adolescent, Idiot, and Stupid, who were discussing the merits of various horse breeds.
“You don't suppose that Snarky fellow is going to cook his lunch, do you?” asked Fop, who would obviously preferred a cooked lunch to the bread he was chewing.
“I was told by Assistant Advisor that Snarky Anachronism was well-traveled and brilliant man unaccustomed to our ways. He seems, though, to have a very slow wit.” answered Selfless. He paused a moment before turning abruptly to Amiable, “Did I miss anything this morning?”
“Nothing.”
“There were a lot of filthy peasants like the ones we dealt with last time,” volunteered Dandy, “a few messengers galloping past.”
“Toward the city or the pass?” asked Selfless.
“The city,” said Amiable, “You missed nothing important., but if I may ask the Lord Fop, what was your last excursion?”
“Oh, someone kidnapped the crown prince. We found him in the headquarters of a supposed bandit king named Scruffy Vagabond. Vagabond made the foolish claim that the prince had kidnapped himself. The prince is safe thanks to the actions of myself and Sacrifice, and Vagabond is in the prison, where his sort belongs, no offense.”
“None taken.”
Selfless spoke slowly and with greater elocution than he normally did, the while staring at Snarky who had finished his gathering and was approaching the wagon with an armful of wood, “The Advisors, both of them, for they know me well and give me some of their confidence, believe Vagabond and not the prince. They favor seeing his brother on the throne.”
“Oh, dear,” muttered Dandy under his breath. “Come now,” he said with a raised voice, “What did you bring this wood for?”
“Firewood for the barren plain, to keep the dark beasts away.”
“Good thinking, that.” said Amiable with a grin.
“We can get wood anywhere,” said Selfless, harshly.
“Yes, but this is Kindling Grove. It's the best wood to get a fire started,” replied Snarky, somewhat taken aback by Selfless' harshness.
“I fail to see the point of carrying wood with us, just as I fail to see the ponit in taking a road full of bandits just to save a few days, but the Assistants' saw fit to leave you in charge.” Selfless then climbed down from the wagon and readied his own horse.
Fop hesitated before blurting out, “Actually, as the only noble, I'm in charge here.”
“He's already foraged the wood, it'll save us time later,” offered Amiable, smiling and shrugging.
Dandy beamed at him, “Good point, that,” before turning back to Snarky. “Put it in the wagon for later.”
Snarky did as he was told, and a few minutes later the group was moving again, going further up into the hills.

Goe, sorry it's taking so long.

Volcano Lancing

You may think it's not important. You may think you live many miles from anything even looking like a volcano. Geology says you're wrong. They're coming to get you!

Goe, not so worried about the jacobin squirrels.

stories

you can storyblog!

Goe, needs to get more written.

A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.

excerpt of Article 4, section 2, U.S. Constitution

Yesterday evening, someone who frequently wants to argue about nothing claimed that the above 'flee' means that if a person is involuntarily removed from a state, that state couldn't extradite them back until Earl Stanley Gardner told some friends of his and had the extradition laws of california changed to permit it.

UGH!

Goe, oh yeah...

meh

typing it in, found major contradictions that i need to fix :(

Goe, blah.

writing

one more chapter of the generic adventure up tonight, probably another before the week's over.

Goe, doesn't know if anyone's been reading it.

SciFi Channel Movies

Important Rules for any movie made for showing on Sci-Fi Network.

1. There must be a conspiracy, either corporate or governmental, which intereferes with the heroes saving the world.

2. The two main heroes can't get along at the start, but must grudgingly accept working together.

3. Any plan devised by experts allied with the heros to save the world will have a fatal flaw, (usually not a big enough explosion) that will require the sacrifice of said expert or minor hero. The flaw will be revealed not before 30 minutes before the end of the film. - Moonwhisper

4. At least one of the heroes must have pre-existing knowledge of the conspiracy.

5. Among the heroes, at least one man must claim at least one woman isn't up to the job of saving the world.

6. Any available experts will have unparalleled knowledge and skills in a tremendous number of different, nominally unrelated fields.

7. If the heroes say a nuclear explosion is the only way to save the world, it is but the military will be reluctant. If they oppose nuclear weapons as unnecessary, the military will want to use one anyway.

8. Any indigenous superstitions will turn out to be correct.

9. The conspiracy will want to kill the heroes after the world is saved, if the shown conspirators live that long.

10. At least one scientific expert will have been outcast for their claims. The things they claim will be used by the heroes to save the world.

11. If the press attacks a character as being evil, it'll be one of the good guys.

Goe, only came up with 10, will add more or any from comments to the list later.

Rumsfeld is still an idiot.

I'm very much in favor of securing our borders, winning the current war,
and having a kick-ass military, which is why I still think Rumsfeld is
still an idiot. One of the motives for the pentagon's 'transformation'
is to reduce the ratio of tail to teeth so that more of our soldiers are
in combat roles instead of support roles. This leaves us with the
question that if reducing the tail is so beneficial, why are we using href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,198097,00.html">soldiers to be
the tail for non-military agencies. The real reason is that the
tail is needed and can't be done away with no matter what href="http://www.indepundit.com/">some people think. It can
probably be shrunk a bit, there is always some waste, but not enough to
drastically alter the structure of our military. The ratio remains
about the same in 'transformation', but the tooth part is shrunk as
well, and as soldiers are removed from the tail, they're replaced by
civilian's on the pentagon's payroll. The real savings doesn't come
from shrinking the tail, it comes from shrinking the teeth, something
done with trickery to make the teeth seem to grow instead.

Goe, against it.

Rose Festival Schmosefestival

There be a new story festival!

Goe, not really a pirate.

EU spyplanes

"robot spyplanes to guard Europe's borders"

From what, exactly?

Fleets of unmanned "drone" aircraft fitted with powerful cameras are to be used to patrol Europe's borders in a dramatic move to combat people-smuggling, illegal immigration and terrorism.

The people-smuggling, illegal immigration, and terrorism of which they knowingly let active participants enter and exit freely. If it's policy to let them all in anyways, on the pretense of refuge or diversity, what is the point of buying robot spyplanes to watch people come if you already know they're coming and don't care?

Goe, confused by the wishy-washy.

Bob and the circus

Bob was tall for a person, which he wasn't. He was short for a tree, which is what he happened to be. He wasn't extraordinarily short, but a sort of middling short that he tried to compensate for by being extra bushy. It was said of Bob, back when other trees spoke to and of him, that he had boughs in places that most trees didn't have squirrels.
Squirrels are ubiquitous on trees, like sand on a beach or patchouli oil on a hippie. A tree without squirrels wasn't a tree, but a tall shrubbery or bush, or maybe a tall hedge with anorexia. Bob did what he could to keep himself covered in squirrels, even the annoying ones who did nothing but complain. Only rarely, at his patience's end, would he grab one by it's tail and fling it.
The squirrels didn't like to be on Bob when he was moving. He could cover tremendous distances in a short while, taking any passengers far from their home territory. The squirrels cared almost as little for the long run home as they did for the very concept of a moving tree. Trees weren't supposed to move, their immutable locations were of fundamental importance to woodland life. Bob moved and this made him the most unwelcome of trees in the forest, so he moved alone, except for squirrels too irritating to be welcome elsewhere.
Bob, also unwelcome elsewhere, tried to do most of his resting in large clearings. He preferred ones with a pond or stream in which he could soak his roots and drink his fill. He tried to do this toward the middle of the clearing, so as to be as far away from the other trees as possible.
Bob was resting in a large clearing, a pleasant meadow surrounded on three sides by unwelcoming woods. In a portion of the clearing, and along the unforested edge, the ground was covered by the rough black rock used by some animals as pathways when they are scurrying about. Bob was almost dozing in the middle of the clearing one morning, as close to sleep as a tree can actually get, when a great many noisy boxes came and stopped on the black rock.
People got out of the boxes, and milled around briefly. Most of them then began moving other smaller boxes out of the ones they came in, while a few began to wander through the field. They were carrying papers and bags. Some had loose papers, some in notebooks, and some with clipboards. Every here and there, after consulting amongst themselves, consulting with their papers, and kicking stones that Bob couldn't see, they would pull a stick, about half as long as they were tall and with a brightly colored flag at the end out of their bags and pound it into the ground.
There were soon flags waving across the whole meadow, and small carts rolling around that mowed down the plants in their path. Bob, in the middle of a large rounded area marked with blue and red flags, was likewise in the middle of a circle of the men with papers. They seemed to be taking turns, talking with one another, looking at their papers, and looking at Bob.
Bob was looking at them as well, or as well as a tree can look. Trees, like all plants except for the potato, don't have eyes. This should not be taken to mean that trees are sightless, for they are not. Trees can see just fine, though the means are unknown to all except for ferns, who are too self-obsessed to tell anyone else.
“It wasn't here last year,” said one of the men.
“It's too big to have just grown,” said another.
“Must be some sort of a practical joke,” said a third.
“It's too big to be a practical joke,” said a fifth, speaking out of turn.
“It's very bushy,” said the fourth, trying to catch up.
“It doesn't matter if it's bushy or a practical joke,” said the second. “We can't put the big tent up with a tree just off of the center of the second ring.”
“We could lay the tent out so that the tree is just off center of the third ring,” said the first. “Nobody ever watches the third ring.”
“That's because nothing interesting happens in the third ring,” said the third person. “Besides, moving the tent isn't possible without moving everything else.”
“We could cut it down,” offered the first, mistaking for a strong breeze the tell-tale rattling of a tree preparing to pound someone flat. Bob thought better of it, and moved out of the men's way. The men quickly stopped being in a circle around Bob, with a mild bewilderment, not about a moving tree, but about how they could work it into a show.
There are many problems with creating a circus act involving a moving tree. The first is that a tree won't fit inside the average, generic, multi-purpose three-ring circus tent. The second is that a tree won't do anything that it isn't inclined to do. The third is that squirrels are filthy vermin capable of spreading a great many pestilences. It's impossible to vaccinate them all because they flit about elusively, like stripes across a television or an Emily Dickinson reading. Catch one and twenty more run through the branches in it's stead.
The people discussed this as they filled in the hole Bob left just off of the center of where the second ring would be. It was agreed, after some bickering in the fashion of roustabouts, to let management deal with the tree. It was management's job to assign trainers and deal with both talent and performing animals. Bob wasn't an animal, but no circus had performing plants, so there was going to be a bit of adaptation.
The rest of that day, Bob watched as the people setup tents and facades, and began laying sawdust on the designated paths marked with flags of a neon brown color. The next day, the remaining tents were raised, the remaining obstructive plants were razed, more facades were put up, and the animals began arriving in their cages. On the third day, the circus was completed. It was also on the third day that the people who told management about Bob were given as clean of results on the management-ordered drug tests as could be expected for circus-folk.
The circus management wasn't interested in Bob. When Bob started juggling squirrels to amuse children bored by the formulaic antics of clowns, it was dismissed as hyperactive squirrels having gotten into caffeinated beverages. When he returned escaping balloons to their owners, it was called a fluke of the wind. When Bob stole bundles of yarn from the women employed as palm-readers, it was an ill omen and the circus left quicker than it came.
Bob was alone again, with some dizzy squirrels, a few rogue balloons, and a lot of yarn at the edge of a trampled clearing. Bob went back to the middle of the field, just off of where the second ring had been. He wasn't nostalgic for the spot, it just placed him the furthest away from the other trees as he could get. He sat there, unsuccessfully trying to ignore the formulaic antics of the squirrels, and started learning how to knit balloons.

