The Clampdown

Dissecting Michael Medved's 'Gay Marriage Myths and Truths

2010-08-11T16:07:00.000-07:00

So my girlfriend brought home an article today, it was handed out in her human sexuality class and after reading it i decided to give it a go over. It was written by Michael Medved, conservative pundit and friend of Mr. Rush Limbaugh...

I think I'll handle this in the same manner I handled the article that got me fired. I'll simply go line by lie...sorry, line, and counter his statements with what I hope resemble well reasoned responses. You know, I'll use facts to parry deceits. I suppose it will be necessary to let you know when I'm speaking, I'll use brackets and italics, keep an eye open. I'll also try to minimize the use of image macros, unless it's really funny or important. Now that I've backed my readers into a TL;DR situation I'll begin.

Michale Medved
GAY MARRIAGE Myths and Truths

The decision by federal judge Vaughan Walker to invalidate California’s Proposition 8 both recycles and revives some of the tired, misleading clichés regarding the same sex marriage controversy. These distortions demand direct, concise correction and rebuttal.

(I'll start really early by pointing out that the above statement is kind of crass. I mean of course we're going to have to debate the issue some more, especially with the same arguments we used before, because largely those arguments were correct, it was Medved's side where the arguments were completely crazy. For example the argument that by enacting Prop 8 we have saved school children from getting gayed up by being taught about gay marriages. You know, that part of the marriage equality act that doesn't exist, also, I would like to remind everyone that having not entirely that long ago graduated from a public school system I do not recall taking the "Same Sex Marriage" class, the one that teaches students all about marriage. Or how about the way all of the pro arguments are couched in defenses of marriage and its sanctity, which automatically defines them as religious arguments, which on principle should undermine the argument to begin with because it means that no marriage should be recognized by the state to prevent the state from sullying its hands with religion.)

1. “Proposition 8 was a mean-spirited ban on gay marriage.”

TRUTH: Proposition 8 banned nothing.

(except the ability of same sex couples to marry in the eyes of the state...you know...the entity that recognizes the coupling allowing them to have the following...

Tax Benefits

Filing joint income tax returns with the IRS and state taxing authorities.
Creating a "family partnership" under federal tax laws, which allows you to divide business income among family members.

Estate Planning Benefits

Inheriting a share of your spouse's estate.
Receiving an exemption from both estate taxes and gift taxes for all property you give or leave to your spouse.
Creating life estate trusts that are restricted to married couples, including QTIPs, QDOT trusts, and marital deduction trusts.
Obtaining priority if a conservator needs to be appointed for your spouse -- that is, someone to make financial and/or medical decisions on your spouse's behalf.

Government Benefits

Receiving social security, medicare, and disability benefits for spouses.
Receiving veterans' and military benefits for spouses, such as those for education, medical care, or special loans.
Receiving public assistance benefits.

Employment Benefits

Obtaining insurance benefits through a spouse's employer.
Taking family leave to care for your spouse during an illness.
Receiving wages, workers' compensation, and retirement plan benefits for a deceased spouse.
Taking bereavement leave if your spouse or one of your spouse's close relatives dies.

Medical Benefits

Visiting your spouse in a hospital intensive care unit or during restricted visiting hours in other parts of a medical facility.
Making medical decisions for your spouse if he or she becomes incapacitated and unable to express wishes for treatment.

Death Benefits

Consenting to after-death examinations and procedures.
Making burial or other final arrangements.

Family Benefits

Filing for stepparent or joint adoption.
Applying for joint foster rights rights.
Receiving equitable division of property if you divorce.
Receiving spousal or child support, child custody, and visitation if you divorce.

Housing Benefits

Living in neighborhoods zoned for "families only."
Automatically renewing leases signed by your spouse.

Consumer Benefits

Receiving family rates for health, homeowners', auto, and other types of insurance.
Receiving tuition discounts and permission to use school facilities.
Other consumer discounts and incentives offered only to married couples or families.

Other Legal Benefits and Protections

Suing a third person for wrongful death of your spouse and loss of consortium(loss of intimacy).
Suing a third person for offenses that interfere with the success of your marriage, such as alienation of affection and criminal conversation (these laws are available in only a few states).
Claiming the marital communications privilege, which means a court can't force you to disclose the contents of confidential communications between you and your spouse during your marriage.
Receiving crime victims' recovery benefits if your spouse is the victim of a crime.
Obtaining immigration and residency benefits for noncitizen spouse.
Visiting rights in jails and other places where visitors are restricted to immediate family.

except for federal stuff, which doesn't apply because the federal government doesn't bestow rights on same sex unions. It's more like stuff your specific state allows)

The ubiquitous headlines describing this voter-mandated change in the California constitution as a “gay marriage ban” amount to the worst example of journalistic malpractice in recent years. The entire proposition consisted of only fourteen words: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” This simple statement imposes no restrictions and issues no commands regarding the behavior of private citizens: it merely demands a change in the actions of government. (So precisely how does saying that not simultaneously mean that gay marriage is banned? Is it like this...

Marriage is only valid if between A and B. What about Marriage between A and A? That is not valid, only A and B. So can A and A get married, can they have the same privileges as A and B? No, that is not valid. Isn't that then a ban and limitation of rights? No, because it is not. Why? Because.) Proposition 8 did nothing to interfere with gay couples in registering for state-recognized civil unions, participating in church or civil ceremonies consecrating their love, forming life-time commitments, raising children, or concluding comprehensive contractual arrangements to share all aspects of life and property. (Sticky wicket that. You see a civil union and a marriage are two entirely separate things. A civil union is not recognized outside the borders of the state it's in and doesn't guarantee all the rights offered by marriage. By suggesting that homosexuals have the right to civil unions but not marriage is to say that these two concepts are separate but equal, which is not true. The two ideas, Marriage and Civil Unions are separate but unequal, and thus unfair and runs counter to the U.S. constitution) The proposition simply says that government will not get involved in any of these private or public processes by calling such relationships a marriage.

2. “Proposition 8 singled out gays and lesbians for discriminatory treatment.”

TRUTH: The proposition never mentioned gays, lesbians or any other individuals, whatever their sexual orientation. (Well, I guess you got me there, it didn't say any of that...but I did notice that it blocks out a swathe of people...a rather substantial swathe of people, what like 10% of the population? That's cool right, by not using their name or title it's not like you're preventing them from doing something? Right?) It didn’t discriminate among individuals; it drew distinctions among relationships. Under the proposition, a gay male and a straight male would face exactly the same options in marriage—free to choose any woman who is not already married or a blood relative. The fact that the gay man won’t want to marry any of the women available to him doesn’t change the fact that he and his straight neighbor face precisely the same opportunities and restrictions in their marital choices. (I really am flummoxed by the previous statement, I mean it reads like something a crazy person would write. So, marriage can only be between a man and a woman, and all rights and privileges are reserved for those people I.E. straight people. A gay man has the right to marry a woman, and experience all the rights and privileges of marriage...the bond of deep love and commitment that it means. Oh wait! That's right, marriage isn't just the rights and contractual crap it's also the symbolic union of two people who love and care for each other, so by limiting the definition of marriage to a man and woman's union you aren't totally obstructing the ability of gays to have same union to honor their love. Seriously, you are effectively invalidating the concept of love in a marriage, it is a cold contract between two people, so why don't I marry one of your relatives Michael? I'll marry her right the hell up, because I love social contracts, what's that? No I don't love them, I'm just exercising my right to marry lovelessly. The main problem is that many of these pundits and the followers of this law and line of thinking do not regard homosexuals as being any different than straight people. A gay person simply feels compelled to make their life infinitely more difficult for themselves, it's not as though science has shown that a heterosexual person and a homosexual person are fundamentally different in their biology and brain activity. Nah, they are just really dedicated to going against the grain.)

3. ”Failure to sanction gay marriage is based on the assumption that “same sex couples simply are not as good as opposite sex couples.” (This language appears verbatim in the judge’s decision).

TRUTH: Opposition to government sanction of gay marriages isn’t based on the notion that opposite sex couples are “better,” but on the idea that they are more consequential, and serve an important social purpose more effectively. Laws in every state recognize the desirability that children should be raised by their biological parents, wherever possible. (So foster parents are completely inferior, why not make adoption illegal if biological parents are the standard by which all children should be raised, hell if the biological parents are deficient in their parenting kill the child. It will be better off dead than in an inferior home setting with two other straight people.) This is based on the universal, common sense assumption that a child generally will fare best if it is raised by both its birth mother and birth father. (Single parents should also be banned...and shot...for failing to be better at marriage, don't look at me like that, marriage is the cornerstone of civilization, not grain or animal husbandry.)

Laws on divorce, child custody, adoption and foster-parenting all display this general preference for birth parents to involve themselves in a child’s life. Traditional opposite sex marriage generally produces a situation where both birth parents will participate in parenting – and this shared responsibility even survives divorce in most cases. (He's got me there, homosexuals can't work together in the common interest of anyone or anything that isn't fabulous.) There is no chance--none—that a same sex marriage can produce a child who will be raised by both birth parents. This doesn’t make that same sex marriage hateful or immoral, but it does make it somewhat less desirable and less significant for society. (Wait, so now marriage is about babies, we need a ton of them, to beat China! So it's not about the individual rights awarded to married couples, you know like being allowed to see loved ones in the hospital and shit like that. Marriage is all about babies. So what about all those people who marry who either don't want children or are otherwise incapable of having them? Shouldn't they also be blocked from marrying because the whole essence of marriage is for procreation? I mean if you're defining marriage as a government contract for baby manufacturing wouldn't it make sense to get rid of all those people milking the system for rights that they don't deserve because they aren't contributing to the overpopulation of the planet?)

4. “Recognizing gay marriage would do nothing to harm existing opposite sex marriages.”

TRUTH: The problem with government endorsement of same sex marriage isn’t damage it would do to current heterosexual couples, but the profound change it would bring to the institution of marriage itself. In every civilization known to historians and anthropologists, marriage involves the union of man and woman—and the recognition that combining the two genders produces a durable unit that is very different from any all-male or all-female combination. The argument for gay marriage depends on the discredited and destructive idea that men and women are identical—that your marriage will be the same whether you select a male or female partner. Gay marriage also separates the institution of marriage from the process of childbearing, at a time when we need to reaffirm that children fare best within a marriage, and marriage becomes more significant when it produces children.(Soooooo...I don't quite follow. The above argument is valid, it wouldn't harm same sex unions, it would not produce offspring of those unions and would not prevent his preferred union from occurring. All your doing is again suggesting that marriage is exclusively to create children, which it is not and that is not the contract that people go into for marriage in the U.S., Michael, seriously, you aren't countering the statement, you are only telling me that in ancient civilizations people would marry and have kids. In ancient civilizations I would also kill black cats because they were witches and scream at eclipses because a giant snake was eating the moon. You know why these things don't really happen so much anymore, it's called science and advances in civilization, clinging to old world ideals wont make science go away...it wont bring back your dead father Michael, let him go, he would have wanted it this way! Let science heal you...with gayness.)

5. “Denying marriage rights to same sex couples is the equivalent of denying marriage rights to inter-racial couples before 1967.”

TRUTH: The old and hateful laws barring interracial marriage directly discriminated against individuals based on their race—a discrimination explicitly prohibited by the Constitution. The language of the Constitution never mentions (or even hints at) similar protection for sexual orientation. (In the same way it doesn't explicitly say we can't have slaves, because back then blacks weren't people. You know it's kind of funny it's almost as though modern society is accepting that there is this whole other 'race' of people...homosexual people. But this 'race' of people shouldn't be accepted, because they will rub off on us, then we'll all be gay and God will hate us, because that's how God rolls...arbitrarily and without accounting for biological precedents uncontrollable by the individual. Let me just say that this sadly forces me to say that homosexuality is kind of proof that the old testament view of God is invalid, or rather that that God can't exist and be considered just. I mean why would God give people free will, and then have these people be genetically incapable of feeling differently than they do, thus damning them for eternity for being born differently. So either God is wrong, or the book is wrong, and if the book is wrong what is your moral code based on?) Before Loving v. Virginia struck down the evil anti-miscegenation laws, such legislation treated a black man and a white man completely differently: the African-American couldn’t marry a white woman, but the white guy could. As noted above, under Proposition 8 a lesbian woman got exactly the same marriage options as a heterosexual woman; there was no potential mate that the straight woman could choose, but the gay woman couldn’t.( This shit again? Jesus.)

6. “Any gay marriage ban is an invasion of privacy.”

TRUTH: Actually, opposition to gay marriage involves the defense of privacy from governmental intrusion, not any sort of intimate assault. The drive to mandate gay marriage demands a vast expansion of governmental involvement into same sex relationships – relationships in which the right bureaucratic policy would be strict neutrality. Proposition 8 mandated no change in private relationships and only an alteration in public policy.(This section is kind of a moot point and really ties back into the whole 'gays aren't afforded the same rights as everyone else.)

7. “Governmental recognition for gay marriage is necessary to end oppression of gay people.”

TRUTH: All Studies and surveys indicate that gay people in America hardly constitute an oppressed minority; on average, they enjoy higher levels of education and income than the heterosexual majority. (But they are blocked from a fundamental privilege all other U.S. citizens enjoy. Also the points you are making don't really reflect the reality of the situation, so a slightly higher percentage of gays are better educated? So? What about the social stigma and hate crimes perpetrated against them? Michael, being a straight man have you ever had a group of people call you a 'not fag' and push you to the ground? Can your sexual orientation be used as a slur? I didn't think so Michael, but you're right, gays totally rule us and we need to hold onto marriage to stave off the gayification of all we hold dear.) Even in the federal trial just concluded, the plaintiffs’ attorneys presented abundant evidence of the remarkable success and eminence of homosexual couples in the United States. (Wait, so they work well together and are successful... but before you were saying they were inferior to hetero couplings? Make up your mind! Are they bad for children and society or are they successful and competent?) The undeniable fact that gay people have achieved these personal and communal victories even without gay marriage, is an indication that the traditionally privileged position for heterosexual marriage hasn’t blocked homosexuals from successful participation in every aspect of American life.(So blacks were capable of learning to read and write as well as a number of them becoming notable in their time and respected by large portions of the nation, whilst simultaneously being barred from voting and going to white schools? Why don't we just ditch those laws giving them rights, women and people who don't own land too, because all of these groups have been successful without overtly using these rights afforded them. It will unclutter our law books if we cut back on peoples rights.)

With Judge Walker’s decision, the debate about re-defining marriage will once again intensify as the case works its way through the system to the Supreme Court of the United States. No effort at logical argument can halt the hysterical distortions that erupt periodically on both sides but the integrity of public discourse requires at least an honest attempt to clear away mistakes, irrational claims and outright smears. (which is exactly why I need to remind you to shut up, because you aren't helping the discourse by obfuscating facts with excuses for bad behavior.)

So that's it, that is Mr. Medved's argument in favor of blocking gays from marrying...stuff...stuff that doesn't make sense nor really applies to the argument at hand. Thank you Medved, for unclearing everything up, and thank you human sexuality teacher for just not getting it either.

Also, for good measure...this is a Nicolas Rage moment...

Hole In My Heart: A Story of Texas

2010-07-09T10:30:00.000-07:00

We'll take a break from the history for a while and do a standard kind of blog, a blog about things and places and people. For starters the name of the blog post comes from a great song by Cyndi Lauper, from an equally great movie called Vibes. I recommend it, because it brings the funny...and the 80's. As for the other part of the blog post title I figure that is self explanatory, it's about a trip to Texas I just took.

Texas is of course the second largest state in the Union, with a history of struggle against whomever it happened to be under at the time. Oddly its name means 'Ally' or 'Friend' in the Caddo language, which implies that Texas actively seeks out allies, then once in the fold goes all independent. I guess then it would be àpropos that I didn't just visit but intend on moving there, it will be like most of my jobs, I'll mesh well, then go all independent, while it tries to go independent from me. We may actually nullify each other.

The reason behind the trip was so I could reunite with my lost love, get a feel for the area, and plot a possible move. I had purchased my tickets and all seemed in good order, until I received a phone call at two in the morning.

"This is American Airlines automated service, we're calling to notify you that your flight at 8:15 AM on June 11 has been canceled and you have been auto rescheduled to a flight on June 12th at 6:30 PM." Responding to this was difficult as I had just crawled into bed after hanging out with my chum Owen and Chum-ette Veronica. I was certainly shocked however, still listening in shock as my brain tried to recalculate the details of my departure. "If you consent to this departure time state 'I consent.' If you would like to speak to a representative wait on the line." I quickly stifled a stream of profanities out of the fear that one of them would sound like acquiescence, fumbling for a pen I suddenly heard an exhausted voice on the other end of the line.

"Thank you for choosing American Airlines, my name is Carol, how may I help you." I was amazed, they staffed people at this hour, they actually had what appeared to be a 24 hour phone service. That's the thing with airlines, they're the only 'flying' show in town, they can do whatever they damn well please. After a quick explanation that they had canceled my flight a few hours before departure I requested a flight earlier than the following day. I got my wish, one hour earlier, however this was the only available flight, and now I was in a pickle.

I had asked a friend to drive me to the airport, but the hour was far to early/late to notify him of the change in scheduling, and besides him I had no friends in the city, certainly not any who would drive me to LAX at such an ungodly hour. I had to quickly call all the various airporters in the area, finding that most had regular business hours of operation and were completely unreachable at that hour. Finally I found one company that was still available and I got my transportation arranged.

Obviously I made it to the airport and then subsequently had to endure all the regular bullshit associated with modern flight in this POST 9/11 WORLD! But when I landed I was off on an adventure of discovery in the large...large...LARGE, flat, state of Texas.

Alright, here's the deal, when you're flying into Dallas/Fort Worth Airport you are flying over Grapevine, Texas. The most striking thing in the landscape aside from the lakes everywhere is the Gaylord hotel, which houses an impressive ice sculpture collection during Christmas time. This photo however is of the more visually noticeable hotel down the road from my girlfriend Jenn's apartment. This is the Great Wolf Lodge, and it seemed that every time I turned a corner there were those four wolves all standing around looking...large. It really was an impressive looking place, it had an attached water park, and in fact this photo comes from a theme park website. The water park had one of those massive funnels that ejects families in tubes into a spinning cauldron of hydration. It reminded me of the Happy Gargler from Happy World Land in Tiny Toons: How I spent My Summer Vacation.

To put it mildly my time in Texas was simply grand, primarily because I found a place with temperatures to my liking. From when I arrived to when I left the temperature never descended below 80 degrees, but even better than that the humidity never dropped below 1,010%, it was like swimming in air...hot fucking jungle air, and I was so warm...so warm and comfortable...like an air blanket. Just as good as this was that Texas mandates that apartments have AC, and I discovered that Jenn's preferred temperature is somewhere in the mid 70's, warm enough that i don't need blankets at night, but cool enough that I feel refreshed when I've spent an afternoon in the 96 degree humidity.

The first order of business however was getting food, which necessitated a trip to Jenn's favorite sushi restaurant in the area. The name I think was Edohana, which presumably means 'Flower of Edo.' I took Jenn's advice and tried the much talked about 'Temptation Roll,' which was stupid delicious, like some kind of flavor Tyrannosaurus. I suppose the story of my time in Texas was simpler than that however since it's more about the people I met and the area I was in.

Texas is vast and winding, so much so that I was always confounded by the placement of roads and where I was in relation to where I was going. Part of the problem was that you couldn't go six feet without tripping over a lake, and there were only a handful of shopping or residential areas. The land is made of red clay and deep green grass, powdery dirt lines the side of the road and the sky is larger than the ground underfoot. Your uninterrupted line of sight is not to the horizon but always somewhere short of that, sometimes it seems like you can only see a footballs filed length ahead of you. These however aren't rolling hills but rather some kind of optical illusion, cresting one hill provides no superior view of another, instead you see another football fields length ahead.

Towns crop up everywhere, distinguished by water towers. As you drive you will invariably see four or five different water towers, each with the name of the town it resides in, beyond that there is no sense of entering or leaving one area or the next. The drives however can be very impressive as you cruise along two lane roads towards another town, cattle lining the road and clouds all over.

Animals in Texas are different as well. It seemed that every few blocks there was a small ranch or farm, with long horn cattle and black and white cows. However the smell wasn't there, I'm used to California, where as you approach a dairy farm or cattle ranch an impenetrable smell hits you...cow shit as far as the eye can see, and miserable cows all crammed together along a feeding trough. I was so fond of the cows and steer, wandering too and fro eating at their leisure. Better yet were the alpaca farms, mixed in with the cows, or the ranches full of horses and colts all bouncing around.

Besides these animals however I was introduced to another wonder of Texas...Jurassic Park.

Yeah, just like that.

On my last Monday there (I was supposed to stay four days, but decided once I got there instead to stay three weeks) Jenn showed me a walking trail beside her apartment. Walking across the bridge, overlooking the slow moving stream and marsh we entered into a close grouping of trees and bamboo. I noticed the cottony webs of the larger than expected spiders there. As a side note I had gone to her fathers lake house during a going away for a friend of Jenn's and while out on a nearby dock I found myself surrounded by literally dozens of enormous orb weaver spiders. Their bodies were the size of a quarter, their webs strung everywhere and apparently the food supply was so low that they had begun preying one each other. It was nightmare fuel.

Back to the story, as we continued down the trail I came to a stop at the sight of a peculiar yellow leaf on the ground. To my surprise it was no leaf but instead was an enormous grasshopper! Proceeding down the trail we encountered hundreds of these grasshoppers, leaping to and fro out of our path. Overhead we were soon surrounded by over sized dragonflies of varying colors and markings. It was the god damned Jurassic in there, bugs of enormous proportions, everywhere! And snakes, and lizards!

Earlier in my stay Jenn and I had been asked to take care of her dogs, Goldie, Juliet and Jackie. Each of these dogs is adorable in its own way. Jackie, is a Jack Russel Terrier, who by all accounts is a puppy, but in truth is actually 10 or so. Juliet and Goldie, are both Golden Retrievers, with Goldie being the oldest at 13 or more. Goldie is the best because she pays close attention to me when I talk to her, unlike Jackie who shows that she understand me, but simply doesn't feel like listening. I would take them out to do their business each evening and on one of these occasions I found Jackie hassling something in the grass, I by that point was used to Jackie giving squirrels the business, but knew that any living squirrel was too fast for her. As I approached I discovered an enormous toad! Dark brown it was the size of my whole hand, it sat quietly as Jackie prodded it with her nose, not wanting such a interesting specimen to be licked I reached down and lifted it up and away replacing it where Jackie could not reach it. In the same breath i noticed on a nearby window the silhouette of a lizard, and with no small amount of interest approached what I discovered to be a GECKO! With little suction-y feet and everything! Reaching for it it took off like lightning, and somewhere behind me Jackie snickered at my failure.

Then there was the fishing! At the lake house I had an opportunity to fish, an activity I haven't done in years, and which i have never actually been successful at. This time however! Whamo! I was catching fish like a madman! My very first time lowering the bait in the water was met with an instantaneous grab by a catfish. Unfortunately for me the fish weren't big enough to warrant eating.

That's where it happened...oh yeah and that dock further out, where the zig zaggy sidewalk goes, that's where the spiders were. Don't go to the second dock.

Lord, I could go on forever about the food, the best part is that the 'Chain Restaurant' is all I really had, places like "Ritzy's", "Dicky's", and "Saltgrass." This means that there are tons of local family places that are undoubtedly even better than that. Special mention goes to Los Burros, a small Mexican restaurant that served me the best enchilada I've had...ever.

Excuse me, I need to go have words with the chef.

So, enough about all that, lets talk about the people I met? Yes? Of course!
First off...

Jenn! She was the purveyor of the good times and is also my girlfriend. Gorgeous and skilled in language (tops at grammar and capable of reading and writing French) she was the main draw of my visit. If you want to know what the second draw of my visit was it was Sonic's Drive In. I love her to pieces...millions of pieces. Also I miss her now that I'm back in Ventura.

Then there's...

Geoff Blair. It is interesting to note that Geoff is rather a lot like my other friend Brandon, mannerisms, voice, and attitudes. the major differences are that Geoff is fairly quick when it comes to the sciences, especially physics (which I'm fuzzy on) and language. I would be hard pressed to come up with a comprehensive list of the things that make Geoff awesome. Seriously, it's not even worth trying to comprehend how great this guy is.

Then of course there's...

Jess! Jess is Jenn's friend. The reason I'm so fond of Jess is that Jenn's history with friends that are girls is kind of rocky. Primarily they were mean and/or manipulative, and they would usually ditch her in favor of some kind of perceived 'better deal.' Jess on the other hand has been awesome to Jenn, and when someone is rude to her Jess will leap to Jenn's defense. She also is chock full of good advice and ideas. Sadly though she has moved to California to finish a law degree...that's right, she's a lawyer, she can crucify you with your own words. Also, her father is the Vice President of Medieval Times, as such before she left we went there and had a extremely good time, which was also helped along by our server, a guy named Bill.

Now we have this gentleman,

JD Livergood, of the Tatooine Livergoods. JD is Jenn's friend, and a capable artist and game developer. He has a tendency to sell himself short, in spite of his multiple talents...also when you glue a cocopuff to his face he looks remarkably like Lemmy from Motorhead. JD's rating is: ACE OF SPADES!

Then there's this guy...

Oh balls! He's got a cute dog! BALLLLLS! This Jeremy, we had lunch at a nice Italian place with a very terse waitress. He is extremely knowledgeable about history and political theory, at the very least it appeared that way in conversation. He's also funny and gets my jokes.

I would keep introducing you to these people but I'm hungry and have been writing this for like two and a half hours now. Anyway, the long and short of it is that Texas was great and I'll be going there at my earliest convenience. This will however be to the chagrin of the myriad of people who all unanimously agree that Texas is a horrible place for me, in spite of often never having visited there or simply secretly wanting me to stay because they'll miss me otherwise. For these people I'm sorry, but you can always visit, under which circumstances I'll take you my favorite restaurants.

A Complete History of the World Part 9: Greece 499 BC- 477 BC THIS IS SPARTA!

2010-05-26T12:01:00.000-07:00

Don't call it a comeback, I been here for years! Rockin' my peers and puttin' suckas in fear! Makin' the history rain down like a monsoon, listen to the bass go boom! It's about time (sic) that we get back into history and see how Greece is doing, you know, while Rome is being Roman.

Anyway, so the year is 499 BC and Ionia is having a problem. Ionia was pretty much the whole of modern Turkey, though rather than Turks it was inhabited by Greeks who had colonized the area, Troy was located in Ionia incidentally. Well Sixty years before then the Persians had rolled in and conquered the whole place and elected a tyrant to watch over everything. Apparently this wasn't going over so well, and sensing that he may lose his position as unquestioned ruler of the region the tyrant in charge of Ionia incited the Greeks to rebel against the Persians and throw off their swarthy yoke. When news of the revolt reached Athens and Eretria they promptly sent soldiers to aid in the conflict, hoping to defeat the Persians and return the region to their control. The leader of the Persians, one Darius the Great, however had different plans.

Those plans really revolved around beating the Ionian's asses so completely that they wouldn't pull this shit again. To no ones surprise he was totally successful in his plan and by 493 BC he had pacified the region. However he had one remaining problem...Greece. Because Athens and Eretria had assisted in the revolt they would need to be conquered as well. So begins the first Greco-Persian War.

You can actually make out some of what happened from the above map. Darius sent his Son-in-Law Mardonius to conquer the Greeks and initially everything seemed to be going his way. Thrace in the North had been a vassal of Persia since 513 BC and it was quickly reintroduced into the fold and Macedon was an ally of Persia so it also allowed the Persian army through without opposition. With a massive force amassing on the Greek border Darius asked rather politely for the city states to surrender. He received a big affirmative from everyone...except two. Athens and SPARTA both executed the ambassadors in defiance. Now with the interior of Greece at war with him Darius ordered the army to advance. Towns were razed and Greeks were enslaved as the Persian army moved forward. Darius gave orders for a invasion by sea of Eretria, the city that had aided the Ionians, and after six days under siege two Eretrians betrayed the city and let the Persians in to enslave their people. Eretrians...cool folk. Anyway, the Persian army then headed South to Marathon, where the Greek army was waiting under the guidance of Miltiades, a veteran of the Ionian revolt. Miltiades and his army fought for five days, pinning the Persian army on the beach. Finally, and for reasons that are entirely a mystery to historians the Greeks attacked in force and slaughtered the Persians, driving them back to their boats and into the sea. This however wasn't the end of the battle, the Greeks quickly turned and marched at top speed twenty five miles back to Athens to scare off another landing force that had been sailing towards the city. Victory was secured and the Greeks had defeated the greatest empire in the world. Darius was pissed.

However as soon as Darius' shattered army returned home he began raising a force that would be so powerful no army could defeat it. Sadly for him as he was doing this the Egyptians revolted and he had to postpone his plans...and then extra sad for him he died. At which point his empire passed to his son Xerxes.

Yeah, I think we all know where this is going. Xerxes stone crushed the Egyptians and started preparing for war with Greece. In 481 troops were mustered from dozens of nations under Xerxes control and after a winter of stockpiling, the Persian Army was ready to finish the Greeks once and for all. This wasn't so terrible however because the Persians had received requests from a number of Greek city states to be added to the fold, so technically speaking it was just Athens and SPARTA that were ruining everyone's good time.

Meanwhile in Greece the hero of Marathon, Miltiades had been injured in a fight and seeing an opportunity a wealthy family prosecuted him for deceiving them into fighting the Persians and he was fined. Fortunately for him he died, good luck collecting on your jerk tax in Hades! In place of Miltiades a general named Themistocles rose to prominence and after a lucky gold strike near Athens he had the money put into building a better navy. South in Sparta however an old power struggle had seen the old Spartan king deposed years before, after which he went into exile and began working as an adviser to Darius and then Xerxes. It is said that he sent a blank wax tablet to the Spartans warning of the planned invasion, at which time it can be assumed the Spartans popped like ten million boners. The war began in earnest in 480 BC when the Persian army under Xerxes marched south through Thrace and Macedon towards the combined Greek armies. At the moment however the Olympic games had begun and for Sparta fighting during the games was extremely sacrilegious.

Also, let me just say...WTF? As though Sonic would fucking lose cross country? Against an Italian plumber at that?

Naturally there was some trouble with this, so the Spartan king Leonidas went out on a limb and took his personal guard to fight the Persians rather than completely offend the Gods. Some might think that this was madness...instead we prefer to think that THIS IS

Dumb as hell. You happy now?

Good. Anyway, Leonidas and his 300 Spartans wander on over to Thermopylae with the allied Greek armies and wait for the Persians in a narrow pass. Basically it was the absolute best place to put hoplite infantry ever...just one tiny impenetrable wall of spears and shields...seriously how do you even flank that? Xerxes sees the Greeks intend to fight and repeatedly charges the encampment but fails to dislodge them, fortunately, in fabulous Greek tradition, a local betrays the Greeks and tells Xerxes about a secret path behind the choke point. Leonidas dismisses the Greek army when he sees what has happened, ordering only 2,000 soldiers to stay behind and they stall the Persian army to buy time. They dined in hell and all that rubbish. Anyway, out at sea the Greek navy was busily defeating the Persian navy, ruining hopes of a future landing. The Persians advanced and after a series of battles they found themselves dissolving into retreat and in 479 BC the Greeks counterattacked and drove the Persians out of Greece.

I think now would be a good place to stop, though next time we'll pick up with the Greeks again and see how they formed the Delian League and pursued the Persians across their empire. Finally for your enjoyment...

A Complete History of the World Part 8: THE POWER AND THE GLORY THAT IS THE ROMAN REPUBLIC! 509 BC- 387 BC

2010-01-08T21:59:00.000-08:00

Alright, this is where the shit gets real yo! This is where this history blog gets really slow, because the Roman Republic lasted over 450 years, and contains some pretty damned important events. That is beside all the crazy shit that happens in the rest of the world, so holy crap, get on board because we are about to learn some stuff...maybe.

Alright so when we last chatted with the Romans they had eliminated their Kings after the rape of Lucretia and now were under the direction of the Senate. The senate eventually created the position of consul, which was held by two people simultaneously, and they were something akin to a dual president, or in the case of Rome it would be closer to like dual Hitlers.

Aww fuck, the only thing they can't agree on is where to invade next!

The interesting thing about Rome was that their constitution was extremely complex, involving consuls, senators, praetors, magistrates and checks and balances to each group, but none of it was written down. the real drive of history in Rome and its government is not the details of this legislative body, but rather the struggles between the common people of the Republic and the aristocracy.
So initially we see the Patrician Era, or the age of aristocracy, when the monarchy fell and the position of consul was created the consuls ruled the country in much the same manner as the kings had before. During a war in 494 BC the lower classes, who were the soldiers of the Republic, threw down their weapons and left, demanding that they have the right to select their own officials. After some debate it was decided that perhaps the ability to wage war was necessary and the Plebeians were given the Plebeian Council.

It was during the Republican era that we see Rome harness the power of architecture to create domes and arch's, which classed the hell out of their cities, versus their Greek counterparts. Slaves were kept by wealthy, and even not so wealthy families, to the point that at one time roughly 25% of Romes population was slaves. The major difference between our modern view of slavery and the Roman model was that the slaves were from pretty much everywhere. The Greeks were common slaves, used for educational purposes, Germanic slaves were used for labor, etc. Further slaves were often freed when they had completed whatever work their master had planned for them, and could also earn money to buy their freedom. The Roman household of the time also had an interesting view of religion, your home was your temple. Each home would have an altar, which would have a statue or image of the household God. Popular God's of the time were Jupiter and Mars, though all kinds of crazy Indo-European deities pop up, like snake Gods and such. Most of the Roman religious tradition however was lifted from the Greeks, who also kindly shared their philosophical beliefs with the Romans...at the tip of a sword.

Now then, back to the history bit. Around 390 or 387 BC a group of Gauls under the leadership of Brennus...

Damn that's one bad dude. Anyway, the Gauls were tromping about the lands North of Rome, what was once Etruria, and wanted a land they could call home. They entered into negotiations with the tribes in Etruria, asking if they could have a parcel of land to live on, the Etrurians had recently come under roman control so they asked Rome to send diplomats to decide what should be done. Rome sent the Fabii brothers (pronounced like Fabio, but with an 'I' instead of an 'o')

So these three 'diplomats' arrive at the Gaul encapment, at roughly the same time as an army from the nearby city. The Fabii 'break the law of nations' I.E. they grabbed their swords and started stone killing Gauls.

The Fabians manage to kill a Gallic leader as well as make good an escape. The Gauls send an actual diplomat to Rome asking that the male models be handed over to them for trial. Rome, being Rome decides that instead of that, they'll promote the Fabians to the position of Consul for how kick ass they are. The Gauls respond with a declaration of war and start marching towards Rome. Rome responded by sending six legions of its best troops, or whoever was laying around. In these days you paid for your outfit and weapons in the army, so the legion would put all the rich older citizens on the front lines and the poorer half naked soldiers on the wings. Further the army used a phalanx formation like the Greeks, which was effectively big spear walls pushed together into even larger walls of spears. The Gauls arrived with around 24,000 men, nearly equal to the Romans and proceeded to drive away the poorly armed wings of the army and then surrounded the wealthy aristocrats in the center...slaughtering them. Romes upper class was now basically bleeding out about 14 miles North of town. The fleeing legions returned to Rome and left the door open, allowing the Gauls to storm the city. The citizenry of Rome fled to one of the seven hills, Capitoline and beat back repeated assaults. The Senate was quickly informed and a man named Camillus was given temporary dictator powers and a generalship. Camillus set about trying to organize some kind of rescue for Rome, which was busily being sacked by the super tough Brennus.

Brennus eventually figured out how to circumvent the defenders and forced a surrender demanding a metric shit ton of gold as payment. Once this business was done Camillus showed up with his new army and battled Brennus on the streets of Rome. This did not pan out for either side and after a hard pointless fight Brennus and Camillus agreed to meet the following day outside of the city. This second fight worked out badly for Brennus who was defeated and forced to retreat. Rome was safe and some important lessons were learned. Some of these included things like not letting your aristocracy do all the fighting, outfitting your army equally so you don't have a bunch of poorly armed plebs running around getting stabbed. Finally the Romans figured out that there were a great many things they didn't know about tactics, and as such they adopted a new 'manipular' form of legion. A 'manipule' is the Roman term for military unit, at the front of the army would be javelin units called Hastati, behind them were the Principes, who did the majority of the hand to hand fighting, and when you needed to break the will of the opposing force you sent in the last unit the Triarii, who were mainly veterans and well armed and armored soldiers. This defeat also caused the Romans to build larger walls around Rome, which you would've thought would have been one of those clever ideas they picked up from the Greeks, but apparently not.

So, this is the Roman Republic, up to the sack of Rome. Join us next time when we see what the Greeks have been doing during all this nonsense.

A Complete History of the World Part 7: THE POWER AND THE GLORY THAT IS ROME! 753 BC-507 BC

2009-12-16T15:45:00.000-08:00

Alright, remember how I said things were about to get complicated? I was really kind of talking about Rome and how pretty much after these guys appear on the scene history kicks into overdrive, and almost everyone has enough stone, paper, papyrus or kiln fired dirt laying around to keep lengthy records of their civilizations. So Lets start with the big guys of the Iron Age, ROME!

So a there isn't a whole hell of a lot of info about the Kingdom of Rome, save that its founding is popularly believed to be around 753 BC. The city of Rome was located on a hill (Palatine) next to the river Tiber. It was ruled by a series of Kings, which in Rome were referred to as Rex.

The most famous of these was Romulus, the founder of Rome...and the ROMULAN STAR EMPIRE. The story goes that a pair of twins were born, Romulus and Remus, who, when they grew up, decided to create a kingdom and asked the local deities to favor one of them to name and lead the settlement. A flock of birds flew over Romulus so he promptly iced his brother with a shovel. with his newly buried brother out of the way Romulus formed the legionary. Now that he had an army as well as a thirst for glory and power he ordered his troops to attack the Sabines. The intent was to capture their women and bring them back to Rome for breeding stock. This event is captured in the musical number 'Sobbin' Women' from the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

Great.
So Romulus gets women for Rome, founds the Roman senate in meantime, and as the war with the Sabine men grows a momentous event takes place. As battle is about erupt between the legions and the Sabines, the now totally raped women rush from the city and plead for the fighting to stop and for the two peoples to live in peace as one. Peace is declared and promptly Rome puts out a notice saying that Rome is an asylum for all who dislike where they live, thus murderers, thieves, political enemies and roughnecks from all over the Mediterranean make their way to the new city. They also invent cloaking devices for their powerful birds of prey.