Goe, was weeding in the rain.

Storyblogging

Storyblogging Festival is up for the fortnight.

Goe, reading them now.

More bob

another bob story 1/3 to 1/2 done.

Goe, knows that bob joins a circus.

An unimportant war.

The war began quietly. Not on purpose, not for dramatic effect, but because when it began it only involved people nobody cared about in a place nobody cared about arguing over things of no lasting consequence. Both parties hated each other because they wanted to. The complaints used to justify the fighting were of incidents so long ago that they were likely as not fictional.
Since it was in one of the many places in the world that we never cared about, we were content to ignore the whole matter, just as we ignore similarly unimportant conflicts in similarly unimportant places. They did not ignore us with a similar disinterest, and we became a scapegoat for the leaders of both sides. Every failed negotiation, military setback, stubbed toe, missing bolt, soiled diaper, and general malaise was lain on our doorstep, both sides claiming that their own failings were because we were helping their enemy. This we also ignored, as pretty much everyone was blaming us for everything anyways.
A politician of ours, seeking to portray an opponent as callous and cold-hearted, pretended to care. Speeches were given about seeking the middle ground, ensuring a fair and equitable peace, and apologizing for our non-interference in things that didn't involve us. The warring parties were not pleased by this, both believing so firmly that we were working against them that greater involvement would doom their cause, so they spread the war.
They began attacking our allies, countries and people that we did care about, in minor terroristic actions, through a variety of mercenary groups. Our allies weren't anymore involved than we were, but they were in easier reach for the unnoteworthy warring parties. Our politicians, and those of our allies, condemned the spread of the war, giving speeches calling for a middle ground to be sought, the assurance of a fair and equitable peace, and apologizing for not interfering in other people's business.
The situation continued thusly until a politician in one of our allies sought a political advantage over their opponent by claiming that the participation they were being attacked for was not only not fictional, but obviously a result of meddling on our part. We denied this, of course, as we hadn't been interfering and were too ignorant of the situation to have picked a side. We knew we weren't involved, and so did our allies, but it was easier for them to shift blame rather than to correct an error believed with religious fervor.
The delusional plight of the warring parties found more allies among us, as organizations indifferent to the war began calling on us to stop what we had never started as a way to gain political advantage in our own political situation. The continued attacks on our allies led our allies to ask for our assistance while their leaders and ours claimed that such assistance was the ultimate cause of these problems. The actual war nearly came to a halt as both sides put their efforts into attacking our allies, ignoring closer enemies.
Others in the region we didn't care about began blaming us as well, and with their aid, the original factions were able to escalate their attacks against our allies and spread the attacks to us. It wasn't until the attacks against us domestically grew too large and frequent for the media to ignore that we actually did something.
Some of our politicians felt that the actions were hadn't taken were misunderstood and could be corrected by sending in peacekeepers to impose peace and force negotiations. Others claimed that we had been involved and that only by distancing ourselves could we, our allies, and the warring parties find peace.
With the support of some of our allies, peacekeepers were sent in. The best soldiers we could muster were sent to babysit the local politicians and soldiers whose irrational hatred of us dragged us into their minor dispute. Our politicians who opposed the peacekeeping mission called it an unnecessary escalation of a mistaken policy, and demanded acts of apology and contrition from their opponents. The people whose peace we were keeping and some of our more Vichy allies were easily persuaded to this point of view, with our allies providing a sanctuary to the warring leaders so they wouldn't have to attend the forced negotiations.
They negotiated without us, after a while, and declared that our aggression against them was the real cause of the war, and turned to our allies for aid against us. Our allies did not aid them directly, but provided their leaders and terrorist organizations with money and shelter. As the attacks against us continued to grow, more of our allies abandoned us.
Nuclear weapons change things, and they changed several of our cities. Our own fault, our politicians and our enemies told us, for having started wars in distant lands that we didn't care about. There were negotiations, which didn't take too long and were held a safe distance from the fallout zones. Our politicians, the ones who ignored the distant wars of people we cared nothing about, were to be given show trials and punished for every unfairness in the world. The peacekeepers were to be likewise sacrificed to the corrupt justice system s of distant countries. Everyone, our enemies, allies, and our politicians who sided with them, could come and take what they wanted from us in reparation for the harm we hadn't caused.
Many of us were unhappy about losing cities, justice, and lives due to the corruption and dishonesty of others. We were told that we were greedy, racist imperialists who somehow had to be responsible for any misery, misfortune, or mistakes in the world, even if we weren't involved in any way. Our own troops, and those of our allies, were deployed against us to ensure that we didn't embark on any new imperialistic adventures or organize to further our racist machinations.
A free people are not easily yoked to injustice and oppression, the politicians complying with foreign powers and demands knew this was coming and tried to prepare. The laws used to catch the terrorists were used against us, 'the real terrorists', and actions never permitted to the peacekeepers were adopted by the police to control a restive populace. Our soldiers and police fight well, it's unfortunate that they're not on our side.

Goe, thinks Derbyshire is too upbeat.

Elizabeth

Saw the producers yesterday, first time i've seen the new version. they said elizabeth was hitler's middle name. making me consider changing the name of elizabeth john, since one of the thematic jokes was that the john family children all had names indictative of the wrong gender.

Goe, was disturbed by a google of "bob the tree" (149 results =-( )

Touch of Death

Every candidate i voted for on tuesday lost. all of them. it was sad. the thieving city councilman who claimed spending $75 million to build something of dubious value was cheaper than spending $35 million to not build it won his re-election bid though. his campaign was based entirely on claiming every other candidate was working for "big money".

Goe, against theft, government sponsored or otherwise.

Cult of the Moment

Last night on Ghosthunters, one of the guys asked someone else if the whole purpose of their group was to find proof of an afterlife. It would probably be unfair to assume that he wasn't the only one who failed to follow their goals through to the unstated end, that ghosts and demons are proof of religion in general, if not in the specific. Two days ago on the Corner, they began discussing the subject of "Voodoo Atheism", the belief that all religion is crap unless it happens to be non-western or very convenient, hence atheists practicing religions similar to voodoo. These people don't actually follow any of their conflicting beliefs to the point of cognitive dissonance, but maybe someday they'll toss convenience aside and make up their minds.