My thoughts exactly. Funny thing about the end of Romulus' reign, it is said that in his 38th year he and the people of Rome went to a large hill, where a storm abruptly sprung up and scared everyone but Romulus away. When the storm passed the people returned and were panicked to find that their fearless leader was missing! The senators quickly called for silence and explained that they had seen Romulus carried away into the heavens to be venerated as a God. This is pretty clearly the Roman Senators beginning the extremely Roman tradition of political assassination and spin doctoring. After the death of Romulus the senate went into a interregnum and elected a new king from the senate...ascended to heaven my ass.

What have I done to history?

Anyway, Rome found a new leader in Numa Pompilius, who had a peaceful reign of 43 years, he was actually rather well liked for managing this. He also created the Vestal Virgins, who watched over the fire of Vesta a protecting spirit of Rome. The virgins were taken at a young age and served 30 years as fire watchers, making sure that the flame never went out. After their tenure was up they could retire and get married, but when your choices in life were either be pampered forever with no sex or consent to the rule of men in Rome most women chose to remain in the 'clergy.'

After the reign of Numa the 'awesome,' Rome went to Tulus Hostilius, whose name is an aptronym. He ignored the hell out of the Gods and fought wars like there was no tomorrow. As he grew old and sick he turned to the God Jupiter for help, Jupiter's response was to drop a lightning bolt on him and his house.

Damn straight.

Because the Romans were worried about their new nation, and because Hostilius was such an enormous cock, the Roman Senate sought out Numas Grandson for the position of Rex. He was much like his Grandfather and ruled Rome with a measured respectful hand. Ancus Marcius, as he was called, adopted a foreign man as son and said that he would take the throne when he died. This man was Tarquinius Priscus, who by all appearance was a great ruler for his time. He expanded the Roman Empire into the Etruria, his birthplace, then gave the Etruscans senate seats. He also created the Circus Maximus where the Roman love of games was finally coming into its own. At this massive stadium chariot races were held, basically ancient Roman NASCAR. I would recommend everyone rush right out and see Ben-Hur as it is famous for its chariot scene, but I haven't seen it. I watched a clip once, but for whatever reason they decided that there needed to be Muslims betting on the race...even though Islam wasn't founded for another 400 YEARS! Damn you movies! Damn you to hell! Anyway Priscus also built the Roman sewer system, which helped him clear out a nearby swamp and expand the city. He was also the first Roman leader to celebrate a 'Roman Victory', wherein large parades and celebrations were held.

Regrettably Priscus suffered a true Roman fate, he was assassinated by one of Ancus' sons, you know, the real ones...the ones who weren't getting to rule Rome. Fortunately, just like in a good movie, the wicked sons of Ancus were thwarted when the throne went to Prscus' son Servius Tullius. He changed up the Roman's civics system, making a more rigid class system and giving more power to an elite few. However as he grew older he began to view the poor of his nation as important, because there was a lot of them, and they could stab him just as hard as anybody. Hilariously he was assassinated by his own daughter Tullia, who got her husband Tarquinius Superbus to the position of Rex.

That would be funny if it weren't true. You see Superbus was a brutal leader, who destroyed shrines dedicated to the Sabines ( who were now largely integrated into all of Roman society), murdered his opposition and threatened the well being of the whole of Rome. Finally he was ousted after an incredibly famous event. In 507 BC Superbus was besieging a distant city and needed to make contact with the Roman city of Collatia. He sent his son Sextus to visit the Governor's mansion, which belonged to a man away at the siege as well. The house invited him in with all kinds of kindnesses and flattery. In attendance at the mansion was the Prefect of Rome's daughter Lucretia, whose husband was the wayward governor. Sextus was quickly enamored with the beautiful Lucretia and that same night he crept into her bedchamber and woke her to give her two choices. She could either sleep with him and be his future Queen, or he could kill her and one of her maids and claim that she was dishonoring her husband by having a lesbian affair. Lucretia opted out of either choice and was summarily raped by Sextus, who quickly returned to the front lines pleased as punch. Lucretia, devastated, went to her father and wept, when he asked her why she was so distressed she said that she wanted witnesses. Once a crowd had been gathered she told the story of her rape at the hands of the King's son, how this was an affront to all Roman's, and that action must be taken, as soon as this message escaped her lips she drew a dagger and stabbed herself in the heart.. The Roman people were infuriated with their ruler and promptly called in the senate to oust him and end the line of kings.

Lucretia was the catalyst needed to finally end the rule of the Rex in Rome, with her death the senate raised an army and barred the gates to the city. Sextus and Superbus quickly heard the news and raced to Rome, leaving the army under the command of two patricians (Roman aristocrats). Discovering that they could not enter the city they returned to the besieged city of Ardea. Little did they know that while they were off running all over the country side a message had arrived declaring Superbus and his kin outlaws, a vote was held amongst the soldiers and a call to revolution accepted. Superbus was driven from Rome and all her territories, eventually ending up in Etruria, where he rallied the Etruscans and Latins behind him to defeat Rome. Sadly for Superbus it just didn't work out and Rome became a Republic, creating the position of consul to replace the king. You are probably thinking that simply having a kingly position under a different name wouldn't really make the situation any better, but the solution to this was to have there be two consuls who would need to agree over courses of action.

So in 507 BC the Kingdom of Rome was at an end and the era of the Republic of Rome was beginning!

A Complete History of the World Part 6: Greece 1100-500 BC, China 2100-480 BC, Japan 13,000- 300 BC, Meso America 1000 BC

2009-12-14T17:12:00.000-08:00

We need to keep this ball rolling, because we're getting to some very lengthy and important periods in the development of everything, so we're going to leap to the next phase in Greek development.

So after the terrible Trojan War, which took up quite a few years after 1100 BC the Greeks moved into a period known as the Greek Dark Ages. The reason for the name is less because of some kind of loss of quality in Greek living, but rather because we simply have extremely little record of what precisely they were doing. So we'll skip the next few hundred years and go to the Archaic period roughly 800 BC to 480 BC.

During this innovative time the Greeks began to build small kingdoms around large towns, the most prominent feature of which was a spot called the Acropolis. The acropolis in Greek city design was a large hill centered in the heart of a city, surrounded by walls, rather a lot like later castle designs. Funny thing about this period is that Kingship was not passed from father to son, but rather from father to son-in-law. Thus disputes and lineage focused on the Queens of these towns. As the Archaic period ended the Kings were deposed by tyrants, another Greek invention. At this time a tyrant was an elected leader (the Greeks invented democracy as a means of bettering their fledgling 'city states') who had absolute authority to run the city as they saw fit, until the next election.

During the next few hundred years the Greek city states we are all familiar with become more defined, and of course wars break out between them. Such as the Messenian War in which Sparta, upset after the raping of some virgins, attacked Messenia, Messenia on the other hand swore that the virgins were soldiers, and that Sparta was simply being rude. This was promptly followed by a second Messenian War, because if Sparta ain't figthin' Sparta ain't livin'.

This sadly pretty much wraps up Greece until we jump up to everything after 500 BC.

Anyway, because Greece is done we can leap over to another part of the world ASIA! Starting with China in 2,100 BC. This was the time of the Xia dynasty, which could have ruled all the way to 1600 BC, but then again NOBODY KNOWS! Because although there are some records of the Xia dynasty existing and a few artifacts, there's no concrete history to speak of, so we'll jump ahead to the Shang Dynasty which ran from1600 BC to 1046 BC. During the Shang period the Chinese worshiped a pantheon of Gods all under a single supreme God Shang-Ti, as well as their ancestors, who after death ascended to a state of God hood as well. The Chinese also started using divination and the reading of bones to predict the future. Leadership at this time was dictated by the 'Mandate of Heaven' which was the will of the greater whole of the universe, if you were leading the country and everything was all right then you possessed the mandate, if however there were natural disasters and the people were unhappy then the mandate was no longer with you and you were fair pickin's for removal. After the Shang gave way a new Dynasty was founded titled the Zhou, which ruled China from 1046 to 221 BC. This transition was actually achieved after the Shang dynasties vassals in the West, the people of Zhou, turned on their masters and declared that they possessed the Mandate of Heaven, and were thus the new rulers of China. Incidentally the constant declarations of possessing the Mandate of heaven will be extremely common in dynastic cycles from here on out pretty much, but then again you knew that already if you happened to play any games made by Koei.

After a fashion the Zhou rulers lost control over the various feudal lords in China and by 480 BC hundreds of small kingdoms all vied for power while claiming loyalty to the Zhou. During the lead up to this there was also the beginning of large migrations of Chinese from the North to the South. In the background to the upheavels of the period Confucianism and Taoism both spring up and become dominant religious doctrines of the period. In recognition of this I'll give them each an opportunity to offer some advice. First of lets chat with Confucius...

Fascinating, thanks for that...all right, let us ask Lao Tzu, founder of Taoism a question, Lao Tzu! What's the purpose of life?

Outstanding, I have made a mockery of these two sacred traditions.

Anywho, lets move to Japan and see what they're up to between 13,000 BC to 300 BC

Stupendous, you venerate that bear carcass! We'll check back in with Japan in a few hundred years.

So where else can we visit? Let's see, in Central and South America the Olmec Civilization appears, along with the Mayans, this taking place around 1000 BC. The Olmec were known primarily for their art work, most notably their giant stone heads.

Exactly like you! Though eventually the Olmec were destroyed by violent insurrections...and by popular Nickelodeon game shows.

The Maya on the other hand would reach prominence a little later, so we'll need to be patient with them. Europe was wearing furs and eating meat nearly raw at this point, so picture early civilization with snow.

Under These circumstances it appears that we've managed to cover history all the way up to 500 BC, so be prepared, because this is where things start getting complicated.

A Complete History of the World Part 5: Ancient Greece 1100 BC TROJAN WAR

2009-11-24T14:22:00.001-08:00

So when we last left off we we're watching the world of the Greeks spiral into chaos as a war with Troy loomed and poor Odysseus is dragged off to fight. So lets get this post movin' and get the Delorean revved up.

At the gathering of the Generals at Aulis a sacrifice was made to Athena. When the blood was done running a snake slithered out from the temple, climbed a tree and ate a sparrow and it's nine babies, then abruptly turned to stone. Instead of taking this as a sign that everything was fucked up beyond all recognition they decided it meant that Troy would fall in ten years.

Now this mighty host was ready to beat much ass, except for the part where they had no idea where Troy was or how to get there. That's right, they had no clue where their enemy was.

So the fleet sets sail and arrives at the Kingdom of Mysia, ruled by King Telephus of the Arcadians, son of Hercules. Guess what, rather than ask for directions Achilles stone stabs the dude and leaves with the fleet, getting crazy lost and eventually ending up back at Aulis.

Sadly for Telephus his wound refuses to heal, and after asking the Oracle what he can do about this it is explained that he can only be healed by the one that wounded him. Telephus goes all the way to Aulis and asks Achilles to tend to his wound. Achilles natural response is to say "Dude I'm 15 I have no clue what medicine is, my major is stabbing things, not unstabbing them." So Telephus takes Achilles spear and scrapes some pieces of metal off it and stuffs his wound with them, and magically it heals. Telephus then gives the Greek army directions to Troy, because he's not a sore loser.

So now that the army is reorganized...EIGHT YEARS LATER! A thousand ships set out for Troy. Upon their arrival fighting began in earnest, that is after a dire warning was given that the first person off the boats would be the first to die in the war. Achilles decided he'd wait and let Protesilaus go first, which got him summarily killed. What a big man you are Achilles. With a few guys dead all around the Trojans retreated into their city and closed the door. This went on for NINE MORE YEARS! That's right, they just kind of milled around hoping the war would end, without actually besieging the city either, just sitting out in front of it. Achilles kept busy though, going crazy all over the Aegean, conquering towns left and right for no good God damned reason.

With the war dragging on and everyone getting crazy fucking sick of it we finally see the army mutiny and demand an end to hostilities. Sadly Achilles manages to persuade the army to hang out and not leave, because he isn't done rampaging all over the damned place. Agamemnon kidnaps the daughter of a Trojan who then prays to Apollo for help, causing the allied invaders to be struck with plague. Agamemnon turns around and asks Achilles to hand over his own woman since he was forced to return the kidnapped daughter. Achilles naturally feels insulted by this and refuses to fight, a huge boon for the Trojans because Achilles kill ratio to anyone else in the invading armies was like 12,000 to 1. The man was a meat grinder, a spinning murder top. Eventually the two armies actually decide to have a real fight, which ends with Menelaus challenging Paris to a dual, wherein he beats Paris' ass. Paris is saved at the last minute by Aphrodite, who was still grateful for the Golden Apple she won because of him.

So Achilles, still refusing to fight minces around the Aegean whilst the Gods roll 20 sided dice to determine whose loyalties will lay where. So Zeus tells the Trojans that he'll supply them a great warrior, Thetis, since Achilles is gone. I guess this would be like renting a car, but only under the promise that the roads wont be populated by only drunk drivers, putting a hero onto a field of battle with Achilles is a death sentence and apparently Zeus didn't feel like losing another good fighter. Anyway the Trojans beat the Allies asses all the way to their ships before Patroclus, who happens to be Achilles BFF, dons the wayward douche bags armor and sends them screaming back to Troy. Sadly Apollo shows up and stops Patroclus, just in time for the Trojan's greatest hero Hector to run him through...like crazy!

So guess what! Achilles is now extremely pissed off that his best buddy is dead!

He comes back, gets his girl back from Agamemnon, gets armor specially made by Hephaestus (God of Forging Stuff) and goes on a murder rampage, killing every fool he sees, forcing the Trojans into their city, save Hector who gets tricked by Athena into staying outside. What happens next? Well lets see...Achilles is a juiced up psychopath and Hector is...his name is Hector, he sounds like a Greek version of Garfield.

Achilles kills Hector and drags his corpse behind a chariot for a while before headin' back to camp. It takes intervention by the Gods to get him to hand over the body for a proper burial. Abruptly another Trojan ally arrives! THE AMAZONS!

No, I'm sorry, I can't take these Amazon's seriously, we're going to need new Amazons...

So the Amazons arrive under the leadership of Penthesilia, who goes on her own killing spree, until Achilles gets to her. Achilles stone kills the leader of the Amazons, then finds out that she's beautiful and wishes he hadn't done it. Amusingly enough the ugliest soldier in the whole army walks by and makes fun of Achilles for having a soft spot for the girl he just killed, then gouges out her eyes.

I bet he even said "ain't so pretty no more," afterward too.

So Achilles feels guilty and goes to the island of Lesbos to ask for forgiveness. While away the great king Memnon comes from the East conquering everything in his path, intent on saving Troy. He battles the newly forgiven Achilles, who stone kills him. Why the fuck even try? Why? You try to stomp Achilles yard and he will go crazy on you. Funny thing though, Zeus and the Gods weigh the fight, between Achilles and Memnon, and find that poor Memnon's 'Win Weight' was sinking, so they let Achilles annihilate him. Now Zeus becomes upset that Achilles has simply killed too many sons of the Gods, too...damned...many, and has Paris fire a poison arrow at him, guided by Apollo. The arrow hits the mark and Achilles is killed, though all the variations of this make sure to point out that he was totally awesome, and that the killer sucked...balls.

So with Achilles dead Ajax and our nutty friend Odysseus grabbed the body and fought their way back to the Allies lines. Agamemnon then decided to give away Achilles armor to the smartest of his warriors, except that Odysseus and Ajax both stepped forward requesting the title. Agamemnon, worried over pissing off Ajax, decided to let the Trojan prisoners decide, by asking who had done them more harm. It was decided that Odysseus would get the armor and Ajax went into a blind rage. Athena quickly cast a spell on him, causing him to mistake a group of cattle for the Allied armies. Ajax hacked and slashed his way through this false army until he came to his senses and killed himself for being so stupid.

After this episode a series of prophecies, each dumber than the last, had to be fulfilled to win the war for the Allies. Odysseus (eager to get home) went about completing one task after another, until finally after a series of adventures that saw quite a bit of vandalism, plus the death of Paris, he came up with his best plan to stop this madness.

Yes, the Trojan war was completely insane. Odysseus came up with the brilliant ruse of crafting and enormous wooden horse(sacred to the Trojans), hiding inside of it, then letting the rest of the army leave so the Trojans would come out and take the horse back in the city. With the plan in action Odysseus and a number of soldiers awaited their fate in the wooden horse, now within the city of Troy. The Trojans quarreled over whether they should offer the horse up to Athena, burn it for fun, or throw it off a cliff...also for fun. At the same time a Trojan women Cassandra, who had been given the power of prophecy, but also the curse of never being believed warned against keeping the horse. Also, as if there weren't enough dire portents a giant serpent rose from the sea and ate two important Trojans. After much thought they decided to hold onto the horse and get super drunk.

Naturally the soldiers came out of their horse, signaled the waiting Allied fleet and Troy was sacked...sacked, burned, obliterated, the women raped in the streets then thrown from walls. All the potential rulers of Troy were killed, and Cassandra was raped in a temple of Athena by Ajax the Lesser, who was spared by Athena after much whimpering. So the Gods were furious, since besides the city, all their temples were destroyed as well...or if not destroyed were witness to all manner of sacrilege. As result it was decided that a majority of the Allies should die on their way home, or if not die, then become horribly lost, except a general named Nestor who decided not to loot and burn Troy, he was rewarded with an uneventful trip home. Odysseus, clever fellow that he was suffered all manner of troubles at the hands of the Gods because of his involvement with the destruction of Troy. Naturally his story comprises the Odyssey, wherein he spends another decade trying to get home whilst assholes try to sleep with his wife.

So with that we bring the "history" of the Trojan War to a conclusion, join us again later for the next chapter in the development of mankind in THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE WORLD!

A Complete History of the World 4: Ancient Greece 2800 BC-1100 BC

2009-11-12T22:01:00.000-08:00

So, rather than go to the rest of the planet right this moment I have decided that perhaps we should stop by and see what the people of Ancient Greece have been up to, you know shoot the shit with all those wild and crazy Aegeans!

Now the early period of what would be considered Greek history starts around 2800 BC and is split into three different cultures in what is the modern Aegean Peninsula (Greece Dawg!)

I will be referring to this, there will be a test dammit! DAMMIT!

Anyway, lets start with the mainland, what is also archeologically called the Helledic period from 2800 BC- 1060 BC. Little is really known about this period actually, the region was extremely hilly, with little space for standard crops and most of the things that are important to sprouting civilizations noticeably lacking. However we still find the beginnings of all the great city states that would dominate Greek history in like another few hundred years. Athens, Corinth, Sparta, were all founded, however called by different names.

Alright, now that we've established that people were living on the mainland of Greece we can move on to one of the bazillion islands that are off the coast where people lived too. One of the more important islands was Crete, where the Minoan civilization saw its birth and eventual collapse in between the years 3650-1150 BC. The Minoans were named such by a 20th century historian who equated King Minos (of Labyrinth fame)

No. Not you, King Minos...this guy, the one who appears in Dante's Inferno.

You know what, whatever. Jareth, you will now be playing King Minos.

Anyway, the Minoans were traders who traveled all across the ancient Mediterranean, boring people with their unremarkable history and their lovely pottery. The Minoans appeared to be repeatedly attacked or annihilated either by earthquake or outside forces invading them. In later Greek popular legend Knossos (major city on Crete during the Minoan era) was home to the fabled Labyrinth, where King Minos' wife banged bulls and made minotaurs.

No, well I don't...I know a few people who would, but that's irrelevant to our journey. Onward to Cyclades! They lived on an island...around 3000 BC to 2000 BC. They carved large round statues of women out of marble. They are more boring than our first post. Man the Cycladic culture was dull. If only there was some way to make this better...

Dammit Jareth! not now!

Lets get away from truly ancient Greece and move to what is called the 'Greek Dark Ages', a time also referred to as the Dorian Invasion. The Greeks explained that the descendants of the banished Hercules returned to the Peloponnesian islands and changed up the language and reorganized everything. there is really no historical evidence to support this, save that Greek culture all of a sudden changed like crazy with no definitive reason why. Although some people also suggest that the change and desertion of many towns in this period was due to the Sea People. Sea People appear repeatedly in ancient texts, all over the Mediterranean. The story remains the same however, a group of guys no one knows, who don't speak the lingo show up and complete obliterate everything they find leaving nothing behind. Fun times in the past.

Now then, this brings us to around 1100 BC, which is roughly the time when there is a possibility the Trojan War happened. See, since the whole thing occurred in a culture that had largely spoken word poems as their method of recording events it's difficult to nail down what actually happened, and because I am more interested in humor and adventure I'll toss around the story of the more than likely made up history of the Trojan War.

It all begins after Zeus, having risen to the position of ruler of the Gods, decides that there are A) Too many damned people in the world and B) A lot of them are half human and half God. Funny thing about that though, because Zeus was father to a lot of those as well, because he could not stop having sex with human women. Plus the lengths he would go to! Turning into animals and all sorts of crap. Zeus had a hard on for mortals, and because he was trying to overcome addiction he was going to kill everything he could bang. It's like a junkie becoming President then proactively hunting down and obliterating anyplace that has poppies in it.

So Zeus heard from Prometheus (recently saved by Hercules) that one of his sons would be his downfall, or at the very least eclipse him. As such Zeus passed off one of his recent conquests Thetis (a woman, not a city) to Peleus a King of the Aegina. At the party all the Gods showed up, except Discord, who was barred from the event (can't imagine why). Well she got seriously pissed and threw her gift into the reception hall. The gift was a golden apple which was inscribed with 'to the fairest.' So Hera, Athena and Aphrodite got into a cat fight over who would get this kick ass paper weight.

Since no headway was being made on the issue it was decided that the three of them would appear...nude...before Paris the hair to the throne of Troy (who was living as a shepherd because he was foretold to bring about the fall of Troy) who would decide. Incidentally the Gods didn't answer because they were acutely aware that if they answered at all the odds of them having extramarital affairs with one or more of these Goddesses would go down the tubes. So Athena, Hera and Aphrodite appeared before Paris offering him treats!

That's right, of the above options Paris picks the 'Most Beautiful Woman in the World' Helen of Sparta. So Aphrodite wins the apple, yay. Paris goes on an adventure or two, then heads on back to Troy where he is recognized as a long lost heir and reinstated...because Trojans are dumb as hell. Now rather amusingly that wedding that we saw earlier, between Thetis and Peleus, guess who the son of the union is...none other than Achilles. Achilles at birth was destined to have one of two possible lives, either he would lead an ordinary and uneventful life, dying of old age, or he would die young and be remembered forever. I think you can guess which one he ended up with...you know, because a guy of mostly Scottish/French descent living on the West coast of a country where the dominant language is not Greek knows his name.

So to make their son immortal, so as to prevent the more tragic 'young death' they either dip the baby Achilles in the River Styx or they hold him over a fire until his mortal-ness burns away. Incidentally we should try this out more often...holding babies over fires and seeing if they become immortal.

Anyway, back to Helen...who incidentally was the love child of Zeus and a mortal women Leda (Zeus was a swan...who raped a woman...rapist swan) which means that almost everyone in this story has had sex with Zeus at one point or another, dudes lucky he didn't get syphilis.

So Helen's fake dad, the King of Sparta finds himself in a difficult spot, everyone wants to marry the hell outta Helen, except that if any one of them does Sparta and the dude whose married her will find themselves immediately under attack by every other suitor. God dammit Helen, get ugly would you? Eventually though the King of Sparta got the suitors to agree to defend the eventual husband no matter who he was. Meanwhile King Menalaus, a rich douche, has a chat with Aphrodite, to whom he promises the sacrifice of 100 oxen if he gets Helen. As a side note the brilliant idea of making the various kings agree to defend the marriage was Odysseus', so he could get help with his marriage to Penelope. Menalaus sends his brother Agamemnon to ask for Helen's hand, and the King of Sparta agrees. Menalaus promptly forgets to give the promised sacrifice...because you know it's Aphrodite he's dealing with, a goddess, what could she possibly do to fuck this up for him?

So Paris arrives in Sparta to collect on his new bride, whilst Menalaus is away burying his dad. Aphrodite sends Cupid along too, with the goal of shooting Helen with a love arrow when she glimpses Paris sneaking into her room...to kidnap her. Well Hera was still pissed off about the whole 'he didn't say I was the prettiest' thing and sent a storm to blow them off course. Which really only hampered them a little, they make it back to Troy and promptly the whole Aegean goes fucking insane!

Menalaus and Odysseus (the worlds craftiest man at the time) head for Troy and ask that Paris stop being a complete asshole and return Helen. Paris refuses and the two return home to Sparta where Menalaus asks Agamemnon to go around Greece asking the various kings to hold up their previous promise to defend the marriage (smooth move Odysseus). Odysseus at the time had just married Penelope and had a son named Telemachus, so the idea of going to war was not terribly appealing to him so when the emissaries arrived with the demand he join up he decided to act like he had gone insane to avoid being conscripted. His fool proof plan was to gibber like a loon while plowing his fields naked, where one of the emissaries placed his infant son. Odysseus' fool proof plan backfired when he stopped plowing so he wouldn't kill his son and he was promptly dragged off to war.

Meanwhile Achilles, at the time 15 years old, was summoned to fight because at the time he was widely considered one of the greatest warriors of the day...at 15. Well his mom disagreed with this plan and disguised him as a girl, which would have worked if the emissaries sent to retrieve him hadn't blown a horn that was used to warn of attack causing the disguised Achilles to leap into action, ripping off his disguise and grabbing a spear.

In no time at all the various Kings, generals and princes of the Greek world met at Aulis and got down to brass tacks about exploding the shit out of Troy.

We'll leave the story there, to be continued next time on Complete History of the World!

A Complete History of the World Part 3: Mesopotamia 3,000 BC-600 BC, Egypt 1500 BC-700 BC

2009-11-06T13:24:00.000-08:00

I think we should let Egypt be alone for a little while as their next phase in history will be during the Iron age and we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. So therefore I have requested that the Doc take us to Ancient Sumer, where we may learn about the Mesopotamian's.

So way back in the 4th millennium we find that all those scattered cities in modern Iraq have developed into very complex cities, with social hierarchies, walls, irrigation and a common language, the language is Sumer, and thus we call these people the Sumerians (who reside in Mesopotamia, which at the time was more a region than a nation). During this time life was hard, for anybody who wasn't in the upper parts of society, and the early religions of the time described death as a mind crushing nightmare, where you ate dirt for all eternity and knew no warmth or comfort. Now you may wonder why they would have such an unpleasant after life set up for themselves? Well it's because life was so completely awful, waking every morning so you could toil in the fields, on the walls, or pretty much any place the local king told you he needed toiling, that suicide seemed like a great way out. That's right, life sucked so bad that people had to be made to fear death so they wouldn't take the easy way out. Remember it's the ancient Sumerians who worshiped Gozer the Gozarian and Zuul.

Anyway, this period has proven difficult for historians to keep track of because of the multitude of city states, each with its own history and that this is when writing was first developed in the region, meaning no one was capable of writing gripping historical epics yet. However we can discuss the greatest Sumerian of the age, Gilgamesh!

NO GOD DAMMIT! GILGAMESH! THIS GUY!

Gilgamesh was a King of Uruk, a city of ancient Sumeria/Mesopotamia sometime around 2700 BC. He was described in his semi-biographical piece 'The Epic of Gilgamesh' as being two parts God, one part man. He was like some kind of shitty cake, because what kind of two part God would hang around in Mesopotamia? The Gilgamesh kind! Anyway, here's the story of Gilgamesh as told via the amusing Epic of Gilgamesh. Our hero is born and grows to manhood, where he builds a mighty wall for the city of Uruk, so no one can get in. In spite of this generous service the people complain to Gilgamesh that he sucks and that he has a nasty tendency to sleep with everyones wives...usually before the marriage ceremony is complete. This kind of cheeses off the Goddess of creation who creates a wild man named Enkidu to run amok and wreck up Uruk...because that will totally irk Gilgamesh?

Anyway, Gilgamesh sends Enkidu a hooker...

Who proceeds to spend a week with Enkidu, banging him into submission. Enkidu becomes civilized and no one learns a lesson about anything...especially Gilgamesh, who starts having strange dreams where he is told he'll be making an awesome friend soon.

After this we see Gilgamesh and Enkidu travel all over creation, killing things, weeping, offering horrible monsters their loved ones. In the end Gilgamesh suffers a bout of depression until he sees the outstanding wall he built at which time he air guitars his way back into Uruk and lives probably happily ever after...until he dies and goes to a realm of darkness where he eats dirt forever.

Then there was the Elam, the peoples who dwelt in the city of Susa(in modern Iran). They are terribly boring and suffered mightily later on under the hands of Ashurbanipal and later the Persians.

Of some more importance however was the kingdom of Akkadia, which was ruled over most importantly by King Sargon. Akkadia conquered Uruk and pretty every other bit of land in Iraq and it was during this time that Sargon (at that time the Royal Gardener) looked over his group of well trained and hard working gardener friends and decided to overthrow the king. So before you write off your local Hispanic landscapers as being not worthy of praise remember that there was a time when they could rise up and completely overthrow the government and found one of the great empires of antiquity.

Sargon ruled for 56 years, which is pretty damned impressive when your life expectancy is probably like a biscuit longer than a dogs. He conquered pretty much the whole of the Middle East and at the end of his long reign managed to defeat a massive insurrection that besieged his capital city of Akkad. However the Akkadian hegemony was short lived, within 100 years the empire collapsed and became the Neo-Summerians. This was short lived as soon the Amorites took over, amorites being basically a ethnic group who moved en masse all over the failing Kingdoms of Ur and eventually ended up just taking over. They effectively ended the long held tradition of city states (your kingdom ends at the city walls) in favor of regular old kingdoms (my kingdom stretches from this pile of dirt over to that cow skeleton). Amorites also appear in the bible, for those of you who care, in which they are used interchangeably with the term Canaanites. They were said to be descended from giants, however it is unlikely that these Amorites are the same group as the historical Amorites...amiright?

After the fall of the Amorites in the 17th century BC we see Hammurabi of the Babylonians gain a position of leadership over the central kingdoms of the old empires (primarily every city in between the Tigris and Euphrates). Hammurabi was a fairly nondescript ruler, who is more known for his strict code of laws, one of the first written sets in recorded history. The punishment for crimes was usually death or disfigurement. Steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family? Lose your hands and feet. I am sorry to say however that when Rastafarian's refer to the world at large as being Babylon they are using some kind of super hyperbole.

After a short stint as lords and masters of the 'cradle of civilization' the Babylonians fell to the Kassites. The Kassites were a third rate power from the Zagros Mountains in Iran. They arrived on the scene and once in power they realized that the Babylonian culture was vastly superior to theirs so they became super conservative and dedicated to Babylonian customs and traditions. They ruled for around 500 years, which is really impressive when we see other more popular kingdoms ruling for only a few generations. Part of the reason why the Kassites were able to maintain power for so long was the success Hammurabi and others had at making regional kingdoms instead of independant city governments.

During this whole period we also see the rise and fall of many Assyrian dynasties. They were largely left alone by the other powers that came and went, probably because their name sounds incredibly dangerous. However by 911 BC(NEVER FORGET!)

The Assyrians, or rather the Neo-Assyrians would dominate the whole of the Middle East. Great plagues and droughts struck all across the old empires of this period allowing the Assyrian Kings to steam roll right over everyone and anyone in their way including the Kingdom of Israel. Poor Kingdom of Israel, they popped up around 1030 BC and were conquered in short order by 931, at which time 27,000 odd people were displaced. Assyria also managed to conquer Egypt in around 600 BC.

Assyria would see unprecedented growth in culture and art under King Ashurbanipal, but sadly this period was short lived as almost immediately after his death the whole of the the Middle East erupted into civil war. We see the Neo Assyrians swept away and the speakers of the Akkadian language (used by the leadership of the Assyrians) wiped out by 605 BC.

Lets leap back over to our old friend Egypt, who we left back in 1500 BC or so. during this whole period Egypt primarily did what it did best, invade its neighbors, allow its priests to get too much power and fall into complete disarray. One such period is when the Pharaoh Akhenaten takes the reigns of leadership, his exciting plan being to completely throw out the old religion and found a new one. He saw a growing threat from the Priests of Thebes, who were effectively directing public opinion at this point, so he declared that there was only one God, Aten, who ruled over all and that he was Atens messanger on Earth. This is one of the first monotheistic religions in history, but it only lasted for the duration of Akhenatens rule, after his death his wife Nefertiti tried to keep up the old ways but was not so successful as did Akhenatens son Tutenkhaman, who under pressure from the priests recounted and reinstated the old religion. After King Tut we see Ramses II eventually arise. Ramses the Grea,t as he is known, builds more temples, statues and great works than any other pharaoh. He also sires a metric shit ton of children and battles the feared Hittites (we'll get to them) into a peace treaty (the first in history). Ramses II is probably one of the most well known Egyptian pharaohs, for his great civic works, his constant canoodling with women and that he is often equated with the pharaoh under whom the 'exodus' takes place. Whether this is in fact under his reign is debatable as there is little evidence to support it especially since it will be still another three hundred odd years before the Kingdom of Israel is founded. you may also know Ramses from Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" in which a tablet is inscribed with the phrase,

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

You probably know Ozymandias as the alter ego of boy loving, purple clad, Studio 54 frequenting multi billionaire playboy Adrian Veidt from Watchmen.

Now then, that should about wrap it up with Mesopotamia, Egypt and pretty much every place in the cradle of civilization. Up next we'll visit Ancient Asia, South America and all those other rubbish places no one talks about. after that we'll hit up Super Ancient Greece, where we will learn all about the Trojan War.

A Complete History of the World Part 2: Bronze Age Egypt 3100BC-1500BC

2009-11-05T09:53:00.000-08:00

So, lets keep the ball rolling, and let me introduce you to the next phase in our history tour. I've chosen to do this by arrangement of periods, you see the prehistoric neolithic period, although long, was incredibly dull. Also since there were few written records and such it makes it difficult to keep everything in order. So since we've moved up to the Bronze Age we have a more clearly delineated historical time line, as such what I will do is move forward by epochs making a post about each culture (sometimes merging two or three smaller cultures into one post) then once we get to a period of actually recorded history we'll move forward by hundred year increments, following every civilization we can during a hundred year cycle, this means we should be done sometime around when you children's children die.

So Doc, what's on the menu today?

Alright, in about 3100 BC we see Egypt start to get its shit together, the Upper Nile looks at itself and says "Upper Nile River Valley, we can do better." so it promptly swallows itself in conflict and intermarriage until it is one unified group of cities, then turns its sights on the Southern Nile Valley. At this time Egypt was creating their early hieroglyphs, making the recording of history easier, and their art cooler. They also began settling colonies in lower Israel, arguably making them the first Imperialists.

So, who unified Egypt and created the first Dynastic period. well Technically speaking there is the possibility that a long lost King of Upper Egypt (you can identify them by their funny looking hats), the Scorpion King, began a conquest of Lower Egypt which was completed after he died.

By none other than the Pharaoh Narmer...who is a guy who they didn't make a movie about. Sorry Narmer. Narmer conquered the Southern Nile River Valley, or perhaps he didn't, maybe another Pharaoh named Menes did it and he was the immediate succesor, or heck, maybe the Scorpion King conquered Egypt and handed it off to Narmer...or maybe they are all the same god damned person! this is what happens when you don't have a well developed system of writing and enough stone tablets surviving posterity to go around. Also Egypt, stop naming your Kings four or five different things depending on where he happens to be standing at a given moment.

the one thing we can say is that he was buried at Abydos...Narmer that is...who may have been Menes...who also could have been the Scorpion King. Whatever.

Anyway, from here we have a few dynasties that see the development of Egyptian Civilzation coalescing into something worth looking at. That culminates in the first big period in Egyptian civilization the Old Kingdom, roughly 2686-2134 BC, here we have however a lineage of Pharaohs who were related to their forebears in the Early Dynastic period and also were in the same capital, Memphis...Tennessee. Sorry, that's a lie, it's just regular old Egyptian Memphis, which at the time was called Ineb Hedg, but that's a stupid name and Memphis makes me think of Powerslave, a video game from the mid nineties.

It was during this time that we see the Pharaoh Djoser (2630–2611 BC) of the third dynasty order a pyramid to be built in Saqqara in the necropolis of Memphis. This is the step pyramid you see on occasion, which looks a lot more like a mesoamerican pyramid, but hey, Egypt couldn't help it if ancient astronauts helped them out by using old plans. Now during the reign of Djoser we see Egypt launch a military campaign against the peoples of the Sinai peninsula in the East, subjugating them and then mining the area for tourqouise. In Egyptian mythology Ra the Sun God's son Horus usually represents the people of Egypt, and Seth an evil black God represents those peoples to the East of the Egyptian Empire. so many stories about Horus defeating Seth are actually analogies for the Egyptians beating on the people to the immediate East. Incidentally it was also Djosers Vizier, or Royal Advisor/Doctor/ Architect/ Scientist who would be responsible for the construction of the Step Pyramid, a Mr. Imhotep.

Imhotep was regarded as the worlds first recorded Engineer, Architect, and Physician...and the go to guy for evil mummies. Besides being a great architect responsible for Djosers pyramid, he also wrote one of the first medical books, which used reason over magical thought for cures. After his death a cult was formed around him and within 2,000 years he was deified outright. Even during the later Ptolemaic period his temples were still places of learning for budding doctors. In later centuries we all know however that he came back from the dead and harassed Rachel Weisz.

Now at the same time as all of that the Egyptians began their reverence of the Pharaoh as a living God who ensured the regular flooding of the Nile and also made sure the cyclical nature of time maintained its balance. Also during this period the Pharaoh began a practice of describing the Egyptian populace as the chosen people, selected as the only true humans on Earth, you know since everyone else worshiped Seth and was evil.

After Djoser and the Third dynasty passes we move to the Fourth Dynasty, the Golden age of Egyptian everything. When you think ancient Egypt, you are thinking of the Fourth Dynasty. This period lasted from the year 2575 to 2467 BC and saw some truly amazing work by the peoples of Egypt. This dynasty was founded by Sneferu, who reigned for 24 years. Sneferu was considered a beneficent ruler, partially because his name can mean 'To make things beautiful', and it was during his reign that the Egyptians started to really hit the nail on the head when it came to good pyramid construction. the guy was Pyramid and civic development crazy! this guy wasn't building any stepped pyramids either, he was making serious smooth sided pyramids, you know, the ones we allcare about. During this time Sneferu also invaded Nubia and Libya where he conquered the indigenous cultures there, and integrated them into the pre existing Egytpian work force.