Goe, posted about this before.

mundane films

a tv in another room is playing 'chumscrubber', a film about which i have no interest. it is yet another dystopian story about suburban high school students who over-react to everything, always understate things, and generally lack any perspective; the latter two traits they share with their underinvolved and usually absent parents. i went through high school in a suburban area, and the film among the multitude of high school noir wannabe's that best represented my experiences was '3 o'clock high'. the main plotline of that film was the main character trying to make sure that none of the people he had to deal with during the day were waiting to beat him up in the parking lot when school got out at 3. no grandiose conspiracies or sinister plots, just wanting to not get beat up.

Goe, not confident in other people's taste in film.

voting

filled out my primary ballot. i don't think there were very many honest people on it. thought about writing my name in a few of the blanks, but didn't because the democratic domination of local politics means pol pot would probably do better in the general election.

when a candidate for city commissioner believes imposing universal health care on the entire state is the most pressing city business while seeming relatively normal compared to the other candidates, it's a fucked up election year.

Goe, wishes there was a political party for people who weren't batshit crazy.

late

being late sucks. at least it wasn't entirely my own fault. that they were willing to reschedule is good.

Goe, got some stuff to do.

Zoo

went to the zoo saturday, most of the animals didn't do anything but lie there. there also seemed to be a shortage of animals. there weren't very many animals of any type, and only one or two of most of the ones they had. the 'big cats' area had two tigers and a leopard, the 'bears' had two polar and two sun bears. the petting zoo is gone, replaced by a 'family farm' that had goats and sheep, and another pen with pygmy goats. there was also a mountain goat exhibit with one goat. the zoo has gotten all lame.

Goe, remembers when the zoo didn't have a 'thrill ride'.

clipboard

was given a quiz on cut-n-paste/copy-n-paste in windows by someone who didn't know what the clipboard was. when i mentioned it, they thought i was talking about the office paperclip, and then told me that cut-n-paste/copy-n-paste only work inside microsoft word.

Goe, rolling his eyes.

fraud update

heard back at my 'anonymous' email address on the fraud report i sent in. the insurance company isn't really interested in that particular fraud being a pattern of repeated fraud, they want names and dates which i can't give them without tipping off the people i saw doing the fraud. the insurance company doesn't seem interested in just doing a check to see if they've got claims with two contradictory reasons (one = medical necessity and covered, the other usually isn't). i've done pretty much everything i can, but if blue cross wants to sit there with it's thumbs in it's ears going 'i can't hear you!' then there isn't much i can do to stop them.

Goe, because if people want to get ripped off, they can!

insurance fraud

i know reporting fraud anonymously and then posting about it may seem self-defeating, but i'm a rebel, damnit!

Goe, rebelling against your societal norms.

American Haunting

Bad, bad film. brags itself up as being about the only known case of a spirit killing a person, then wraps up the story with the only fatality having been poisoned by his wife. the whole narration angle was lame, as the story was being narrated by one of the minor participants to one of the people most affected. not really worth watching.

on the plus side, after a lot of mulling it over, i reported some insurance fraud i witnessed to an insurance company. i've known about it for several years (it's not a one time incident but a scam i've seen people in medical offices do to get insurance companies to pay for cosmetic procedures they don't cover) and i've told several people who work at an insurance company only to get brushed off. so i found an online fraud reporting thingie and ratted out the thieving bastards.

a whole field of fraud prevention in healthcare came into being in the 70's and 80's, employing hundreds of thousands of people and costing hundreds of millions of dollars, but everyone i know who is employed to prevent fraud would rather just let it slip on by. like a bank building a vault with solid steel walls several feet thick and putting an army of armed guards in front, only to let anybody wander in and take what they can carry.

Goe, against theft!

Story festival

There's a new storyblogging festival up over at Back of the Envelope.

Goe, read em all.

GA Chapter Six

When Amiable and Noreach reached the Rally Inn early the next morning, the first shimmers of light were creeping up from the horizon. Dandy Fop was already there, asleep and wrapped in a thick fur cloak. He was perched on the top of a large gilded carriage emblazoned with the Fop family crest, two crossed swords with large roses on the ends where the pointy bits should be.
Idiot and Stupid were trying to move a set of matching gilded luggage from the carriage into a weather-beaten clapboard wagon from which remnants of faded gray paint were imperceptibly peeling off. Several of the gilded trunks were already in the wagon, along with a simple brown chest, and a set of trunks in the deepest black Amiable had ever seen.
Snarky was nowhere to be seen. Selfless waved to them as he rode up. He was on a large brown horse, several bags holding his gear hanging from the saddle. “Good Morning,” he said. “There are more than enough horses to go around. Fop's men will tend the wagon team for us. I don't know where that Anachronism fellow has gone off to, but I expect he will be back shortly.”
Amiable nodded to Selfless even as he ignored the message. He spent a few moments looking over the horses before slinging his bags onto one. All of the horses were brown, except for two. A white horse of impressive size and strength had some very odd things hanging from the thickly padded saddle. A oddly shaped black horse obviously belonged to Lord Fop. It was only of middling height but it's girth betrayed a lack of exercise and bordered on the obese. It's saddle was also thickly padded and, along with everything else hanging from or covering the horse, inlaid with cheap baubles made up to look like precious gems.
“I don't see the bloody lad about, have you?” Noreach asked of Amiable as he began to fasten his own bags to another of the brown horses.
“No, but I hope he shows up. We'll look like idiots if the first person we sponsor is too cowardly to even bother to come along.”
“Adolescent Misfit will show,” offered Selfless, the half-heartedness of his voice betraying a lack of sleep. “I've done a great many of these little excursions, and nobody has ever quit this early. No. Nobody will quit until we've reached Recuperation.”
“Has somebody quit already?” asked a strangely dressed young man. His attire was so strange that it appeared to be nothing more than a collection of silken pockets.
“This adventuring party is being managed by the Order of Timely Heroes, Enchanters, and Royalty, a Section 23 organization. As such, it's business is a secret protected by both guilds and the King's law,” droned Selfless.
“So if you don't move along stranger,“ added Amiable, “We'll have to kill you to keep that secret.”
Amiable and Selfless both bared a small part of their favorite swords and Noreach pulled one of his smaller axes from their leather carrying case. The Goon brothers, sensing trouble, moved to stand between the stranger and Fop's carriage.
“It's, uh, me! Snarky Anachronism! I have a shave and a bath. I'm going with you. I just wanted to know who wasn't.”
“Everyone is here, Anachronism, except for Upwell and Misfit. If we're lucky, Upwell will have had a bath as well.” Selfless didn't sound the same, the fatigue was still on his voice, but there was a hesitancy that spoke more to confusion and a lack of confidence. Noreach was the only one in earshot who didn't notice. He did catch the comment about Upwell and began snickering.
“Knock it off, Axemaster.” said Amiable curtly, adding in a whisper, “Something's wrong here, watch your back.” The dwarf nodded in reply and finished packing his things.
A bit of chivvying by Selfless got the Goon brothers back to work. They finished moving Fop's trunks into the wagon and hooked up the extra horses, leaving two out for the late arrivals. Snarky watched Selfless with a concerned look, both of them being watched by Amiable and Noreach.
The Sun was cresting over the hills when Cleans arrived, courteously approaching from downwind. He had neither shaved nor bathed, the two unlucky horses trying in futility to shy away from him. He still picked one and tied a sack to the pommel that smelled of rancid meat. It actually was rancid meat, although it was slaughterhouse fresh when Cleans adopted it as the latest in a long and failed line of good luck charms.
Cleans was hanging a rusted and dented sword to the other side of the saddle when Adolescent arrived. He was out of breath and barely able to make his apologies for being late. “I'm sorry,” he said to Noreach's frown of disapproval, “I slept in, and then I went to the On The Way Inn, but you had already left, and then I went to the Lavish Luxury Inn where someone gave me directions and asked me to remember them to Lord Fop. Pudgie, her name was.”
“Pudgie?” snickered Noreach, arching an eyebrow. “Was she missing his company already?”
Adolescent looked apprehensively at Noreach. Slowly, comprehension dawned on him and his face wrenched in disgust. He shook his head and Noreach began laughing loudly at him, loudly enough to wake Fop, who lifted up his hat enough to Stupid holding his horse. “Time to go then,” Fop said merrily, climbing down from the carriage and onto his horse.
Adolescent put his bags into the wagon and his weapons onto the horse before climbing up into the saddle. Noreach, Amiable, and Snarky did likewise. They looked around a moment before Snarky spoke again.
“Selfless Sacrifice, you'll do nobody any good at Ambush Pass if you don't get some sleep. Sleep in the wagon, and we'll wake you when we get close.”
“We're going through Ambush Pass? There are rumors of bandits there.”
“I know of the dangers. It will take three days off of our journey and we won't get there until this afternoon. So get some rest now and we'll deal with what comes as it comes.”
Selfless grew worried. He stared at Snarky, as if trying to get a measure of the man. Snarky proved either inscrutable or illegible, and Selfless glanced instead to Amiable. Their gazes met and Amiable gave the slightest hint of a nod.
“Okay,” said Selfless, sliding down out of his saddle. He tied the reins to a ring on the back of the wagon. Idiot gave him a hand up and as soon as he was nestled into the baggage, Selfless pulled his hat down over his eyes and sought rest. Snarky turned his horse towards Starting Gate and began to edge it forward. The other riders began to follow. Stupid flicked the reins for the wagon team, and those horses began to trot in unison, as if for show. “These are good horses,” muttered Idiot, and both Goon brothers flashed an approving glance towards Selfless, who had yet to sink into an uneasy sleep.