Now we get to the big guy, the one we see all the time, Khufu, known in Greek as Cheops, as well as his son Djedefra then Khafra and his son Menkaura. These rulers built the Great Pyramids of Giza, lasting symbols of the power and might of the flowering Egyptian civilization. In later years it was widely believed that slave labor had produced these works (as credited in Exodus) however archeological evidence suggests that the work force was drawn from all across the Egyptian kingdoms and work was only done during the off season when regular agriculture wasn't manageable. evidence has shown that each Egyptian household was responsible for at least one laborer for the civic projects ordered at the time, though the wealthy could hire laborers to do the work for them.

After the grand Fourth dynasty we see the fifth and sixth dynasties declining towards the collapse of this early era. Dynasties came and went and the faith in the old Pharaohs was rocked when a terrible famine came and droughts blighted the Nile river. We enter the Intermediate Period a century of decline and war in the Egyptian Empire, from 2181 to 2055 BC. The Egyptian Empire splits between Herecleopolis in the South and Thebes in the North. Besides the famines and such, one of the problems that arose was that regions of Egypt were controlled by regional monarchs (called nomarchs), who handed down their titles in a standard hereditary model. these monarchs accumulated power, built monuments and raised armies in their name, eventually challenging the Pharaoh's authority.

In the South Libyan invaders rose to prominance, gaining a seat of power for over 500 years, defeating the Memphite rulers of Egypt and installing the 9th Dynasty. Meanwhile other invaders conquer Thebes and set up the 11th and 12th Dynasties, or at the very least make good their place for the future.

After the conflicts ended in these two different power centers we enter the Middle Kingdom, wherein the 11th Dynasty, the Thebens conquer the Herecleoptian cities and reunite Egypt. Mentuhotep II ruler of the eleventh dynasty invaded Palestine and Nubia during this period, after conquering the Southern Kings. He also gave control of civil matters over to a Vizier instead of handling them himself.

At the end of the 11th dynasty we see a smooth transition to the 12th, because it is widely believed that when Mentuhotep IV passed away and the reigns of power went to the already qualified and well positioned Vizier Amenemhat.

The new Pharaoh curtailed the monarchs, put down rebellion and kept the reigns of power by offering a second in line position to a trusted adviser. He was then promptly killed by one of his bodyguards.

Sensuret I takes over, hands off leadership to Sensuret II, who uses diplomacy to form trade agreements with Nubia and Palestine. Sensuret III however looks at his dads works and says "Fuck that shit!" and invades Nubia, leading the army personally. He builds forts along the Egyptian borders and generally makes a nuisance of himself. when he dies his son Amenemhat III steps in and does such a solid job of leading the Egyptians that he is deified in later years. You know you're doing alright when you become a God for your efforts. He also allowed Asiatic peoples to live in Egypt under the promise that they would help him build shit.

Then comes the 13th and 14th dynasties, which sucked and caused the second intermediate period. You remember that period, that shitty time where the country split in two? Well it happens again. At this time a group called the Hyksos invade Egypt and formally conquer it, which runs from the 15th to 18th dynasties, ending sometime around 1570 BC. the Hyksos were a group of Asiatic peoples from East of the Nile delta, who arrived in the region with many important technological advances, the composite bow (sturdy and accurate) and the horse drawn chariot.

I think we'll take a break there, before we reach the New Kingdom, where more crazy hieroglyphic shit happens. so tune in later for more...of this...you know, everything that ever happened anywhere.

A Complete History of the World Part 1: 10,000BC-4,000BC

2009-11-04T16:24:00.000-08:00

That's correct, at this very juncture I have decided that it is in my and everyone's best interest to start writing a complete history of the world, from the dawning of civilization to the present day. I have no doubt that it will come to naught, but hey, who the hell cares anyway, I have a user base of near zero, if there was a bright center of the blogosphere this would be the page that it's farthest from. So lets set the wayback machine to the distant past and start the inexorable march forward, God help us.

That's right we're going back to just shortly after the last ice age, when mankind, having struggled our way across the globe via land bridges settled in our respective regions and started ruining things for everyone. Our first important civilized skill to be learned was the domestication of plants, and further the desire to remain in a single place. You see before 10,000 years ago humanity spent most of its time wandering around, hunting and gathering, diets consisting of berries, large land animals and ground up shit they found laying around. You see what happened to us was that we started building dwellings and stopped migrating, once we discovered that we could selectively grow different types of plants, and further make those plants do things we wanted, like make bigger seeds or shed their seeds earlier in the year. This lead to the creation of granaries where our forebears would pile all of this grain. this was not just happening in what is called the fertile crescent, the cradle of civilization (modern Middle East) Oh no! This is going on everywhere else, the spontaneous discovery of agriculture (albeit maybe a thousand years later in Asias case and a few thousand years more in South America as well) anyway, each of these other regions cultivated their own unique crops, like potatoes in South America and coffee in Ethiopia.

Anyway, this was all called the Neolithic revolution, our first steps towards motor cars and the internet. the next big endeavor in the revolution was the domestication of animals like goats and pigs, as well as the camel. all of this was focused in and around the fertile crescent again. Largely these changes were caused by an increase in population, putting stress on the early groupings of humans, which is surprising when your life expectancy at the time was probably like 12.

So we collected together and formed little bands of people, building granaries, making animals have sex at our discretion, making plants have their own plant version of sex at our discretion. Bending the world to our will.

these first discoveries prompted us to find out other cool things! Like that if we dried out the skins of our various dead animals we could make shelters and fashionable straps for our collective crotches. We could take the hair from animals like sheep and alpacas and turn it into wool, so we could be itchy from things besides lice and other small parasitic insects. Milk, there's a winner! But best of all we realized that if you took a bunch of goats, tied them together and then tied yourself to it, they would drag you places, at speeds of up to five miles and hour...HOLY SHIT!

From here we also developed our various exciting diseases. Because we lived in shit, with animals, we created all manner of exciting crossbred illnesses like measles and smallpox, not to mention cholera and the like. You see in the Eurasia we loved domesticating animals and drinking their fluids, but in the Americas and the Pacific islands you find people who rarely domesticated large animals and when they did they didn't drink it's various juices. This is an important fact that will crop up in a few thousand years.

So in no time at all, like maybe 5,000 years we see cities cropping up with thousands of inhabitants, toiling away on useless crap, like writing and art. Early Chinese were some of the first peoples to make a semi written language. Regardless of this it's hard to pin down the exact things that make a civilization, for example the Inca had grandiose buildings but no written language until 200BC, the Chinese had a proto language but no great works aside from that. You see where I'm coming from? Now then, with all these densely packed cities cropping up we have the first 'Civilization' appear, the Mesopotamians.

That's right, that very informative video will provide you with valuable imagery to work off of. In reality Mesopotamia wasn't really quite like we were today, you know, organized under a single government, sharing a common language and all that. No, the Mesopotamians were a collection of like minded peoples who knew pretty much the same thing and lived in large cities, the most important of which are Ninevah, Uruk, Nippur and Babylon. Mesopotamia, as with most things during the neolithic revolution, was located in the Tigris and Euphrates river regions of modern Iraq. Besides the Mesopotamians there also arose a group called the Sumerians, who were from the city of Eridu, which would later become the city of Uruk. Now the Sumerians are regarded largely as Mesopotmian, however they spoke their own independent language, and were also the first peoples to do the whole 'agriculture' thing year round.

South of these groups was of course the future 'Big Boys' of the region, the Egyptians, a bunch of kooks all living in the Nile river valley, whose favorite pastimes were inventing forms of writing and getting eaten by crocodiles. The early predynastic Egyptians, known as the Faiyum A culture, created woven baskets, undoubtedly sold in the worlds first Pier 1 Imports.

Then comes the Merimde culture of Egypt, then the El Omari and the Maadi, who like burying their dead in graveyards. After this the list of minor cultures growing then disappearing on the Nile goes on and on, however it was during this time (6,000 BC) or so that the Egyptians developed simple boats, some with sails, to traverse the Nile...and be eaten by crocodiles in new and interesting ways.

However all good things must come to an end, or rather all periods of discovery wherein stone tools are used must come to an end. So from the Neolithic Revolution we move into the Bronze Age, beginning around 4-3,000 BC. Incidentally this is where things begin to get complicated and interesting.

Hail the conquering History! for September 30!

2009-09-30T18:05:00.001-07:00

After an extended absence, owing to my slow destruction at the hands of my old employer, and my otherwise worrisome predilection for worrying, I am back! So now you can all suffer along with me, suffer the burdens of knowledge...knowledge of history...suffer. So lets get to work shall we!

In 1399, in a little land called England a gent by the name Henry became King Henry IV, Lord of England, Ireland and King of France! The King of France part was less than accurate, and more of a holdover from previous tradition, nonetheless the constant reference to being King of France irritated the hell out of Charles VI, the actual King of France at the time (whose surname was the Beloved and the Mad). Henry was quite the fellow, managing to not just become King but also to have become King after previously having taken part in a rebellion that saw most of his friends executed...plus he got promoted by the very fellow who he rebelled against, King Richard II. Henry was the beginning of the Lancaster line of kings, all from the House of Lancaster...which sadly for them would only last three Kings. Naturally because he wasn't a Plantagenet (previous line of rulers) there was always talk of the old family still lurking, which meant constant assassination attempts, a handful of rebellions...leading to the War of the Roses, which I refuse to get into here...now.

1791, in Austria, land of Austrians, and chocolates...and latent Germanosity, Mozarts last Opera is performed. This Opera being The Magic Flute, conducted by Mozart himself. Mind you he died in December...that same year, so this is rather sad in the long run. If you really care I suppose you'll read a book or some biography of the great composer, however if you are lazy and don't care you can watch the extremely entertaining 'Amadeus', followed immediately by 'The Last Action Hero' wherein F. Murray Abrams plays a villain, and jokes about him in 'Amadeus' are referenced. Go watch, it will be funny.

1791, Dear God have mercy on the French! The National Constituant Assembly is dismantled in favor of leadership in the form of the incorruptible Maximilien Robespierre! From here it is really down hill for the newly created France...downhill with a vengeance. I'll let Kate Beaton explain...

Is it wrong of me to reference this comic repeatedly? No that's damn right it's not, now go to her actual website! Dang it! www.harkavagrant.com/

1888, Jack the Ripper kills his third and fourth victims, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes. Proving once and for all that hooking in Whitechapel in 1888 is dangerous business. Now however in this modern age I can safely say that Whitechapel had a number of tasty Indian restaurants, PROGRESS!

1903, this is a fun one, the new Gresham School is opened by one Field Marshall Sir Evelyn Wood VC. The school is simply one of those traditional English boarding schools, the real important thing here is that it was Mr. Wood who made it happen. Evelyn was a hero of the British army, from the Crimea to India and back again. The most fascinating thing about the gentleman however was how good he was at surviving things, and his proclivity for serious injury and illness. He has been repeatedly shot, stabbed, fallen ill to malaria, regular fevers, been knocked off horses, clamped fingers repeatedly in lawn chairs (true story, in Africa nontheless), all manner of terrors. Yet somehow he survived, heck he even lived through Florence Nightingales hellhole, where he nearly died at her nurses hands. Plus he lived to 81, he was a veritable pillar of fortitude, so lets raise a toast to Field Marshall Sir Evelyn Wood recipient of the Victoria's Cross!

In 1938, at two in the morning, Britain, France and Germany all sit down and say it's okay for Hitler to have the Sudatenland. I mean seriously, look at that mustache, and those dang old symbols, the guy screams movie villain! You want to know what Indiana Jones was doing at that moment? He was in a race to get the Holy Grail away from these jerks. This means that in 1936 he already knew that they were scumbags and was busily stealing the Ark of the covenant out from under their noses. God, Britain and France were dumb.

1941, in the Ukraine the Babi Yar massacre takes place. Outside of Kiev a guerrilla war was being waged by the local Jewish population against the invading Nazi's. The natural next step for the SS was to kill 33,000+ individuals, because, well...like I said before Nazi's are the bad guys...like the worst guys...like seriously, it's hard to sympathize with anyone who sat around and pretended that things were okay in Germany right now.

1954, the first nuclear submarine is commissioned, the USS Nautilus. Admittedly this is not nearly as cool as I would have hoped.

1955, James Dean dies in a car accident, at 24...take that James Dean, I have successfully outlived you, me and Marlon Brando.

2004, in related news the first image of a giant squid is taken of the coast of Kimura, Japan. My response is to be extremely excited, then remorseful that I wasn't responsible for it.

2005, remember that whole drawing of Mohammad thing that got that Danish paper and cartoonist into trouble. That was today. you know what I could do...I could do my own picture of Mohammad, and let the chips fall where they will...see if maybe I could get Syria or someone really pissed off at me, but I'm about to move so I don't really feel like it.

RRRAAAGGGEEE!!!

2009-07-24T16:48:00.001-07:00

Yes my disciples, I feel I must unleash a maelstrom of rage for you all to bear witness to, work related rage as well. You see I work in a building with many different personalities all clashing, and one of these personalities is worse than all the others. We will call her, oh I don't know...Michael Bay. I am amazed that A) I am protecting her identity, and B) actively combining her with someone I hate almost as much, making my RAGE levels somewhere near Olympian.

Anyway, so Ms. Bay, I say Ms because I do not know if she's married or not, is effectively a secretary for a very important person in the company. A secretary in effect, with some ancillary powers, like looking after employee goods, as in "There are not enough forks in building D, could we please order more forks." Anyway, she has an extremely inflated sense of worth, and also absolutely hates security. When I say hates I mean it, in the most detached and pointless way possible. she hates us in that kind of weird way where you want to ruin and destroy a group of people...people who are trying to in all regards help you. People who if you get rid of them you need to replace...but with what? I mean seriously, of all the groups at a company to try to eliminate and belittle security is not the one, because if you get rid of us, who will grant you access to the buildings? Who will reserve your parking, and most importantly, who will call the police when a gun wielding maniac shows up demanding to see the Flaming Lips in concert. So anyway, Michael Bay hates us, and no amount of racism, misogynistic high school sex sub plots or explosions will satisfy her rage. She will find access to a building denied and will call us in a fit of rage, explaining that she has always had access, and that to not have access at this critical juncture means that the doors need to all be replaced by us, and that we should all also be deeply ashamed of ourselves for not foreseeing her misfortune.

Then there was today's rage inducing sub plot of her regular war with security, you see today I was notified I would need an extra set of keys, specifically to lock cabinets in the building E break room. Why you might ask? Because coffee and coffee cups were going missing, or rather, that they were having to order more, more frequently than they used to. So because she is some kind of 'hate harpy', a winged mythological beast whose utterances and dark tongue are all derived of that same said emotion...

She assumed that this change in a traditional dynamic could only be explained away by theft. Someone was stealing coffee and styrofoam coffee cups. Now instead of requesting any sort of investigation, or even consulting with the people who would know she instead decided that all the cabinets in those areas needed to be locked at seven and unlocked in the morning. So when this trend continues she will naturally blame security because they are in charge of the locked cabinets where stuff is going missing from. Here are a few things wrong with her thread of logic...

1) There is no cups or coffee leaving the building. I know this because the janitors in charge of that break room have not just been here for years, they also have never received complaints about theft. Oh, and just in case you think that perhaps they have turned to a life of crime using their good credit with the guards I will also note that the actual physical evidence shows that when they leave, they don't leave with bags of cups and coffee. Well then? Who is it?
2) Michael Bay works in another building, in a whole different place than me, with different procedures, admittedly I can walk to her building, because the two are directly connected, but she doesn't come by here, and she has no clue what goes on here. The reason the coffee cups have started to run out faster is because in the last few months it has become common practice for the employees to take a bag and put it next to their respective coolers. Rather than have to walk all the way back, this of course has led to an explosion in cup use as it is no longer a work breaking ordeal to walk across the large space to get a cup of water. As for the coffee, guess what fucko?! It turns out that times are a little tough so there has been a dramatic decline in 'Starbucks Runs', meaning we are using a lot more in house coffee, and also, the employees have been placing bags and bags of the stuff near their portable, localized machines. Of course this is all pretty obvious when you work in the building, and perhaps if you asked someone who worked in the building, but NOOOOO, you have to assume that it's theft, change the rules of the game, and also tarnish the reputation of the only decent janitors we have. Michael Bay you are the biggest and most reviled bitch on the planet, and I fucking hate you. You should probably ask us if it's possible that there is some other reason more coffee is being used, besides theft. Christ!

You get em Nick!

H-H-H-History for 22nd of July!!!

2009-07-22T19:08:00.001-07:00

So it has been a while since I illuminated you to the various personages and events from recorded history, however I set to rectify that, with this!

1099, Godfrey of Bouillon, leader of the first crusade is named Defender of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. He apparently preferred the term princep, as the original title was to be 'King of Jerusalem', a name he thought was a little too...what's the word, sacrilegious. Unfortunately for him he only held this position for around a year, before succumbing to either arrow, poisoned water, poisoned apple, or regular run of the mill death at 30.

1298. Battle of Falkirk, King Edward I uses longbowmen to stone kill the Scottish Rebellion of William Wallace, star of Braveheart. In effect Wallace showed up with a bunch of surly guys with pikes, and Edward showed up with organized guys, archers and cavalry. So roughly at the moment sharpened sticks fell from the heavens on the heads of the Scots it was all over.

1812, Arthur Wellesley, who will become in no time flat the Duke of Wellington, defeats Auguste Marmont, French General in Spain at the battle of Salamanca. Of course it's fair to add that Marmont and his second were struck by shrapnel from artillery bombardments within minutes of the fight beginning, so you know, there was that part.

1864. In the United States, or rather what was left of it, William Tecumseh Sherman was busily marching his way towards Atlanta, rather unopposed as the only army between him and the city was under a General Joseph Johnston. Johnston would always pack up and retreat the minute he saw Sherman coming, and was thus becoming unpopular with the higher ups, so it was requested that perhaps General John Bell Hood should go and thrash Sherman. Mind you that this is the end of the war, the Confederates aren't exactly a great fighting force, and Sherman has the whole of the Western Union army under his command at the time. Hood being dramatically outgunned, but under fairly direct orders tries to engage Sherman before he makes it to the Confederacy's rail hub in Atlanta. It fails spectacularly and the Rebels lose 8,000 men, men who are completely irreplaceable at this point. Sherman laughs all the way to Atlanta.

Here we see a depiction of Hood's 46th 'Fightin Paunches'.

1934, America's most wanted man, John Dillinger, is shot by FBI agents as he left the Biograph Theater. Leaving the building he noted FBI agents waiting across the street for him and made a break for it. Unfortunately the Fed's were faster and shot him in the back as he tried to escape. Rather amusingly after death Dillinger gained some notoriety for the photos of his corpse which appeared to showcase him with an enormous 'dead man' erection.

Hot damn! Look at that enormous wang! Is what folks would say, if I wrote for them. in reality however it was quickly revealed that it was merely his arm after rigor mortis had set in, and that his wang was unremarkable...ly HUGE! No, sorry, that's a lie, just a regular...HORSE PENIS! No but seriously folks, John Dillinger looked like a tool and had a tiny penis...COMPARED TO THE PLANET EARTH!!! I better keep going...

1943, The allies role into Palermo! Patton rather enjoyed this stretch of the war, as after he landed he was placed in direct competition with General Montgomery of the British Army. The plan was to land on the South coast of Sicily, then Montgomery would drive North and capture Messina, whilst Patton would take the 'long' way by going West and then up and around capturing Palermo on the way. it certainly worked out for Patton though as somehow rather magically he still managed to beat Montgomery into Messina despite what would have a lengthy delay.