Goe, over 14% of the way there!

interviews

had an interview a few months ago on pill hill where the interviewers scoffed at their predecessors skilltesting of applicants. hiring people for who they know instead of what they know is the fashionable thing. yay for cronyism/'networking'!

had interview today with two managers who seemed genuinely uninterested in my job skills or work ethic and entirely interested in how i'd fit into office politics.

Goe, wondering where all the grownups went.

Gender Ethics

I watch Grey's Anatomy, it's one of my vices. This last week's episode is summed up on another site, but they seem to miss the point of one of the sidestories.

a pregnant woman who already has six kids wants her tubes tied secretly so her husband won't know, because they're catholics and it's apparently good for tv shows to bash catholics and their beliefs. she tells the doctor she wants her tubes tied, intern says she should tell her husband or call the police if he's been abusive. patient says husband is great guy, she just doesn't want to have more kids and doesnt want him to know. so during the c-section, the doctor cuts her tubes and calls it a 'complication'. intern tells husband to get a lawyer, doctor hates intern, patient is happy but won't tell husband to call off lawyer to hide her position.

it seems that most people think the doctor did the right thing, the intern is an asshole, and the patient is the victim of an evil oppressive cult that should be abolished. they seem to think that the lack of a signed 'informed consent' for surgical sterilization, and falsified patient records (both done by the doctor, not the 'asshole' intern) are perfectly fine and should not be questioned. it gets stranger. most of the people that i've heard blame the intern for exposing fraud happen to work in health insurance, doing fraud prevention. Curious about why insurance costs keep going up?

Goe, because fraud is theft with more digits.

Corner revisions

The recent change to the corner is a bit more visually appealing, even if it makes it a tad bit harder to see the list of new articles. for some bizarre reason, the impromtii have lost their name and are now just another bunch of nordlinger articles. the world is a worse place for this having happened.

Goe, will blame the french and soldier on.

May Day

Even though over a hundred million people have been killed in the name of communism, some people still think it's the best thing ever.

Goe, doesn't want to die for oppression.

Remembering the victims of social injustice

over here.

Goe, not a commie.

volunteering

volunteering at habitat for humanity:

get appointment for briefing on history of organization

go to briefing on history of organization

fill out application

interview

get scheduled

get something done


volunteering at google:

click 'next blog' button, if you think it's a violation of terms of service, click 'flag'.

it's not really surprising that for-profit encourages and uses volunteer labor far better than charities and non-profits. it is sad, though.

Goe, busy busy busy.

blog surfing

been clicking a lot on the 'next blog' button lately. get a lot of strange blogs, several expounding conspiracy theories, many in languages I don't know, some dedicated to pictures of the blogger's kids. lot of all-spam blogs too. makes me think I should post more, but most of what I want to say to people wouldn't be appropriate for mixed company.

Goe, feeling blue.

la di di di da da di di something something something

Went through the new Despair demotivators. The ones that are the least reflective of reality seemed to be the least funny as well.

Goe, will weed tomorrow.

Miracles, Chap. 2

Deborah Johnson grew up in California, in a small coastal community sandwiched between two other small coastal communities at an unidentifiable point along the line of identical small coastal communities that compromises the California coastline. She was raised by her mother, a woman who never married and pretended that her status as an unwed mother made her a societal outcast. Being California, nobody really cared about her marital status, and she was the life of many neighborhood parties. This was, again a result of being in California, how she came to be with child in the first place.
Ms. Johnson tried to teach her daughter to be like her: self-sufficient, confident, and capable. These things Deborah learned but she also learned that there was no need to have a man around the house at all. With a proper reference book and a bit of elbow grease, there wasn't anything a woman couldn't do alone except conceive a child. Judging by the parties her mother attended, men would line up for blocks to participate in that event, while some methods of conception meant that the man didn't have to be in the same state, or even alive.
That isn't to say that there was a shortage of suitors for young Deborah. She was quite pretty and many boys in her schools attempted to court her. This mostly involved holding her bags at the mall while she flitted from store to store with other girls her age. The conversations of the girls on such outings never varied from a finite set of topics; who was or wanted to date whom, who had or wanted to fight whom over who was or wanted to date whom, clothing, jewelry, other fashion accessories, and how stupid and immature they felt the boys under discussion were. The last subject was always Deborah's favorite, and she would raise her voice when giving her reasons for feeling that all boys were stupid and immature so that her “date” could clearly see that she felt nothing but hatred for him. Under such conditions, being gossiped about in front of one's face and subjected to an endless barrage of ridicule and torment, it was of no surprise that few boys tried to “hang out” with her a second time, and none had the stomach for a third.
This continued as Deborah progressed through high school, and into college, where she took on journalism and women's studies as her majors. She devoted herself wholeheartedly to her studies, and her hard work paid off as she spent her summers interning for the dominant local paper and the area's network affiliates. She became part of one of the college population's many small cliques, one in which none of the women could sustain a relationship for more than a few weeks. This led to Deborah and her friends being the subject of many vicious and not entirely unfounded rumors about their opinions of men.
Towards the end of her senior year, still having not had any relationship with a man that she felt to be meaningful or of any importance, she landed the job opportunity of a lifetime, which happened to be at Lifetime Network. As a junior script consultant, it fell to her keen eye and red ballpoint pen to ensure that certain objectionable and offensive material never made it through to production. She worked with several other women to ensure that no male character exhibited any traits that might, to the network's audience, mitigate their inherently dangerous and boorish behavior.
The job suited her perfectly. She believed in the importance of her work to the core of her being. The pay, even for such a low position, was twice again what any of her male classmates could hope to get in an entry level position. The health insurance left nothing to be desired, while flex hours allowed her to finish up her college studies. The company was even eager to pay her tuition so that her studies could continue indefinitely.
With her new employers support, and surrounded by a cadre of women unwilling to challenge her beliefs about the uselessness of men, Deborah thrived. She secured her diploma, and entered the master's program for women's studies. Leaving her journalism career behind, she began dabbling in the other socio-ethnic studies programs.
It was in one of these side programs, tangential to her goals of a master's degree and possible doctorate in women's studies, that a very peculiar thing happened. She was correcting the instructor, a bossy Japanese woman advocating the destruction of male-dominated western civilization so that the gender-neutral societies from the rest of the world could rise up to fill the void, on the fallacy of allowing any male voice, regardless of their originating society, to be heard when men were clearly not capable of even cleaning up after themselves, when the person next to her agreed so vociferously that it seemed at first, both to Deborah and the rest of the class, that he was arguing with her. It was while he continued her tirade on the evils of men that she realized that she found him rather pleasing to the eye. When the teacher began groveling obsequiously to this man for her unintentional downplaying of masculine vileness, Deborah began to grow faint.

Goe, flipping between stories.

Lefter of Stalin?

Another local genocidal marxist decided that Hillary Clinton, supporter of nationalizing everything in the name of the proletariat, is too right wing to be in the Democratic Party. Stalinists don't have control of this country yet and they're already planning purges and show trials.

Goe, feeling weary.

Unrepresentative Representation

Bush's popularity is plummeting, and it has little to do with the single issue that kept him in office in 2004. The current war is probably the only reason anybody likes him at all. Despite the claim of assorted lefties that he's got a large blind following, he's broken with his base on almost every issue but the importance of killing terrorists. Even on that single issue, he's a lot more hesitant than some people (like me) are comfortable with.
Rumsfeld is an idiot for fixating on 'transformation' to the detriment of other things, like national defense, the war, etc., but Bush not only remains supportive of Rumsfeld, he's supportive of many similarly idiotic domestic policies. The only benefit to having Bush as president over any given Democrat is that he doesn't want to sell us out to appease foreign dictators, whereas the Democratic party primary purpose for being seems to be grovelling to foreign dictators. How can anyone take seriously people who condemn Bush as an evil tyrant when they praise Castro on another? The Democratic party and it's supporters are mostly a bunch of fucktards who don't question the party's adherence to genocidal socialism, which means that they're evil and must be kept from power.
So, between the leftist Bush and the even more leftist Democratic party, there isn't really anybody left who represents a majority of Americans. Even the writers of National Review, a magazine that played a noteworthy role in the Reagan Revolution, can't agree on which of the leading Republicans is least-leftist and should be supported in 2008.
Third parties are a joke. Most of them are to the left of the Democratic party, even Libertarians are more likely to ally with anarchy-socialists than with small-government Republicans. The Constitution party is making headway among Republicans because it supports a closed border (like 80% of Americans want and Bush is against), but it to the left of the Democrats on the war, which is a much bigger issue that will probably be more important to voters on election day. This leaves nobody, which sucks ass. I'll probably ending up supporting whatever Republican is the most hawkish, because that'll be the only issue on which I agree with any of the candidates.