2003, you might remember this folks, the 101st Airborne division kills Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay. Apparently the 101st was simply cruising through town when an informant tipped them off to the location of the brothers. Dropping by for biscuits 200 troops began milling around outside, and it was only after one of the soldiers hot wired Uday's Lamborghini did they actually start shooting. Four hours later the four dudes inside the house (one of them was Qusay's 14 year old son Mustapha) were dead and full of bullets. That goes to show you that in the future, war movies about this will be extremely boring. Imagine just 200 guys all shooting at a building for four hours while jets fly by shooting vulcan cannons at it too. It kills dramatic tension when the underdogs use overwhelming force.

As for celebrations for today, let's see... we have

RATCATCHERS DAY!!! A celebration of the Pied Piper of Hamlin. Or rather a remembrance to pay of companies you owe money to or they'll take your children.

Fuck You Insurance Company I Work For!!!

2009-07-16T15:20:00.000-07:00

Alright, here is a little gift from my work. We have a internal service and homepage here at Wellpoint, the insurance company I'm security for, and they have boring articles about how awesome they are every day. Come to think of it, it's like working for a slightly more advanced super capitalist Soviet Union. today however was special because they had on the top of the page a link to a transcript from an interview conducted on NPR, between Steve Innskeep and Dr. Sam Nussbaum. Inskeep hosts the Morning Edition news program on NPR, and is fun to listen to, Nussbaum is Chief Medical Officer for Wellpoint, which means he is a major PR guy for the company, because he is a doctor, and when people become doctors they have more credibility than say anyone who disagrees with them. This is the exact reason I became a doctor...of theology, so that in a pinch I could put Dr. in front of my name and win arguments. Anyway, I present here the transcript of the interview and my commentary on what Nussbaum has to say, and why i hate him. All in all since I copy pasted this from my companies website this might be a 'career' decision where I am fired and sued for distributing unfriendly things about the company via the internet. Mind you that we have a tendency to take peoples complaints and amp up security because anyone who disagrees with us is a bomb throwing anarchist, in the companies eyes. So perhaps, just perhaps I'll get lucky and this will be discovered by company lawyers and they'll make a big case of it, and I'll finally have more than four readers. I'll get so big in fact that I won't be able to afford web hosting and be forced to CLOSE DOWN.

So lets jump right into the interview shall we?

NPR MORNING EDITION TRANSCRIPT

STEVE INSKEEP, co-anchor: Next we’ll hear from a leading insurance company, one of many opposed to the so-called public option. That’s the plan for a government health insurance program to compete with private insurance. We sat down with Dr. Sam Nussbaum, chief medical officer of WellPoint. What’s wrong with the public plan?

(Let me begin by saying that the statement 'compete with private insurance' isn't exactly the way to describe what's being suggested, I would like to think that rather than having the goal of this be a competitive market, the goal is FUCKING HEALTH CARE, besides this Steve's a nice guy.)

Dr. SAM NUSSBAUM (Chief Medical Officer, WellPoint): Steve, we do not endorse a
government-run health plan. We absolutely want to see universal coverage for all Americans. We believe the private sector can provide innovative solutions to healthcare.

(In effect what insurance companies, like Wellpoint and others, want is for the government to create a plan or outline that requires we all have insurance, by law, kind of like car insurance. This is a preferred environment because it means that all Americans will be paying one of the companies something, otherwise they'll be committing some kind of 'health crime'. So, do you see an interesting angle on his argument, "Yes I want healthcare for everyone, wherein no one has a choice but to pay me". Insurance companies have been becoming progressively less and less competitive in the past years via major mergers. Now there are probably only three actual companies operating in the U.S.. For example Wellpoint is actually 'Wellpoint Anthem Blue Cross' those being three different companies in order of ownership. So under a system where everyone has to get a plan under one of the companies you can see a situation arise where the few remaining victors of the consumer insurance wars can artificially control the market for their services because when you have only two other competitors and everyone’s comin' out about equal there's a big enough pie for you all to FUCK.)

INSKEEP: Dr. Nussbaum influences the coverage received by WellPoint’s 35 million customers.
It’s the country’s largest health benefits firm. He argues that the private sector is more efficient
than the government.

Dr. NUSSBAUM: Let me give one specific example, Steve, that I think will be informative. When we look at advanced imaging, and this is MRI, CAT scans, PET scans, we know that as much as
30 percent of those procedures are not necessary and we’ve been able, over the last several
years, to have growth in imaging procedures of between zero and 5 percent. The government
under CMS has seen imaging grow 15 to 20 percent during the same time interval. That’s an
example--

(Yes let's look at your example you pig fucker, he says that around 30% of MRI, CT and PET scans have been determined to be unnecessary. Beyond just fudging number here you have in the same time frame he's describing insurance companies actually eliminating millions of customers who used their insurance too much. Likewise it's in the best interest of a private company to avoid using expensive procedures and to find reasoning, any will do, to not use it. Cases of course arise where Doctors will explain that a patient needs a life saving liver transplant only to have the company say that "No, we're sorry but that seems like a dodgy maneuver, we'd prefer they simply die so we don't have to pay." Now then when looking at this efficiency rating you'll note that also the 'government programs' are less efficient because they use it more, which is hard to explain away unless you consider that the government programs are dealing with a narrower slice of people, and ones that generally require scans more often than the 'healthier' private insurance users. Remember, if you are unlikely to fall ill you are the best candidate for a private insurance companies largesse. So the whole measurement system is cock-eyed because it depends on both entities having identical demographics, which they don't. COCK SUCKERS.)

INSKEEP: You’re talking about Medicare payments. The Medicare program.

Dr. NUSSBAUM: Yes, the Medicare program. We’re talking about the use of imaging services
and the cost of imaging services. So, I would argue that where the private sector has been far
more effective than government programs is in limiting clinical services to those that are best
meeting the needs of patients. Important as Medicare is for coverage for Americans, it has not
been effective in controlling costs, in integrating care, and bringing the advances in medical
treatment to all Americans.

(Advances in medical care? You are equating the advancement of medical care with the limiting of services to narrow group inside your company. Also, I ask that you pay attention to how he keeps referencing the high 'cost' the government program creates, or it's poor control of costs, because that will come up later.)

INSKEEP: There are people who would argue with you about the effectiveness of Medicare or
the efficiency of Medicare. I’ll take the point that you have a different perspective on that, but I
would just ask if you’re not undermining your own argument. If the government is lousy at
providing efficient healthcare, why is a public health plan a threat to you? You’ll just be more
efficient than they are and make money.

(Hmm, Innskeep, that's a good start, but I'd prefer you bait him then sink him, instead of just teasing him with a little "I know some stuff you don't think I know.")

Dr. NUSSBAUM: I believe we will be far more efficient than a government program. I think that
when you look today--

INSKEEP: Then why worry about it? Why not just let them establish it and you won’t lose any
customers to them?

Dr. NUSSBAUM: Here’s the issue, Steve, is that we’re talking about competition not on a level
playing field. The government can negotiate very different for healthcare costs. They can
basically set unit cost reimbursement. They, today, set unit cost reimbursement approximately 20 percent below that paid by the private sector.

(OH YOU DONE FUCKED UP, YOU DONE FUCKED UP! Remember the higher costs of running that government program earlier, how much money was being spent doing CT scans and x-rays on sick patients, it turns out the government pays a sum total less than what private companies have to pay, which forces the private companies to COMPETE against the government program. So in essence the reason the insurance companies prices are so high is because they want to make a profit, and thus want to cut the amount of use they have, which forces clinics and doctors to raise their prices to stay in business since insurance companies don't want to pay out in the first place. whereas under a government program a clinic or hospital is guaranteed to have a check and can't artificially raise prices without engendering the ire of a legislative body that can refuse to keep paying them. Mind you that the operating cost of a public system is roughly 3% of the operating cost of a private company, so the insurance companies are extremely bloated in how much they charge and make.)

INSKEEP: Let me just translate that. You’re saying that if a hospital provides a service, it’s
covered by insurance. Medicare, for example, would pay 20 percent less than WellPoint would
pay for a patient with the same service.

Dr. NUSSBAUM: Exactly. On average, the private sector subsidizes government programs by
approximately 20 percent.

INSKEEP: Oh, when you’re saying subsidizing, you’re arguing that that hospital makes up the
shortfall from Medicare by charging you a little bit more?

Dr. NUSSBAUM: Absolutely. It’s the hidden tax, the hidden cost shift.

( Some kind of hidden tax on a insurance company? Those guys hate spending money, why are we trying to take their precious dollars, because if we just stopped and got rid of all the cheaper government plans then the insurance companies would thank us and shower us with FREE health care, just like Goldman Sachs made a 3.1 billion dollar profit this quarter and as a thank you for the bailout they plan on giving us gold plated hoverboards that they'd been saving. I'm sorry but we don't exist in a thwarted Randian paradise where unfettered capitalism means that the capitalists will succeed in uniting and equally benefiting everyone, no in a system like that the executive and the board of directors buy twenty yachts while you are forced to live on mac and cheese for the rest of your bloated sack of shit life because you can't afford to climb the ladder with the rest of them, them being the people already born at the top. We can't all be rock stars or famous actors, the same can be said of executives or businessmen, we can't all be on wall street making billions, so telling me that our work ethic sucks and that if we'd all just work a little harder we'd all have private jets, or at the very least three houses. I'm sorry there's no more room in the tree house, the forst closed, now please go and die because we don't need you anymore, we already have your money. Insurance companies are always trying to paint themselves as a business one minute and a service the next, and that's what's fucking this up, they want sympathy, but don't want us to notice that they're just as bad as the bankers and commodities traders.)

INSKEEP: Given that lots of lawmakers are insisting on a public plan of some kind, but there’s
still some flexibility as to what kind of plan would be, is there any form of a public plan or a
government plan that you think WellPoint can accept, can live with?

Dr. NUSSBAUM: We’ve talked about the fact that a government plan is not necessary to
achieve the insurance market reform, the delivery system reform that is so necessary for
Americans. We do not believe there is any need for a government plan.

(Insurance market reform? You assholes have been saying that every damn time we want to have health care coverage for Americans, you say it so that we can pretend you are actually intent on fixing things, the only problem is that YOU ARE THE PROBLEM you fetid hippo shit! You don't want any competition because you're making shit tons of money, the sad reality is that it's hard to argue that as a capitalist society we need to protect you because every dollar you make is related to a human life. This isn't about taking money from bankers or Oil Tycoons, who deal in limited assets or other fungible bullshit, your trade is the health and safety of human beings, and when you cut a couple million peoples plans, or adjust their rates your deciding whether a disease or injury will kill them or not. Insurance companies have been switching up their system, raising deductibles, and putting the cost of procedures increasingly onto their own customers, there was a time where for every dollar you paid in insurance the company matched that dollar and ten cents, at this point insurance companies have shifted that, for every dollar you spend they pay 70 cents, and they would like that to get lower. Doesn't that seem kind of crooked, that maybe this company that's supposed to be providing you with a service is actually a way for you to provide them with a major financial windfall?)

INSKEEP: But I’m asking given the political realities of the situation, if somebody says to you,
‘OK, look, we know you don’t like it but tell us what you can live with,’ is there anything that you
can live with in this department?

Dr. NUSSBAUM: I think we have to look at the plans that exist today that are viewed as being
government plans. The federal employees health benefit program, that’s a plan that is managed,
that is run, that has all of the advantages of a private health insurance plan and we at WellPoint
are proud to provide benefits for 1.3 million federal employees under that program.

(Yeah, a lot like the military we decided it's pretty easy to sub contract out our insurance to Wellpoint, I don't see any conflict in interest with politicians and this arising.)

INSKEEP: It sounds like you’re basically saying, ‘Look, we just don’t want a government-run
health plan. We’re just not going to sign onto that.’

Dr. NUSSBAUM: That’s correct. However, I think the American people need to understand that
even the government health plan that has been most highly regarded, the government health plan that our senators and congressmen and president has access to is actually a plan run by the
private sector.

(Yes, because we don't have an actual government plan, because you wont let that exist. you know how these greedy pencil dicks keep saying "You don't want a bureaucrat coming between you and your doctor." Well guess what that’s what we have now. You see under a public system you go to whoever the fuck you want, you select your place of care, and go there, as it stands now you have to ask permission from your insurance company where you get to go, you have a CEO coming between you and your doctor of choice, that's the reality of the situation not the horseshit their trying to shovel off as facts. No seriously think about that, how is a bureaucrat coming between you and a doctor? Under a public system you go where you want for care and get the care you need, at no point do you have to ask permission to see someone or have an injury looked at, there is no "You can't se Dr. Johnson because he isn't covered under your plan." because there is no FUCKING PLANS, THEY ARE LITERALLY TRYING TO DESCRIBE THE PUBLIC OPTION IN THE SAME MANNER YOU WOULD DESCRIBE THEM!!!)

INSKEEP: Dr. Nussbaum, one other question, our correspondent Mara Liason had a report last
week that focused on the language politicians use, for example, when President Obama talks
about someone who is working with him, he’ll describe that person as a stakeholder, whereas if
they’re working against the White House’s agenda, they’re a special interest. I’m wondering if
right now you think you’re a stakeholder or a special interest.

Dr. NUSSBAUM: That’s a terrific question, Steve. I’d like to believe we are a stakeholder, that
we are collaborating strongly to produce and share our knowledge to produce health reform that
is sustainable, that produces high quality healthcare that makes the healthcare experience for all Americans as terrific as the clinical science and innovation that we have in America.

(You are contributing precisely twenty dicks in our collective American asshole)

INSKEEP: Sam Nussbaum is chief medical officer for WellPoint. Thanks very much for your
time.

Dr. NUSSBAUM: Thank you, Steve.

(FUCK OFF SAM YOU MOON EYED JACK RABBIT DIDDLER!)

If you're interested in how Insurance companies like to screw you in many other ways here's this awesome transcript from Billy Moyer, wherein a PR guy from CIGNA explains why insurance companies love you and hate the government, and by love 'you' I mean love your money.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/transcript2.html

Now I'm going to try and chill out and not have a huge aneurysm thinking about how in spite of the suprvillainesque evil insurance companies represent we aren't going to do anything about them because everyone is bought and sold for millions of dollar every day, except for FUCKING ME!

Last Person on Earth Meme...

2009-07-06T18:27:00.000-07:00

I shall use it. Apparently this is making its circuit around the world as a meme, and I figure that so long as it's relatively fresh and interesting I'll add my own two cents. The question goes as such...

"You wake up tomorrow and every person on the planet has vanished. What do you do?"

The replies are:
Day One
Week One
Month One
Year One

Day One: Since tomorrows Tuesday I will have work, and I'll also have been sleeping in my apartment. The first hour or two will be odd, since I'll have gotten up and gone to my families, undoubtedly not noticing the lack of people. In my house I'll assume that my parents had gone off somewhere and will think nothing of it. Depending on my choice of actions and how our power grid works I'll either discover that there is no one around when I start scanning news stations and see that there is no one there, or perhaps if the power grid or Internet is down I'll find out when everything is off and I go outside. Regardless if the time gets close to when I need to go to work I'd attempt calling or messaging my associate Abe. I will feed my cat, as she will be the only one around.

There would be no answer, there would be no one to speak to. I would quickly discover that no one is picking up, and within an hour that there is no traffic on the street outside. I would become paranoid and fearful of some unforeseen disaster, attempting to analyze my previous night, hopefully pinpointing some event or action I took that would spare me yet seemingly eliminated everyone else. I would then arm myself and take a walk around the neighborhood, going to the local government center and marveling at the lack of security, but also fretfully acknowledging that there is no sign of anything, no uniforms and rumpled clothes laying where their owners were last standing, there is merely a void. Behind all of this will be a white knuckled terror, that I will be unable to shake, why did everyone disappear? Langoliers? A new weapon outside my ability to understand? Am I in a coma and this is my creation, a Silent Hill for me to occupy. I will live in fear of the sound of sirens and the sight of industrial rust, I will quake when night falls, waiting for the sound of clattering metal, clutching a knife or metal rod to myself in my dark house believing that I will self manifest Pyramid Head to annihilate me for my own tortured crimes against myself. However this will not be the case, because there is merely no answer, everyone is gone, I am alone, and there is no boogieman out to get me, unless you count the ones I can create for all the shadows and unseen corners of a room.

Week One: Depression will set in almost immediately, probably a soul crushing malaise will capture me during the first day once I realize everyone I care about is possibly dead or that I am and will never see them again. Knowing me however I will think of The Mist and determine that the real enemy is my own despair, that if I quit then it really will be over and I wont see anyone again. I will assume this is some form of insane test, and that I must survive to be reunited with humanity. Armed, dining on simple cold things, those things which are good out of a package and are still fresh from grocery stores I will take my haversack, cloaks and hats and set out for my friends Matt and Owens houses respectively. I will walk to Matt's in under an hour and break inside, acknowledging that property rights ceased to exist when everyone vanished, I will take his prized katana, sharp as my wit and then make for Owens house. At each place I will look for signs of life, some sign that possibly some relative or friend of mine survived as well, that perhaps I am somehow the center of some bizarre cosmic right of passage. At Owens I will break into his car and steal a book of survival techniques from the turn of the 20th century. I will get a leash for my cat, and we will begin walking and riding in cars to a new destination. I will worry endlessly over my cat and whether she'll get loose, and if so what she will do for food and shelter. The rest of the week will be spent walking and hiding at night, moving North towards Amanda and Derek's house. If within the week I arrive at Santa Barbara and have seen little more than birds and bobcats I will be forced to re-evaluate what is happening. Considering that once I reach my next friends house I will be able to undoubtedly determine that there is no one there, and that there is little chance that anyone is anywhere. I will eat little, drink whenever I can and sleep lightly, dreaming of friends and waking in a sickened depression.

Punishment, some unseen force, though not a God must be punishing either humanity or me, either I am a clerical error in a cosmic number crunch or the victim of some scheme or carefully concocted revenge by an entity I never knew existed. I will steal a copy of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, wishing I were Arthur Dent, hoping that Ford Prefect will show up and show me that Earth was merely an accident and that there are other 'people' alive elsewhere in the galaxy. I will look up and hope that this isn't universal. I will grab a towel, preferably green and stuff it in my haversack.

Month One: I will be thin and weak, I will worry too much, and spend too much time moving North. I will decide within the first two weeks to finish my plan, I am intent on moving to Portland, land of delicious salmon and majestic trees. I will drive when I can, stealing cars when I find them, I will find one that suits me and steal it decorate it, I will live in my own hollow version of the Road Warrior. Everyday will be a struggle and I'll go days without talking, in the evenings as I'm falling asleep I'll worry that I will lose language in time, through simple lack of use. Pressing on there will be many hard sights, familiar places and memories of friends now lost to the 'event'. I will instinctively hold onto the sword, convinced that in a cinematic sense the moment I release it I will find myself beset by monsters or wild men. I will not have smiled for weeks. On the way I will pick up apple seeds and plant them, becoming a modern Johnny Appleseed, I'll ponder if the missing can see me, if they're dead and are all watching me, wanting to see what I do. Perhaps they know what happened, perhaps they know there's a way to save them, bring them back. I'll spend long hours wondering if my intuition is leading me somewhere, if a subconscious narrative is forming, and if I'll be challenged to save them, everyone on the Earth. I'll fret over it, I'll battle with Hope, wishing it to go away so I could simply accept the grim reality of things and go on living for the pure bullheadedness of it. I will hope however that there is a chance to save everyone, even if I have to switch over and go into the nothingness they went into to bring them back. I will wish that I could simply be offered clear and simple a choice between not existing and everyone being back or remaining in this world with everyone missing. I will make it to Portland, and there will be no one around, I'll find Oriana and Stacie's house, and if I have used cars to get there I may be able to save their cats and add mine to the mix. I will stop wandering for a while, I will sit and stew. Gardens will spring up and I'll learn how to make fire and sow seeds, how to raise plants and fish.