What brought this to mind was this story linked by Instapundit about differences between Israel and it's neighbors.

For a while there Israel wanted a man in power who was just a big fist. Until the second intifada broke out, Ariel Sharon - the Butcher of Beirut - was considered marginal and extreme by Israelis as well as by almost everyone else in the world. Yet they swung hard to the right and picked him to lead.

Yes, Ariel Sharon was elected by the Israeli's following a series of suicide bombings and the ongoing riots of the second intifada. Instead of being the 'big fist', he worked very hard to out-appease his overly appeasing predecessor. Instead of a wolf fighting to defend them, the Israeli's got a sheep who tried to sacrifice them to the terrorists to keep itself safe. When even their own government wants them to die, what chance do the Israeli's have? When all of our political parties want to destroy our country, what chance do we have?

While writing this, I got some spam email thingie from a "conservative" political group saying that they're refusing to support any republicans unless republicans get serious about closing the border. The republican party is getting close to breaking up, and there's no one around to take the reins except socialists. Winning the cold war didn't do us much good if we're going to implement soviet oppression ourselves.

Goe, not feeling upbeat.

Chance of Oblivion

Known risks, as of today, for asteroid impact: .09% for the next hundred years! Woohoo

Goe, cause it's 99.91% against.

Storytime again

Yet more stories are at the Storyblogging Festival.

Goe, readin' some.

National Security is for chumps!

The CIA finally decided that maybe secrets should be kept secret, and fired someone for telling secrets to a reporter.

The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the firing.

Apparently though, the learning curve is a tad too steep for the average government employee.

Goe, thinks we should fire the lot of them and start over.

To the left of Stalin

A local socialist blog, what would be considered "moderate" locally, but downright trotskyite in it's intolerance of dissension, has decided that Michelle Malkin crossed a line by giving out information contained in a public press-release, and that people not calling for her death or imprisonment are hypocrites if they believe that calling for someone's death or imprisonment is a bad thing. Apparently the "students against the war" (really just against us winning it) press team feels that they shouldn't hear from people who disagree with their bullying tactics. it's a lot more complicated, but to sum up.



lefties bully military recruitiers, brag about it, ask people to cheer them on.

someone prints the bragging on a website including email address where much congratulating is expected.

Michelle Malkin links to the website, says 'haha'.

some non-lefties say mean things about the bullies instead of cheering them on.

lefties get mad and threaten Michelle Malkin for spoiling their fun, encourage each other to say mean things about her and her family.

other non-lefties tell the lefties to grow up.

pol pot wannabe tells other non-lefties that bullying people in person is fine, but lame email insults cross the line and shouldn't be tolerated, unless they're from his website or dailykos.


Goe, cause it's just so absurd.

The Many Miracles of Elizabeth John

Elizabeth John's father was from a mostly pleasant and polite family in rural Wisconsin. His father worked on a dairy tending cattle, while his mother kept a good, clean house, the sort of house any respectable woman of the day would be proud of. In addition to being good and clean, the house was also neat and tidy.
Mr. St. John was only ever home to eat, sleep and read the newspaper after Sunday services at the local church. Elizabeth's father, Christopher, was often regaled by his mother with all of the shortcomings she saw in his father. The three main complaints of the long and varied litany his mother produced that had an effect on young Christopher were that his father had no respect for the work of women, in raising children or tending house, his father always made a mess of things that some poor woman would have to clean up, and that his father was never home to help with any chores, repairs, or miscellaneous labor.
Mrs. St. John attributed the last of the three to a laziness on the part of Mr. St. John, that his time was always spent working in gainful employ was, to Mrs. St. John, not proof of a strong work ethic but concrete evidence that her husband was stupid as well as lazy. Believing thusly, and convinced that her other children were likewise lazy and stupid for having afterschool jobs and friends, Mrs. St. John forbid such luxuries for Christopher, her youngest, and taught him all of her homemaking skills through a process involving many sticks and no carrots, to which she was allergic.
The St. John household was not welcoming, nor comforting. It was to no person a sanctuary. It offered no respite or peace of mind. It was, however, clean, neat, and tidy. A memorable thrashing awaited Christopher if anything grew dusty, dirty, or out of place.
He swept the walls and ceilings thrice daily to keep the dreaded cobwebs at bay. Every window was washed twice a day, inside and out. All of the dishes, used or not, were washed after each meal, even the fancy china that Mrs. St. John received from her mother-in-law as a wedding present and never otherwise left the china cabinet.
The wood and tile floors were swept hourly, and mopped each night after the rest of the family had retired to bed. The carpets were swept before school and in the evening with the very same carpet sweeper that Mrs. St. John had grown up with, as she abhorred the ineffectiveness of a vacuum cleaner.
The piano and other wood furnishings were dusted twice daily, both times in the evening, and waxed to a high shine every third day. Christopher was only required to weed the lawn and flower garden on weekends, so that it would not interfere with his schoolwork.
Mrs. St. John was very adamant that Christopher not play with any other children. Even his siblings, the youngest four years older than he, were considered filthy useless beasts. The neighbors houses were practically barns, with dogs and cats running about, children frolicking hither and yon, and mud tracked in so thickly covering the floors that a person could almost see it. Mrs. St. John felt quite justified in keeping from such dirty and disgusting places the only child of hers that could understand the importance of cleanliness, sanitation, and hygiene.
Christopher did his best to please his mother, even when she made him hose himself off in the yard each time he returned from someplace she had conceded to let him visit. The schools were appalling, the restaurants atrocious, and the doctor's office disgraceful. Christopher's schooling didn't fare well under the circumstances, and while at school he was unable to make any friends to speak of or with. He was always impeccably dressed and groomed, but he never managed to complete a single piece of schoolwork sent home with him. Notes from teachers were always returned with a complaint by Mrs. St. John of illegibly poor penmanship, even on the notes that were typed.
It was only by the kind graces of his eldest brother, Kevin, that Christopher managed to break free from the virtual imprisonment his mother tried to keep him in. Kevin helped Christopher get a job at a hospital in Colorado, near where Kevin worked. The job wasn't very prestigious, it involved cleaning blood and detritus from operating rooms and sanitizing them for the next surgery. The job also didn't pay well, but it was enough for Christopher to get a small apartment and afford enough material to keep it immaculate.
Christopher worked there for five years or so, when the hospital decided that a good education was the foundation for good service, and required all of it's employees to commence continuing education or be let go. Christopher wasn't very keen to go job-hunting, having already found his perfect niche in life, one perfectly suited to his lack of people-skills and the beaten-in obsession with scrubbing things, so he enrolled at a nearby community college. They had an accredited program for cleaning operating rooms, and Christopher naturally assumed that he should do that first.
One of the classes required by the accrediting organization for the program was a class on cultural and gender awareness in the workplace. He wasn't aware he had needed any awareness of things that weren't there, since he usually worked alone, but he tried to keep an open mind, even if the chalkboards were filthy, the carpet in need of replacement, and the ceiling tiles stained by leaking water. One of the other students in the class was Deborah Johnson, and that is how Elizabeth John's parents met.

Goe, got stuck on the idea.

chapters

I'm going to try to get two chapters out this week. Had an idea for a completely different story, but I also want to finish The Generic Adventure before the next NaNoWriMo begins.

Goe, has typing cramps.

Iranian Nukes

A problem with internet threads is that they often bring out the ignorant and the stupid, such as this fark thread comprised mostly of comments supportive of iran's nuclear ambitions and self-proclaimed genocidal intent. Some of the participants believe that anyone who's been in a church more often than they have is a religious extremist. Some believe that the United States and Israel are the cause of all of the world's problems and should be destroyed. Some believe that any country without an overtly leftist government is evil and should be destroyed. Some of them are ignorant, some are stupid, but most are proud to oppose anything they see as non-harmful to bush.

If we do something to stop Iran, we're evil warmongers. If we don't do something and Iran goes nuclear, it's all part of a bush-bin laden conspiracy to impose theocracy on the world. They have no suggestions to deal with the situation themselves, only an eagerness to blame bush for not having done it differently no matter what he does.

Goe, wishing bush was more like Reagan than petain.

Rumsfeld is an idiot

I've believed Rumsfeld is an idiot ever since the hat fiasco when he resumed the Secretary of Defense job. Anyone who thinks a new hat would improve morale is either a shopaholic or an idiot, and Mr. Rumsfeld doesn't strike me as the kind of person with a closet full of shoes.

I wrote a lot about his policy of "transformation" wherein the army is tranformed into a couple of special forces unit, equipment is replaced with wishful thinking, and mercenaries are hired to fill in all the gaps, back on the other site I used to write on (back before the admin there decided it was wrong of me to confront a lawyer with proof that the information he was plagiarizing was wrong).

So two points here. 1. Rumsfeld is an idiot. 2. Generals always fight the last war because they know how it was fought. Anybody who says they know how the next war will be fought is talking out of their ass, as a lot of it will depend on who we're fighting against. 3. Iraq is another Vietnam. It doesn't matter how well we're doing or how just the cause is if most of the planet is rooting for us to lose, including parts of our own country, like hollywood and the news agencies.

Okay, that was three points, so bite me.

Goe, can type 90wpm, CAN YOU?!

Chapter Five

They made it as far as Bisecting Road before they stopped.
“Clearly, we're going to need supplies for the journey.” said Dandy, looking quite pleased with himself. “Why don't we meet up at the Lavish Luxury Inn in the morning. That's where my coach is, and we can each make our own preparations in the meanwhile.”
The others nodded, except Selfless and Snarky. They looked to each other instead.
“What would you suggest?” asked Snarky.
“The Rally Inn at dawn, and no coach. We should keep a low profile. Traveling nobility will draw more eyes that we want or need,” replied Selfless.
“The Rally Inn it is then. I will arrange for an ox cart to carry our baggage, something simple. We will get horses on the way out of town.” Snarky looked at Selfless, who had taken on a strange expression.
“Ox cart? You planning on eating the horses?” laughed Dandy. Amiable and Adolescent both chuckled, but Selfless just stared contemplatively at Snarky.
“They do things very differently in Distant,” said Selfless, still staring. “I'll come with you to get the wagons and some good horses. The merchants here will rob you blind if they think you're stupid.”
Snarky thought for a moment and then nodded.
“Make sure he doesn't try to eat them!” chortled Dandy.
Snarky gave his head a slight shake, then raised his right hand to give a little wave. He and Selfless turned and stepped into the passing crowd and vanished from the sight of the others.
“What was that about?” asked Idiot, gazing down at the fresh dung Stupid was shuffling his feet about in.
“Something about wanting someone to eat a cart. Boss said no.” replied Stupid, staring at the harmful facade of the Chapter Three Building and absentmindedly shuffling his feet.
“Boss is smart.” said Idiot, nodding in agreement. “What now, Boss?” His gaze shifted suddenly to Dandy Fop.
“Time to go shopping, lads. Why don't we go get some new boots before we pack our things.” Dandy smiled proudly at his armsmen, and they both followed as he casually crossed Cross Street and disappeared behind a fast moving wagon of timbers.
Cleans darted away across Bisecting Road. Several passing horses flinched at his odor, and he took was soon obscured by traffic.
“Okay, now what?” asked Adolescent.
“We get our things ready.” said Amiable.
“Come with us, laddie. We're sponsoring you so it's our responsibility to make sure you are properly prepared to fight na'er-do-wells.” said Noreach, clamping a hand on Adolescent's shoulder and pushing him down the road.
“Let's start off with a couple of nice bags for your share of the plunder, laddie.”
“Why do you keep calling me 'laddie'?” asked Adolescent as the dwarf continued to steer him.
“Dwarf rules.” answered Amiable. “Anyone in the Dwarf Union has to talk like a dwarf, and that means saying 'laddie', 'bloody', and 'arse' a lot.”
“Dwarves are very strange, I don't think I want to be one. Ugh.” said Adolescent, having been pushed into a door by the dwarf. “No offense, Master Dwarf.” The dwarf gave Adolescent a few more rough pushed into the door before looking up at Amiable.
“The door says 'pull', 'Master Dwarf'.” said Amiable with a slight grin.
“Oh.” grunted Noreach. He let go of Adolescent's shoulders and soon had the door open so that they could enter, which they did. Going through the doorway didn't lead them anywhere. They were in a bag shop which, because it was a shop and not a signpost or path, could not be followed, only perused in. Peruse they did. Noreach spent time looking at shelves of small pouches, some plain and some ornate before the clerk told him the shelves were not for sale.
Amiable was rather more focused and helped Adolescent pick out a very large canvas bag with a leather shoulderstrap short enough to prevent the bag from dragging on the ground as he walked. They also picked out a large backpack that had many small leather loops on the outside to hold an assortment of tools and weapons, and a much smaller leather bag with a concealed pocket inside. Noreach bought a small pink coinpurse with light blue lace fringe so that the clerk wouldn't think he really wanted to buy one of the finely made shelves.
When they left the bag shop, appropriately named The Bag's End and adjacent to the Bag Inn, they went to a nearby cutlery store. The Pointy End sold mostly knives, but had a varied, if not numerous, selection of swords. They bought him a nice long sword with something unintelligible carved along the blade, and several knives to hang in the loops of his backpack. They then went a few more blocks to the Adventurer's Store, where they bought him a Standard Adventuring Kit, something Adolescent had never heard of before.
The Kit contained three cloaks, two blankets, a tinder box, and a small manual on how to be an adventurer. Amiable threw the manual away as they left, “No reputable guild agrees with their advice.”
They also bought him thick leather boots with thick soles and fur inside at the Orphan Store, which specialized in Orphan Quest adventurer's and their needs.
“Are you an orphan?” asked Adolescent of both Noreach and Amiable. Noreach just shook his head.
“No. Both my of my parents are alive but these prices are really hard to beat.” said Amiable.
Adolescent mused on his being an orphan and considered confiding that to Amiable, when Noreach grabbed a few strange metal objects off of a countertop.
“Plot devices!” he said eagerly over his shoulder as he rushed off to find a salesclerk.
They dined together at the On The Way Inn, where Amiable and Noreach had rooms at a Free Association of Recycled Character Embodiments discount rate. Afterwards, not yet a member of the Association himself, Adolescent returned to the Smelly Stable, an unscrupulous establishment that claimed to be a youth hostel and overcharged for space in the hayloft.
Adolescent slept fitfully that night. He dreamed of his aunt and uncle chasing giant rapsberries around their smithy. He dreamed of a woman, half-starved to death and wearing impossibly thin and tight yellow clothing, who spoke like the dwarf, waved around a strangely curved sword, and kept asking questions about the Advisors. He also dreamt of Teenage Sweetheart, a girl from his village, but she was not in a smithy, not armed, and not clothed.

Goe, over 6000 words now!

Episode Guides

I don't watch American Idol or 24, mostly because I'm not interested enough to remember when they're on. Over at IMAO though, they not only watch those shows religiously, they offer episode guides that are probably more entertaining than the actual program.

Goe, snickering still.

To Be Enlightened

It must be a terrible burdened to be an 'enlightened' individual. One who can agree with the wise leaders of HAMAS that Israel rewarding terrorists by giving them land is an act of aggression that makes terrorism necessary.

Yes, those evil Israeli's, planning to slaughter the poor hapless palestinians by dropping the burdens of responsibility on their shoulders. And it's good that Snabulus let's us know that the land once belonged to the palestinians, and that no jews lived outside of Central Europe until 1945, giving none of them any real claim to territory outside of Central Europe.

Okay, enough being sarcastic. It's sad that someone can post such nonsense as to claim that giving someone you've defeated in what realistically amounted to a civil war land that their 'friends' took in that war, and that you later took from those 'friends' during one of their attacks against you later on, is something bad. It's sadder still that not only do they believe that their gibberish makes sense, some of the commentors think that he is being overly kind to the 'zionists'.

Goe, thinks teen dramas should be outlawed.

Zimbabwe Falling

Zimbabwe gets worse. This is the same sort of mess Venezuela would be in if it didn't have oil to sell. Many other countries are eager to follow their example and collapse their own society because they see it as a way to spite us. Unfortunately, pretty much anyone who could/would replace Mugabe will be likely be just as bad for the people of Zimbabwe. At least it's not likely to get as bad as Darfur.

Goe, sad.

Storytime

more stories.

Goe, tell you to go read them and then eat a cookie.

no new story

I meant to have another chapter or new story up this week, but the second chapter of the communist manifesto took up most of my enthusiasm for writing.

Goe, doesn't believe Atlantis was of historical importance.

Manifesto, Part Two

Chapter one here.

In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?

Wanna-be masters and eager slaves? Genocidal fucktards and gulag inmates? Militant dictators and starving subjects?

The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.

There are twenty-five communist parties in the United States, according to Wikipedia's count. It would seem that actual communists never make it this far into the manifesto. Marx intended that communists would join and support “other working-class parties”. This is because seizing power in the name of such a small group (urban industrial workers in the early stages of the industrial revolution or canadians) requires that the small group in question be led from within. Most communists, even Marx and Engels, are not from that small group and are inclined to herd it from without instead of leading from within.