Year One: I will either be alive, living off the land, devastated at the state of things, going mad with every passing day, clinging to pictures of friends so I don't forget their faces, or I'll be dead. I'll probably be an alcoholic, or merely someone who has nothing better to do than drink because otherwise he must sit and contemplate the miserable state of his life. I will be unhinged, fencing with shadows, shouting soliloquies from rooftops and tending the cats. Every morning I'll wait for the sound of a door opening and everyone coming home and I'll scratch my beard and long hair wondering what became of me. Of course at some time earlier I may have died, via sickness or accident, so many things coil around us that when left completely on our own could finish us off. I will go on living, hoping that I die peacefully, but preferably before I have to remove my own teeth Castaway style, or set my own bones if I break them.

I will be in a waking nightmare, but the cats will be okay and I'll take solace in that. I will patiently await everyone's return, or death, whichever finds me on the couch first.
How awful this was, how completely depressing. Please everyone, go and watch something humorous starring Steve Martin or someone of his ilk, and don't assume that this extremely nihilistic narrative is indicative of my own moods. I'm usually rather chipper.

Terror on a Holiday

2009-07-03T16:40:00.000-07:00

Since I have to work today I shall make you work as well loyal readers. I shall keep a little diary of my hours here, like a guide to my afternoon and how I spend it during a holiday. You see everyone is gone today and except for a few dedicated souls in another building I am the only soul here. My duty is to inspect and keep secure every one of the five unoccupied buildings, walking their perimeters and inspecting their various closets and chambers. Naturally this can get both maddeningly boring and slightly unnerving as there has been a history of 'unusual' events here. But why waste your time with explanations of what is plainly obvious, I am alone at a large complex of buildings for eight hours, and I am here to tell you what happens in each of those as I wait for the clock to wind down.

15:00 hours, 3:00 PM: I entered the building with a book, which is strictly prohibited, you can't be seen inspecting or reading a book otherwise the illusion of professionalism will be wiped away. This however doesn't extend to using the Internet, as it's use is accepted and ignored, seemingly for no other reason than you can't prop the computer screen on your lap and lean back to view it. I brought the book along because I have developed a strategy to mete out my activities to fill the four hours at the end of my eight hour day. the first four hours of work is spent dealing with events around the office, after seven however the buildings are empty, thus the Internet is my only friend. To keep from exhausting my Internet however I opted to bring a book along to fill the time up more evenly.

My first order of business was to relieve the officer that was here during the day, and receive any additional instructions from him. There were none, save a notice that a laptop had been left out, a notice I was well aware of because I had reported it last night, and since this was a holiday there was no way the fellow had dropped by to fix his unknown mistake. With a few pleasantries I hurried my coworker out and seated myself behind the counter in the front office. Cracking my knuckles and raising my office chair to its maximum height I tapped away at the keyboard. Once i had checked my in office email for any events or important memos i was free to indulge in studying up on a topic or two before getting down to brass tacks. My area of study for roughly fifteen minutes was Haida art, the Haida being a tribe from the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately for me, either the Internet had no information about their art, or the strict search parameters set by the company were blocking all relevant searches. This has proven to be troublesome in the past as well, often when searching for information about painters or historic events I will find that everything is blocked or unreachable, generally accidentally. "The battle of Waterloo wasn't a video game, this isn't a video game website, it's a damned historical website you idiot box!" I would say. The attempt made by the company being one of saying "please don't look at video games or pornography while at work." Which is perfectly acceptable if the sites they blocked were actually related to either one, but more often than not they are accidentally blacklisted, whilst sites that really do need to be aren't. A search for Haida art yielded no results for actual Haida art, the few that were listed were then blocked by the companies own parser, and the one that wasn't turned out to be a woman's portfolio of self shot nudes, of which none of them had anything to do with the Haida.

Exacerbated I got up and went inside the building, I had to make sure the laptop was still sitting, untethered to its dock, sitting where it was left yesterday, sitting where no one would think to go for it, on an employees desk. We need to maintain a constant surveillance of such equipment in case corporate saboteurs sneak onto the premises and start making off with company secrets. My very presence here is a symptom of massive corporate paranoia.

I walked through the darkened aisles, between the cubicles of building E. You are probably wondering why it's so dark at three in the afternoon. Well, the short answer is that it's cheaper to keep the lights off when no one but me is here, this also goes for air conditioning and food. So proceeding up a darkened aisle, eyeing the distant double doors that lead to the lit hallway I catch a sound from behind me. I stop, look over my shoulder and casually lean over the sides of the cubicles closest to me, listening for any other signs of activity. Odd sounds tend to crop up at odd times here, and it's best for the guard on duty to ignore them, unless they want the painful surprise that there is never an answer as to what was making the sounds they heard. Of course I double my speed for the door, eager to leave the building, building E being one of 'haunted' buildings, wherein phantom typing can be heard from the far wing of the office, well away from the route I would take. Pushing open the door I turned to regard the vending machines, I was thirsty for something akin to a sierra mist or sprite and had a dollar in my pocket, saved from a pair of pants I was discarding the night before. I peeked to my right and gave a little bob of the head to see if anything was happening inside the atrium. Between buildings C and E is a strange tropical atrium, it's plexiglass windows old and scratched into a filmy grayish haze, the temperature perpetually ten degrees warmer than anywhere else in the building. At night golden lights would turn on at about knee level and illuminate the ferns and tropical leaves. This area too was haunted, the atrium was said to be the home of a very angry man, whispering can be heard inside it at night, and at times the feeling of being watched and followed is overpowering.

Turning from the atrium i made good time towards building D, where the laptop resides. i push my hands into my pockets, feeling the money in my left hand, the vending machine didn't offer any acceptable substitutions. i glance to my left, there is a pair of double doors that lead down a long hallway, flanked on both sides by more large doors. This hallway is usually pitch black, the doors often left open, leading into even more shadowy rooms. i rarely use this hallway, it always feels like there's something there waiting for me, that it creeps along behind me till I'm about to exit and because I quickly change my speed it is thrown off and returns to whatever corner it crawled out of. This time however there is something extremely unsettling about the hallway, the lights are on, bright white lights running the length of the corridor, banishing the shadows, even the rooms, with their yawning doors are lit up. I keep walking, it's obviously a trick, there is no reason for the lights to be on, there is no one there, ahead of me the lights are off, somewhere just ahead of where I'm going. high on the wall there i can see a mirror reflecting the hallway around the corner, the shadows are dark, but in the middle of the concave surface is more white lights, the hallway leaving the building is still illuminated. Before I'm forced to go into the shadows I turn to my left at another double door, this one leading into building D. I glance one more time down the hallway, leading into the shadows, and now it seems just a little bit further away than i remember, I click my card and push open the door.

I am pinned in place. The office lights are on directly around me, but past that the darkness extends to the far wall, where low lighting shows the exit rows more clearly. I am frozen because on the far side of the building, resting on a cubicle frame is something looking at me. At five foot nine I am too short to look over a cubicle wall without standing on my tip toes. Whatever stares at me rests an arm languidly over the partition between two, leaning forward, a large head tilts a little to the side, it is easily seven feet tall. I collect myself, my job is to ensure that there are neither intruders nor wendigos prowling my halls, so i begin walking with anxious fear towards the shape. I can remember the other times I went into building D when no one was working, the shuffling running sounds, moving up and won the aisles parallel to me, the sound of someone hurrying to head me off at the intersections, then when the moment of attack came silence. the lights detected my movement and kicked on, the figure was cast out in an instant, now not much more than an odd shaped balloon and streamers piled about a cubicle wall. This however was still unsettling, i hurried towards the opposite door from where I came in, the lights turning off again abruptly, everywhere I looked I could see balloons, and all of them seemed to be looking at me. I could almost feel it, when my back finally turned to them they would begin moving slowly forward, one aisle at a time, when I turn they seemed maybe a little closer, one would bob in an non existent current of air. I hurried down a short flight of stairs grabbed the handle and glanced over my shoulder to pin any that might be hurrying faster than the more patient terrors that sleep under the raised floorboards of the building.

Free, in the hallway closest to the bathroom, by the cafeteria I was free. No odd feelings, no unusual sounds, merely a hallway. I grabbed a sprite from the coke machine and made good time back to building E, entering from the opposing door, far from the one i had exited from earlier. This side of the office was darkest, and the hardest to get the motion sensors to trip on. I moved quickly surveying the surroundings watching for odd shapes or movement, I was on the home stretch and that's always when the floor falls out from underneath you. i looked to my left down an aisle of cubicles, all of it reassuringly black, nothing out of place, merely dark, at which point a shaft of light spilled out of a cubicle. It danced against the wall closest to it and i made sure to keep moving, there was no reason to go looking for trouble now. As I passed the break area I heard the sound of a door open and close and a muffled shout. I stopped and whipped around looking behind me for the culprit, an employee working on the holiday perhaps wanting to know if they could get back in after hours. No, it was no one, the door was closed, no one was there, just the absence of light. I rushed as quickly as I could back to the front desk, bursting through the door into the humid front office I sat down and began writing.

It was somewhere after the first paragraph that I heard the THUD beside me. In the office beside me, every so often you'll hear odd sounds, sometimes they even come into my area, except they're overhead, in the ceiling. Scrapping, wheezing thumps, shouts and bangs, much bigger than the ones a rat would make. That was the sound i heard when i started typing the second paragraph, a bang against the wall, and a muffled scream, like a woman yelping. I stopped typing and rushed into the building, i needed to make sure that everything was secure, that there was someone in the office. But when I got there, to the massive glass windows, looking into the pitch black meeting room all I could see was shadows and my reflection off the glass. I watched both, looking behind me int he reflection then changing my eyes focus to look into the abyssal room. Nothing, there was nothing there that could have made the sound, even now I hear it, the thump, no more screams or yelps, merely a thump, moving further from me, sometimes frighteningly close. I backed away from the glass, I backed away from the shadows, my spine against a filing cabinet, I moved with cautious steps back towards my lobbies door. When i needed to remove my back from the cabinet I turned, keeping as much of me away from the office as I could, keeping my eyes on the room on the other side of the wall from me. I crept back to the door and eased it open while looking out into the growing gloom of the office building. I sit typing now, the bangs and thuds are still there, squealing sounds come from outside and by the time I reach the door to see what could be causing them there is nothing. I remember having the doors locked, shut on a moonless quiet night, when abruptly they both pulled on their hinges, straining against their locks, shaking. Something was trying to open them violently and nothing was there. I watched as they heaved away to the night air and relaxed, after that the locks worked funny, they wouldn't bolt right, and the doors had to be replaced. So I sit here typing, waiting for the sun to set, waiting for whatever lives here, under the building, in the shadows and the vents, to come out and try to catch me again.

I'm Running, Police On My Back...

2009-07-02T15:27:00.000-07:00

I keep running Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday! What have I done? What have I done?

To quote The Clash. Yes, I am on the run. From who, you might ask? Why none other than the management of my apartment complex. You see, for those of you who follow this blog you may have noticed I am intent on moving out of California as quickly as possible, fleeing if you will like a coward from the army, AWOL from my personal cultural army. I am through with this place, this town, I need room to breath, a chance for a better life in a town that could give a damn about me, instead of one that asks me to keep quiet.

Naturally there have been some...obstacles. Money is one, my visit cost me financially and has thus slowed my ability to collect enough cash to escape. Then my car went kablooie, meaning I have to move on foot, and the rules changed a little at work. The most important problem though is that due to repair work on my car (which shall now be scrapped) and a tow truck for it, plus a suit for a wedding, 300 dollars in spurious fees by my bank, and a few other miscellaneous expenses I am completely broke and probably slightly overdraft. This means no rent for July, which incidentally would be my last month anyway. So after depositing my thirty day notice I have decided to work as feverishly as I can to empty my apartment and hide someplace so my landlords can't come begging for more of my money. To be honest I am completely mortified of them, they have been pushy, sneaky, and nosy. They act like parents, asking me why my girlfriend left, what my plans are, where they can find me...the list goes on and on. On top of that they can be extremely threatening, in the way that says "Give us money or we'll make bad things happen to you!" and my only response is "Stop yelling, I don't have any money for you, nor will I be getting any." They act like I have a secret pot of gold hidden away from them, and I need to collect from it or they'll feed me to the bears.

It's that situation in movies that makes me exceptionally uncomfortable, where a character knows nothing of what's going on, or doesn't have what the antagonist is looking for and gets threatened or tortured to cough up aforementioned item. They're all like "I don't know, i have no clue what a positron collider is!" and the villain is like "Fuck you pal, I'll just jam some bamboo under your nails till you suddenly know, which will be NEVER!"
Anyway, because I am completely terrified of them, and don't want them threatening me when I explain that I don't have the money, and more importantly that I don't want to give them any money, because they scare me, and I don't give people that scare me money, I have started hiding. Yes I am hiding in terror, convinced that some clawed management type will swoop down and demand money from me, and if I don't have it right now they'll keep hunting me till I give them more money, or promise them money in the future. I hate giving all of these bullies money, when from the get go they kept trying to get me to leave, or scared away my potential room mates, and all the other rude little things they threw at me. I'm terrified and pissed off and I'm not going allow myself to be placed in a situation where they get some money.

So this morning I rose, nervous that they were on my doorstep watching for me, and as a result of this I crept silently along the floor till I got to the peephole. Flattening a hand against the door I leaned in, toes stretched in the hopes of keeping extra quiet. My eye moved into position over the peephole and flicked left then right, confirming that unless they were positioned right outside my line of sight they weren't there. I stealthily back to my room to dress, grabbing my work clothes in the process, my mind plotting a course, one that was unlikely to draw attention, and also would conceal me from my crafty opponents. Returning to the front door I took the bolt in my hand and gave it a quick turn then lifted on the handle to keep the door from catching and sending a reverberating sound through the next door and down stairs apartments, because who knows, perhaps they were waiting in the downstairs apartment, eager to swallow my head, while simultaneously picking through my wallet. With the door open and no one outside I was well positioned to make a break for one of two alleys that lead to my families house on the far opposite side of the complex. With swift feet I peddled down the stairs, knowing that if a maintenance cart came by I would be helplessly trapped. Fortunately no cart came and I carried on down an adjoining alley, till I reached an intersecting driveway. Another wide open space, the street curled up and away on both sides, providing a little coverage, but if a cart came it would be too late by the time I heard it. Gathering my wits I ran as quickly as I could to the opposite alley and proceeded cautiously forward. Alley by alley, i made my way to my families, each time I came to an opening I would drop and peek my head around a corner, then proceed on cautiously. In time I was safely inside my families, a space with plenty of closets and drawers I could scurry into if the landlords showed up breathing fire and looking for me.

Eventually though I would have to leave the safety of this place, go out into their territory, open myself up to capture again. I could sense them, they were waiting for me out there, dead eyes fixed on the house wondering where the phantom tenant who owed them money was, somewhere, miles away on a breeze you could almost hear the words "just take the deposit and leave me alone." As the time grew close I trusted my ride to simply pull up and contact me, allowing me the minimum of time to get there and get away. However once 2:30 rolled around I worried and felt compelled to sneak out the back door and slink my way up to the front driveway looking for him. I crept up the back way, away from the windows of the front office, I could picture all future paycheck flying away, Ventura laughing maniacally in the background, punching me in the ribs while Santa Barbara and LA tied me to a chair. I moved along the side on an apartment and made my way to a sidewalk, then plopping myself down I waited, watching anxiously for my confederate to come and get me out of there. As I watched the school bus arrived, dropped off it's cargo of children, parents waiting at the ready, then it eased forward and began to leave. At roughly this same moment one of the landlords came charging out of the office, on a trajectory angled towards a tenant who had just gotten out their car.

"Shit!" The word leaped up and out of my mouth, I vomited expletives as i tumbled backward and down a grassy hill away from where I saw the landlady. I was in a dither, I pressed myself against the closest apartment wall and inched towards the alley next to the parking garage. I leaned slowly forward and watched to see if the first landlady was headed back for the office or was pursuing the shadow she caught of the corner of her eye, the shadow that seemed to owe her money. Nothing, no one was there, I knew though she was out there and my heart crept into my throat as I pictured her walking along the sidewalk at the front of the building, while I stared out the back, could see her now, turning the corner and spying me, at which point I would melt away and promise her months of paychecks, months of indentured servitude anything to keep her from using a stern voice and threatening me with hard time or worse, disappointment. Abruptly, out of nowhere, the second landlady appeared lumbering towards where the first one had been.

"Fuck!" I expelled another expletive as I leaped from the alley to the wall overlooking the dumpster, I teetered a bit then fell forward into the enclosure between wall and garbage receptacle. Now I pictured them both hunting me, eyes furtively searching every inch of ground, until I was discovered. Fortunately, although they knew quite a bit about me they did not know that I was a champion at hide and seek, untraceable Trebaol as it were. I crawled towards the dumpster, pulling out my phone 'where the fuck is Abe?' I pondered, he was late and as such I was now in danger. I plinked away at the tiny keypad, beseeching him to hurry, to skip his regular stopping spot and head for the back gate of my families house, just past the dumpster I was hidden beside. I glanced up at the alley just over me, did I try to press myself against the wall just below it and hope that in a quick search they wouldn't look at their own feet, or did I simply take my chances and play an ace only I could play by climbing in the empty dumpster, it would be through underestimating my fear and zeal for hiding that they would lose me. Thinking twice about both plans I moved back towards the alley and wall and peeked around the corner. the whole office staff was now arranged in a neat circle at the end of the alley, chit chatting. I hadn't been noticed, I had escaped at least temporarily!

I turned and ran as quickly as I could towards the back gate of my families house, carefully opening the door and ducking behind the grill. Abe still hadn't arrived, he texted me back and seemed perplexed as to where he needed to be.
"In the back, behind the house, go to the back alley!" I shouted in a restrained murmur, watching through the cracks of the fence. finally his Volkswagen GTI slid into view, stopped at the end of the driveway. 'Perfect' I threw open the gate and ran headlong towards the car, praying no one was coming, that the maintenance truck wasn't on its way at that moment, ready to identify me, ready to spill the beans as to where I had crept off to, ready to wreck months of intended hiding. I grabbed the handle and glanced won the driveway, there, at the far end, shining in a sickening white was the maintenance pickup truck. I was in full uniform, a black and white target, pinned against a wall. I slammed the door and Abe began to pull forward.

"Not that way!!! Turn around, right, right, right!" I shouted, crouching in the seat, I knew I had been seen, at least I could assume I had been seen. My only hope was that the day workers hadn't bothered to notice my regular uniform i wore in the late afternoon. I prayed that I was imply an anomalous sight, some strange event like deja vu or a previously unseen bird swooping by. "For the love of Pete get me outta this place!" I shouted again. Glancing behind me I could see the truck was gone, had it been there at all? Was I cracking up under the pressure of hiding all the time? The GTI rolled onto the street and sped away for my work, where no one could find me for eight hours.