They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.

Their interests separate on all matters except their dislike of the upper classes and their disdain for the lower classes. The proletariat's primary interest every time they've been able to express it as a group is to try to force their way into the bourgeoisie, to have the property, rights, and privileges that they see as bourgeoisie traits. The communists intend to destroy everything that makes it possible to have bourgeoisie traits, therefore intend to thwart the proletariat.

They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.

Sectarian principles are precisely why the communists identify themselves as communists and not proletarians although they proclaim to have the same goals, why rural workers (“peasants”) are not counted as part of the proletariat, why they view elections that can expose their internal differences as bourgeoisie trickery.

The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

1)They need to gloss over the differences between different regions, because unless they count all of their supporters from all regions, they're pitifully small compared to PTA's, the AARP, or AAA.
2)This is a problem that recurs within Marx's ideology. Here he states that they have to represent “the interests of the movement as a whole.” The problem is that he's assuming that sectarian differences don't exist, haven't existed, and will never exist. We know that even before the manifesto was written, communist organizations fractured frequently. The IWA itself was split between communists and “mutualists” (supporters of collective wage agreements and abolition of profit margins) while Marx was on the governing “General Council.” This blind assumption that deep down everyone secretly supports marxism is not a mistake made of ignorance, but of conceit. Marx and his supporters can't see how anyone not in the bourgeoisie could disagree with even their most ludicrous claims.

The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

The commuists don't want to make anyone's life better, they just want to destroy any means of measuring whether or not anyone's life is better, and they see themselves as enlightened for obfuscating openly stated goals. They also believe that this 'enlightened' position makes them the natural leaders of all labor related movements.

The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

They'll also cure cancer, cure HIV, walk your dog, paint your house, and help your kids with their homework. What they really want to do is form the proletariat into a class, and then use that class's urban location to take over the cities. Then, the peasantry is supposed to obediently enslave itself to provide the cities with free food, while the peasants, bourgeoisie, and other classes compliantly kill themselves to solidify the proletariat's claims of being a universal class.

The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.

The theoretical conclusions of the communists are based entirely on ideas and principles that have been invented by communists for the advancement of their genocidal cause.

They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism.

No, it's not. It's a selective interpretation and sometimes openly fraudulent distortions to push their claim to be the natural leadership for the destruction of civilization. More on the property bit in a moment.

All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.

But never the abolition of property relations. History is full of changes to property rights, coincidental to changes in power structures, to which class warfare was an incidental portion. The complete abolition of property and property rights is a distinctive feature of communism and was a driving force behind the development of anarchist groups.

The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.

Property rights were not abolished, they merely changed hands.

The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.

Okay, not general property, just bourgeoisie property.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

Okay, abolition of property in general, bourgeoisie or not. This sort of double-talk is found in most communist writings.

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.

Yes, bad commie, bad.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.

Marx thinks not all property rights need to be abolished by communists, as the parts that won't be won't survive until communists take over.

Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?

Hee's already said that he wants to abolish all 'property'. He's just trying to be clever.

But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism.

It creates wages, which are an interchangeable form of labor which can be used to get property. Like a computer with which to read the communist manifesto online. Or a tv, or a chair, or a hat, or a broach, or pants, or... etc. Not everyone has a beachfront home, but even my cat has stuff (two scratching thingies, a few toys, a litterbox, food and water dishes, and a pink leash that she HATES and wouldn't mind the abolition of).

To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.

Capital is not a collective product, as wages are capital, making wage-labor a capitalist endeavor. Capital is mass-produced by industry, rewarding the owners and investors far more than the labor in most cases. There are disproportionate rewards, but to say that the individual laborer doesn't benefit is dishonest.

Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.

Especially if you don't want to get caught at this year's COMINTERN meeting wearing last year's fashion. In a free society, anything can be indicative of social status and power.

When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character.

This assumes that the concept of social power and influence can be destroyed, but if the concept of social power and influence can be destroyed (to rob the property of it's social value) then the abolition of anybody's property rights is rendered unnecessary, since it ceases to mean anything. The abolition of a concept, insofar as all known human history, is impossible, rendering this goal unachievable. Someone will always have nicer stuff (even if it's just less worn) than someone else, and they'll both know it.

Let us now take wage-labour.

Yes, let's.

The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer. What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his labour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.

This is, of course, based on the assumption that wages are useless for anything but food and rent. That the wages a person is paid can't be invested or used to acquire property because they are only sufficient for food and rent, and that if a person worked longer hours, there would not be an increase in wages permitting them to have excess to invest/save/acquire property with. In short, it's wrong.

In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.

But what promotes the enrichment, width, or existence of a laborer if property and social status are abolished? If the laborer has nothing to aspire to, to what purpose are they laboring? How would this differ from Marx's claim that the bourgeoisie keep the proletariat as pseudo-slaves if Marx intends to keep them as slaves but abolish the masters?

In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

In communist society, the propaganda dominates past and present, to the detriment of reality, liberty, and individuality. Anybody who thinks people don't have individuality in a bourgeoisie society hasn't heard of tattoo's or piercings. Anybody who thinks people living in bourgeoisie society are dependent hasn't heard of the small industry of 'off the grid' equipment and supplies, an industry that makes it possible for people to be as independent or involved as they wish.

And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.

It's not just individuality and freedom being destroyed for the bourgeoisie, but for everyone. It's the enslavement of all the classes to benefit the proletariat, including themselves. The complete abolition of liberty for every single person. It's been pointed out often that the only way to make everyone equal is to drag people down to the lowest level. This was not only known by Marx, but embraced as a fundamental principle of communism.

By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.

Which is pretty much every type of monetary transaction, the purchasing or selling of goods or services.

But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other “brave words” of our bourgeois about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.

This is a gibberish version of “I'm not saying what you think I'm saying even though I said it.” Abolishing trade abolishes free trade only if you have a medieval perspective, but abolishing trade doesn't abolish anything if you have a communist perspective. Maybe if you're a communist, you can also have tea and no tea at the same time.

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

My cat has far less property than most of the 1840's urban workers that this was written for, yet my cat has property. To say that people have no property when they clearly do is dishonest, making it another pillar of communist ideology.

In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.

A little honesty refreshingly slips in and Marx admits that it's YOUR property that they want to abolish, not his, and not turn proletariat clothing into a find-your-size free-for-all.

From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes.

The moment that labor can no longer be converted into money, it ceases to be worth doing except for direct personal gain. Money is just a physical representation of labor value, and if you can't buy food, what will you eat if you're an urban worker? You have nothing to trade that isn't some form of monetary representation of labor, and doing labor directly in exchange for food places you back into Marx's paradigm of proletariats being given a subsistence living by the bourgeoisie in exchange for labor. Marx won't address this because a) he's dead, b) he's more interested in laying the groundwork to be the leader of a proletariat dictatorship than in making one that could be functional, even in a fantasy world.

You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.

Another contradiction. He claims that the bourgeoisie economy is destroying proletariat individualism but claims that to free the proletariat, they must destroy individualism.

Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.

Which means that he can't have anything that he can't manufacture or grow himself. Which means that any person not living on arable land will just have to starve to death for the greater good.

It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.

Plus the fact that most people won't have access to the things they need to survive, and won't have access to the raw materials needed to make those things for themselves. Those who survive the global famine will probably give up communism pretty quick to get a barter 'bourgeoisie' economy going.

According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital.

Except that capital is incentive enough to be productive. The proletariat is rewarded with money (exchangeable for food, water, shelter, clothing, entertainment, etc) and thereby given incentive to work. The bourgeoisie is rewarded with the EXACT SAME THING, just in differing quantities. This all or nothing view of disbursement is dishonest, but dishonesty is an important part of communist ideology.

All objections urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating material products, have, in the same way, been urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating intellectual products. Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture.

Since property is mostly the result of production, and all classes within a society share a common foundation for their culture, it is not unreasonable to think that destroying property requires that no more be produced or that destroying the underlying social foundations is to destroy the society resting upon it.

That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous majority, a mere training to act as a machine.

Except that it's wasn't a majority when he wrote that, and isn't one today. The majority of the population in the western world is bourgeoisie or petty bourgeoisie, and for the rest of the world, it's the agrarian peasants. Proletariats made up the majority nowhere, ever, except in the cities that they apparently never wandered far enough away from to spot the countryside.

But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, &c. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.

This is Marx going “You don't understand me! NEENER! NEENER! NEENER! The words I keep using do not mean what you think they mean!”

The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property – historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production – this misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.

The society he is condemning is always competing with variations of itself for efficiency. Western civilization didn't advance so far in the sciences by being ignorant or adhering to fallacies, yet Marx believes that bourgeoisie culture is based not on fundamental principles of human nature that have existed for thousands of years, but entirely on post-feudal social structures. While post-feudal social structures are important, they are adapted forms of social structures that have existed for thousands of years, not post-feudal innovations to support the bourgeoisie, but post-feudal adaptations of social structures as old as humanity.

Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.

At last! A solution to 'deadbeat dads'! No fathers, no mothers, women will just drop any kids they happen to have off at the local orphanarium.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.

The present family is based on the need of our species to propagate itself and protect/prepare it's young so that they may do likewise. People take care of sick relatives because it's family, not because there's a profit motive. People have kids because they want kids or don't bother to use birth control, not because they can make money selling them for lab experiments.

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

Even poor people have families. Even people in Zimbabwe have families. Family is not an extension of capital but of our needs to reproduce and be amongst those we know. This makes it one of the “eternal laws of nature” that communists don't believe in.

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

Without the ability to feed themselves, and prevented by communists from exploiting the labor of others to sustain themselves, children will cease to be shortly after birth. Insofar as exploitation for profit goes, child labor laws were enacted without a great communist revolution.

But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

Schools have existed for as long as there has been writing. That lower classes send their children to school is a function of the same bourgeoisie that Marx condemns for not wanting children to go to school. Mandatory education was pushed through by the educated upper classes, not communist masses.

And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

Here, by social, Marx doesn't mean public schooling versus home tutoring as above, but means using educational systems as a means of indoctrinating children into the communist cult. Communists want schools to be primarily a means of distributing propaganda and indoctrination along the lines of re-education centers.

The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.

Simple and minor labor laws stopped children from being used for labor without their parents consent, not communist revolution. These laws were passed because the bourgeoisie wanted them passed, not because of pressure from communist organizations or their political allies.

But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus.

Women were gathering in groups and gossiping long before Marx and will be for millenia to come. More on this later.

The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.

The bourgeois sees his wife as someone who will be very upset if he forgets her birthday, their anniversary, or St. Valentine's Day. Apparently Marx never knew any man henpecked by their wife. And yes, most men don't want their wives to be “exploited in common”.

He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.

This was something women proved quite capable of doing on their own. Marx wrote this long after Queen Elizabeth I, Katherine the Great, Isabella of Castille, etc, so he should have known better.

For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

Woohoo, Marx acknowledges that women can gather together on their own. This, of course, totally obliviates any communist position on the status of women, and therefor means that there was no need to claim to have one.

Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.

Now he's mad that the bourgeois are sleeping with the wives of other bourgeois, as if that were a greater affront to communist ideology than sleeping with the wives of proletarians or prostitutes.

Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.

Marx's solution to the problem of adultery and failure to keep marital commitments is to abolish marriage. Bathwater, baby, bye-bye.

The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.

Yes, in that anyone with dreams of global domination desires the abolition of countries and nationalities other than their own, rendering the concept moot.

The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.

Working men have no country only if they can honestly deny deriving benefit from their country's customs and laws. Laws which guarantee payment for work, provide aid when work is unavailable, protection from criminals, provide public sanitation to prevent the spread of diseases, etc. We rely on organizations larger than ourselves, and those organizations rely on larger ones in turn, leading up to the nation as an entity. It is not something that can be abolished without abolishing the need for small local organizations as well.

National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.

People are saying very similar things today. The problem is that “national differences and antagonism” goes beyond commerce and into ethnicity, language, culture, religion, etc. While some will see humanity as one common people, the global commerce that makes it seem so can also illustrate the differences between peoples as well.

The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.

Putting the proletariat in charge won't erase nationality. In every case of nationality being denied, it is always replaced with either ideology (religious/philosophical) or ethnicity, thereby maintaining the same construct under a different pretense.

In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.

Nations quarrel for the same reasons that men quarrel, this is true. Rallying the proletariat to destroy anything associated with the bourgeoisie is hardly going to reduce antagonism or hostility between classes or nations though.

The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.

This is the holy manifesto and shall not be questioned last the questioner be fed to a demonic hamster that dances! Marx can bite me.

Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?

Nope, it's pretty obvious that one's ideas, views, and perception change as things around them change.

What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

Wrong, the dominant ideas of the feudal era were either religious or rudimentary scientific principles, wheres the ruling class of the day primarily embraced militarism to the detriment of all else. It has been that way for most of history, as military strength is what kept the ruling classes in power. The other classes, unless engaged in revolt, dealt with everything else of concern, such as the necessities of living, religion, commerce, etc.

When people speak of the ideas that revolutionise society, they do but express that fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.

Except that no society has been replaced by a new one pre-engineered to that purpose. These changes have always taken time and, as ideas and ideals are found to be inaccurate or unworkable and replaced, always led to something very similar to what has come before.

When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge.

Since “religious liberty and freedom of conscience” are necessary to free competition within and without the “domain of knowledge”, it's existence protects them, and they are not casually discarded by the wayside as Marx implies. The rise and fall of religions, both “ancient” and Christianity, had little impact on economics, either micro or macro, excepting the Christian restrictions on banking that hindered commerce and development. Not change in religion changed the fundamental structures of society that Marx believes to be an illusory bourgeoisie construct.

“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.”

Yes. Exactly.

“There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.”

Yes. Exactly!

What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.

Every society has had striations of both social and economic class, but their history is not the history of those striations, but of what they as a people did. Those striations are a fundamental part of humanity and are unavoidable in everything we do, not an artificial creation to antagonize and enslave, and were not the driving force behind any social upheaval until the industrial revolution brought groups of workers so close to seats of power that they could taste it and wanted it for themselves. Revolutions prior to 1798 invariable saw not an abolition of striations but a rearrangement of the why and how of those striations.

But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.

Except that capital allows everyone to exploit everyone else. The worker is exploited by the businessman to produce goods, but the businessman is exploited by the worker to sell the goods, with each able to judge their value to the other by the value of their own labor and the labor of others doing comparable work. If exploitation is abolished entirely, then no one but the farmer can eat his crops, no one but a tailor can wear clothing, no one but a logger can use wood. It is not possible for one of us to meet all of our own needs and wants, so we trade our labor for money which can be traded for another's labor. Communists want to render us unable to meet our own needs and wants, and believe that we will be happier for it.

The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.

Also a pretty radical rupture with common sense, acceptance of free will, and human nature.

But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.

Oh, if you insist.

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.

Except that he established in chapter one that Marxists don't believe in elections, or representation, and at the time the manifesto was written, the majority of workers were rural and “peasants”, not the proletariat that Marx wants to rule.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Yes, once in power, they plan to take everything from everyone else and keep it for themselves, using the state to seize and keep secure for the proletariat's use everything created through the labors of the proletariat (their own stuff), the peasants (help, help, they're being repressed), and the bourgeoisie (both the regular and decaffeinated petty bourgeoisie), thereby completely the great cycle of exploitation, elevating the proletariat into the bourgeoisie, lowering the bourgeoisie into the proletariat, and leaving the peasants alone in the fields without stars upon thars, and this is supposed to somehow make everything better.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

Marx admits that it's going to hurt. It's going to be oppressive and repressive, and generally make everyone miserable. Each step will make the next step (which will be even worse) necessary, the people haven't any real say in the matter throughout the process, as their stuff is taken and their families ripped apart by governmental decree.

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

If you say so.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
1.Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

So people pay rent to the government, thereby being exploited by the government, to prevent people from exploiting them by charging rent. Got it.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

Yes, because taking away any financial incentive to work longer or harder won't discourage people from taking the day off and renting a portion of beach to lounge on.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

This would be easy since nothing could be owned, just rented.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

Since their property is being taken away anyways, it'll be easy!

5. Centralisation of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

All your deposits are belong to us.

6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.

So that Mussolini can make the trains run on time, or at least raise the rent on people who complain that the train is late.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

Yes, because with sufficient expendable slave labor, anything is possible for the glory of the ruling workers! But where to find sufficient slave labor?

8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

We'll draft everyone and force them to do slave labor, much better plan than permitting them to follow their talents and be exploited by others for the higher quality or quantity of their work. Much better.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

Yes, we don't want people living where food and water are either readily available or easily transported to. We want them living in a desert with no fresh water at all! Although drinking water would justify higher rent...

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

Been there, done that, tradeschools abound.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

Everything just fades away. The people will stop being conscripted into agricultural armies to tend fields, produce goods, and expand factories not by an official proclamation, but through apathy. People will just stop paying rent and nobody will care. No one will tend the pumps to irrigate the fields and no one else will care. No ambitions, no hopes, no aspirations, nothing to take joy in, nothing to find distasteful, nothing to fondly reminisce or anticipate. People will be nothing more than machines. Isn't this exactly what Marx was complaining about happening to the proletariat? This double-speak is at the heart of communist ideology.

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

Assuming that those compelling everyone else to work in industrial armies and collecting rent are somehow not just a new nobility ruling over a multitude of serfs, it would still require that hope and ambition be wiped not just from public awareness but from the minds of people not yet born.

Goe, because power doesn't stem from class antagonism.