Tonight when I return home I will remain awake. I will stalk the alleys and garages of the complex with impunity, everyone will be asleep and I will be free to move about unmolested. I will use this freedom to open my apartment and empty out it's contents, in time hopefully leaving it bare, leaving an abandoned husk for them when they finally beat down the door with dollar signs in their eyes. I will move with speed, and regret no loss, so long as I am not caught. I have lost quite a bit in the past few years, but on this I will win! I will laugh all the way to Portland while the slavering crowds in Ventura smash coconuts over their heads, demanding to know who let me slip out of their grasp! Ventura will throw everything at me, the town is trying to kill me and will succeed if I'm not craftier than it is. I'm certain you must all think I'm crazy to think that a city would actively try to eliminate a favorite son in such a manner, but I assure you, beyond a shadow of a doubt if it's not the city that's trying to kill me it's the whole freakin' planet. The moment I find a nice place to live...WHAM! Car trouble, bank trouble, house trouble, job trouble, every possible iteration of trouble all comes sliding down the chute, the world becomes a fetid fish cannery of misery, all in the hopes of crushing the spirit of a single person so they won't try hard enough to break free of the madness surrounding them in a state called California. I think for Southern Californians the biggest trick we played on ourselves is believing that this is all worth it here. The grinding financial degradation, the lack of culture, leave SoCal to the rich, let them sip their champagne and frolic on their beaches while the rest of us take on three jobs, I say shove it SoCal, I'm outta here! Go ahead and try and stop me, nothin's worked yet!

Portland

2009-06-29T17:25:00.000-07:00

I sat down to write this, my hand moving over the keyboard, and my index finger (I poke at a furious speed) began to press down the 'I' when the phone rang with a wrong number. It's a minor inconvenience, but now everything feels like an epic struggle against some unseen force. every foot I place in front of me is met with a fallen power line, or a wall, there are obstacles everywhere and hard decisions to make. The decisions aren't always simple ones either, they prove to be massive lumbering concerns over how I perceive my surroundings, how I regard my plans for the future and how I accept or deny the outcomes of my actions against the wishes of the people near me. So it was the phone, before that an employee came bustling out needing their "g'nights" and acknowledgements, before that the customer looking for assistance, before that a new catch-22 in my orders for work, before that it was my car breaking, before that, before that, before that. I have been back a single day, most of which I spent asleep, yet the few hours I have been awake have been a yawning cavernous bore.

Time to get down to business with the where and why for of the bore; you see I went on vacation to Portland, in the land of Oregon. I went for a number of reasons, first and foremost was that I have friends there, friends I have a terrible tendency to neglect, secondly I wished to make a quick inspection of the place. The inspection was to help me decide if I might be intrigued by moving there. You see most people I know have been there and rather enjoyed it, and often jokingly suggested I go there, I felt differently. You see the town I live in, and have lived in for 25 years is perfectly acceptable, as in it is never too hot or too cold, never changes through the year, is caught between two more famous cities and has a number of little commodities to keep its children in place. I have traveled abroad quite a few times, to other counties, other country's, other places than home, and some of them were better than others but none of them ever seemed better suited to me. In essence even though I loved San Francisco the bustling big city noise turned me off, and the rural North Bay towns were too plain and unwelcoming. London was too hard to get into, then became too totalitarian, Vegas is simply a place you don't live, and Aptos, though beautiful still only said to me "When you've run out of places to go come here." No one place demanded my presence, no place disarmed me and demanded my company. I loved no city enough to make it home. I heartily expected Portland to disappoint as a whole, certainly my friends loved it, but if I did every single thing my friends said I would hardly be myself, my forced individualism would be lost.

I flew there, with a connection in San Francisco. My plane rattled, the angle of our climb made me uncomfortable, not to mention the few moments I swear I heard the engine conk out. I had a temporary fear in me of flying, it wasn't that I thought we would crash, rather I had been waiting so long for an adventure or vacation that I half expected this to be the chance destiny took to kill me tragically at 25 and rob me of all those other adventures I hadn't started on. Even though I looked out the window and watched the earths curve rolling further and further along. The ground was golden, mountainous in places, little green hillocks where a few trees grew sprang up here and there, it was after all California and California looks like this in most places. As we flew and the scenery continued to underwhelm we came to a large collection of clouds, and by large I mean that the whole of the surface of the earth was obscured by a flat foamy white, rather a lot like a cup of coffee or glass of beer. This white went on seemingly forever, my eyes always fixed down below, because by my estimation we should have been over Oregon, and yet I still had no feel of its scope or appearance. The plane finally began its descent, which lasted an eternity, we hit those white clouds and remained in them for well over fifteen minutes, circling, banking careening up and down, but never breaking below them. Naturally my fear kicked in, I remembered a hectic landing at LAX, rain slapped the windows and planes skimmed by us too close to count ourselves as truly safe. I also pictured langoliers, hovering at the edge of perception waiting to eat existence, though I was comforted by the virtue of there being simply too many people on the plane to all have been asleep.

At last, with unexpected speed we exploded below the cloud line, and I was taken aback. There below me was the Columbia river, and trees, tall strong trees and in seemingly endless supply. I looked as far to the sides as I could and there it also stretched, when the dirt would claw up it would appear as a dark brown, the colors mingled and painted my eyes with such splendor I could hardly believe such a place were true. The plane landed and I felt unaccustomed already, as I always felt when I visited new places, I had no clue what was here and i grew deeply mistrustful of the people and surroundings, what I found wonderful on the plane was now hidden behind air traffic control towers and freeway onramps, I may as well have been in any airport in any city in the world.

In the week I stayed there, in the heart beat it took for me to land then leave, to say I loved the place is too timid a word. Everything was matched against me, the streets, the buildings, the people and their nature clamored at my attention and begged me to let them in. Never have I been treated so well as a stranger, which to some may mean I have not been enough places, but regardless of traveling to every city and town in the world to be treated with such an openness is unexpected. Ventura asks from you that you don't make too much noise, that you keep the arm waving to a minimum and maintain their quaint seaside appearance, in Portland I couldn't wave my arms wide enough. It was to me the difference of Bergerac to Paris, the small town, all of its fields and cobblers gave way to a bright artistic hive, bustling with people, odd beautiful and individual people. I felt at times to be blending in, to be obscured behind a shade of more extravagant figures, which shouted to me to make my voice louder, my actions more daring, to call up my old stage presence and fill every available space with color and bravado so I would stand out. I sat at cafes, ate at bakeries, sipped at bars and drenched myself below waterfalls and storm fronts. The art flowed like a river from the houses and shops, it lapped at the buildings, appearing on the sidewalks, the walls, a high watermark was everywhere, manifested as it was by a painting of a rabbit, or stenciled graffiti. Yet no one came to scrub it down, to my shock it was seemingly encouraged by a lack of interest, to my greater surprise the artists would collect on the streets on a specific day each month and hock their crafts.

I was greeted, questioned and gawked at, and to every direction was the trees and earth, the air crisp and warm, cleaner perhaps than i had ever known air to be. The city is split it seemed, carved in two between the more 'city' like South side and the more urban North side. In the South was the art museums and strange shops you would expect in any city, but here too I was caught by surprise. Their art gallery was protected by a larger than life statue of Theodore Roosevelt, bearing this inscription...

"He was found faithful over a few things and he was made ruler over many; he cut his own trail clean and straight and millions followed him toward the light. He was frail; he made himself a tower of strength. He was timid; he made himself a lion of courage. He was a dreamer; he became one of the great doers of all time. Men put their trust in him; found a champion in him; kings stood in awe of him, but children made him their playmate. He broke a nation's slumber with his cry, and it rose up. He touched the eyes of blind men with a flame that gave them vision. Souls became swords through him; swords became servants of God. He was loyal to his country and he exacted loyalty; he loved many lands, but he loved his own best. He was terrible in battle, but tender to the weak; joyous and tireless, being free from self-pity; clean with a cleanness that cleansed the air like a gale. His courtesy knew no wealth, no class; his friendship, no creed or color or race. His courage stood every onslaught of savage beast and ruthless man, of loneliness, of victory, of defeat. His mind was eager, his heart was true, his body and spirit, defiant of obstacles, ready to meet what might come. He fought injustice and tyranny; bore sorrow gallantly; loved all nature, bleak spaces and hardy companions, hazardous adventure and the zest of battle. Wherever he went he carried his own pack; and in the uttermost parts of the earth he kept his conscience for his guide."

I mean Jesus Christ, I could spend a lifetime trying to earn that kind of write up, if anything my life will be spent attempting to live up to such a standard, even though, unlike T.R., I am a frail human and he a shining pillar lost to history.

The art museum was odd, it had its displays in front of people, not so much the paintings I mean, but rather the sculptures. The gallery depicting ancient Chinese and Japanese art deemed it acceptable to place their statues outside of glass, with no ropes to keep busy fingers from them, merely signs saying "please do not touch". I left an offering to Ganesha, a little bowl of money and candy sat before his trunked image. The gallery gave way to mysterious places underneath, hallways slinked downwards then up again, past skylights and staircases until you found yourself in another gallery. A gallery hidden within a gallery, secreted away and off of maps.

Then there was the book store, a fortress of letters, a temple of bindings and sweet smelling pages in the middle of the city. It was a city block, one city block and three stories tall, filled with books, books on everything, books by anyone. I found T.E. Lawrence's 'Revolt in the Desert', the first American edition there, for 8 dollars. There were rare books as well, one for over 100,000 dollars. It was huge and terrifying, I simply could not call on the mental reserves to pick through it and find everything i wanted. I felt the need to contain all of its knowledge, I could sit and look through a book about the rise and fall of Spain's empire, then jump to an oral history of rock and roll, then running downstairs I could read every religious work known to man, before throwing up my arms and leafing through all of the authors I neglected to read over all the years i should have read them.

With that and a million other reasons snatched from every second of every day I found myself unable to see my poor body any place else. Se meager every other locale seemed now, so hollow and unwelcoming by comparison. Ventura offered me familiarity in return for a life of quiet desperation, Portland promised me color and possibility, and all she wanted of me was a character in her play. What am I but an actor, a part in this play, I have found my stage, my canvass and my page all in one, i am called away to a higher goal now, to adventures beyond any navigable shore. Away from Ventura, she sinks her fangs in me a little deeper every day, promising me a quiet patch of green, in a forgotten little cemetery. No, no! I shall strip away the weaknesses, the failures of character, the harms and fouls I have collected. I will strive to those perfect ideals I once held so dear and hold onto to innocence and virtue. I am through with this little life, I found it too easy to fall into line with everyone else, to accept that I was past great things, to tell stories of old glories, no I will take my days by the throat there, and wring the glory from them, no more dusty stories, I shall make new ones! I will do it so when my life is through and death my grinning foe brings about the final curtain on me, I will sweep away the clouds and stars with a gesture to pick my new home, I will take one thing unspoiled with me, one thing unspoiled and perfect, Portland will give me my panache!

History! 5/26

2009-05-26T10:20:00.000-07:00

Its been quite a while since the last time I did History! at all you poor people. As such, because I'll be dealing with courtrooms and bailiffs for the remainder of the day and into the night I thought it best to do one early so it didn't seem wasted. So, lets get on with it then shall we?

1293 AD, In Kamakura Japan an earthquake struck. Now this happens a lot, like all the time, however what made this one so special is that it killed 30,000 people! Seriously, the Japanese at he time were living in single story shacks, so the likelihood of them being completely unable to flee outside is slightly incredible. Thus I am forced to to picture the ground literally opening up and swallowing a whole city. When I did a quick google search for 'Japanese Earthquake" this is on the first page! My guess is that the Japanese have a long standing tradition of rescue cats, dating back to this terrible disaster, when bands of cats would roam the rubble looking for survivors and demanding treats until rescuers could arrive.
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1538, Man, John Calvin, founder of Calvinism is just cold hated by everybody. On this day he was kicked out of Geneva and told to go cause dissent someplace else. Naturally he picked Strasbourg, because when I think of places to hide from the Catholic church I think of Strasbourg.

1637, Here is a big one for me, like epic! During the Pequot War in North America, noted douche bag John Mason, Bostonian General of a combined force of puritans and Mohegans attacked the seat of Pequot power in Connecticut. The Pequot had earned the ire of the local puritans and through some shady back room deal the puritans had gotten the Narragansett and Mohegan tribes to assist in a brutal war against the larger Pequot tribe. Well, Mason and the puritans were eager to attack the chief of the Pequot, but after a long days marching they opted instead to attack a nearby Pequot fort. This was also after encouragement from the Mohegans, under their equally douchey chief Uncas, who had found some Pequot on the way and decapitated them, showing the heads to Mason. So today Mason surrounds the fort in the dead of night, with his Mohegan and Narragansett allies (the Narragansett weren't all that bad actually, they were like a Native American Andorra, just cold stuck in the middle of all the big guys) and orders volleys to bie fired into the fort. At this point the Pequot awake and start moaning and shouting so pitifully that the English think for a moment that perhaps they should take pity on their opponants. At this point it is noted that they overcame their Christian charity when they remembered that the Pequot had cruelly slain a dude months before on his houseboat. Oh yeah, that dude that the Pequot killed, that kinda caused this war, he was a wife stealing, smuggler/pirate who had been asked to leave the puritans cities because he was a nuisance, but puritans have extremely short memories and extremely long grudges. Mason orders the group of puritans and indians to enter the fort and fight hand to hand, which then forces him to reconsider and instead he declares boldly, "We must burn them!" So Mason promptly lights a torch and sets a bark house on fire, to the complete shock of the Pequot. The fire is picked up by the wond and the whole fort is completely ablaze within thirty minutes. Now the English (who have suffered two casualties during this) block the two exits and proceed to keep the burning Pequot in the fort, stabbing or shooting anyone who came near, including women and children. Within an hour of the initial fighting close to 700 Pequot are dead. The Mohegan and Narragansett look at each other in complete horror at what they were party to, especially the usually chill Narragansett who had emphatically stated at the beginning that should any forts be captured that the women and children must be spared. As for the puritans, you know, the buckle shoe wearing thanksgiving fuckers, here is how they used the bible to explain why they had to burn every mother fucker in sight, including the women kids and babies.

"Should not Christians have more mercy and compassion? No. When a people is grown to such a height of blood and sin against God and man...there He hath no respect to persons, but harrows them and saws them and puts them to the sword and the most terriblest death that may be." as for the kids? The answer being totally! "Sometimes, the scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents. We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings."

That one siege effectively marked the end of Pequot resistance. Now long after the Mystic Fort Massacre as it is called a statue was erected on the site of John Mason drawing his sword. Thank heavens there were still some Pequot descendants who pointed out that putting up the statue was the equivalent of putting up a "monument at Auschwitz to Heinrich Himmler, architect of the Nazis' Final Solution." Thus the statue was moved to another site, though it was still met with protests for the fact that the man was hardly a hero. If you would like to know more about how terrible, and sometimes terribly humane the puritans were I recommend Sarah Vowell's 'The Wordy Shipmates'.

1647, ten years after the last blood letting, though the intervening years had plenty of blood shed, the puritans execute their first witch in the New World, Alse Young. Seriously guys, stop it.

1805, Napoleon is crowned king of Italy. You know what, I want to build a huge army, more advanced and better supplied than any other army in history and start conquering places, so I can declare myself 'King' of them. "Have you heard, General Trebaol has conquered the Starbucks on Main st. He is holding a coronation and will be declared 'King of Starbucks and Coffee'."

1830, man this is a bad day for Native Americans. So today the Indian Removal Act is passed by Congress and two days from now Andrew "Trail of Tears" Jackson signs it into law.

1868, Andrew Johnson narrowly misses getting impeached by a single vote. The reasons are a little complicated and extremely boring.

1894, Nicholas II becomes the Tzar of All Russia's! Did I neglect to point out he will also be the Last Tzar of All Russia's!

1938, The House Un-American Activities Committee has its first meeting, however they really don't become extremely interesting till the fifties so lets leave them there for now.

1940, The battle of Dunkirk! Or rather the important part of the battle, you know the part where against every possible expectation the British manage ti escape the huge Nazi war machine barreling towards them. Literally fishing boats crossed the channel so they could pick up five guys and take them back to England, while being shelled by 'Jerry'.

1983, a frikkin' 7.7 earthquake strikes Japan, but this time the method of execution is tsunami! 103 people are killed by the mammoth fuckin' wave. screw you plate tectonics!

So there is fuckin' that! History for May 26th!

Mephistopheles and the Lost Scholar Part 3

2009-05-25T15:19:00.000-07:00

The inland trek had already consumed two days, following the same worn path towards El Dorado they had taken the first time. The jungle changed little, and looked very much like every bit of jungle before them and behind them. At night they would huddle under the nearby canopy and light a fire, sleeping fitfully as mosquitoes and bugs assaulted their various orifices and exposed parts. It was during the third night of uncomfortable sleep that Brandon awoke with a unexpected shock. He lay stretched flat, gripping a large root next to his head, his breathing barely audible, the fire now dim, he dreamed of real beds and of adventures that were better thought out. As he dreamt there came a rustle from the brush beside him, just out of sight behind leaves something was sneaking about. So deep was the sleep that no one noticed the little gray creature slink from the darkness of the tree line. The moon caught in its massive eyes and reflected an eerie green. Its arms were long, its hands thin and tipped with bony clawed fingers, it hopped a little as it approached the sleeping man. Its mouth was concave in shape, until it leaned slowly down to the chefs back and opened it, then it revealed itself to be circular in shape and lined with razor sharp teeth, in rows all the way back to a spiny tongue. It raised its arms over its head, the gray skin almost translucent in the night and very slowly it leaned in for a bite.

Then, from the forest a twig snapped, a monkey or capybara had stepped too heavily on a fallen branch and it sounded in the night, waking Brandon. The burly chef rolled and launched forward, eyes shut, fists cutting the air at 140 miles an hour. It wasn't the first punch that struck the 'chulupacabra', but the second, though it was all it needed to be launched bodily into the trees, back broken over a tree limb. Finally eyes open Brandon glanced around, nothing, and with that he returned to sleep. However in the cover above and around them other large shimmering eyes watched and hungered.

The Sun rose, as it is want to do on most of the Earths surface, casting warm light over the intrepid adventurers and pulling them back into the land of the awake. Mephisto rose and glanced around, he was hungry and wondered if there was any food around. Tony then awoke and felt the same curious question raise in his mind, at which point finally Brandon sat up, punches flying (though at a safe distance) and opened his eyes.

"Dudes, I'm hungry, what do you want for breakfast?" Brandon rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and the various mosquitoes from off his arms.

"I don't know, we really should have thought a bit more about this." Tony squatted nest to the smoldering embers of the old fire.

"Time was of the essence." Brandon growled, "Never mind, I have any idea, let me see if there's a river nearby." With that Brandon looked up and around then trudged off into the jungle.

"I should probably have told him to stop." Mephisto said as the sound of Brandon's walking became more and more distant.

In the encroaching jungle Brandon moved forward with single minded courage. To be fair however he hadn't actually thought of how he would get back, and had not paid very close attention to the surrounding that he was passing, his only current concern was to find a river and use a trick he had learned years before, that is if he could remember the details of the trick. his nose however caught the scent of a river, and then, progressively he could hear the trickling as well, within fifteen minutes he had arrived at the bank of a large brown river, trees overhanging the banks, beautiful birds flying overhead.

"Jackpot!" Brandon immediately set to work, firs the would need the sap from one of these river trees, however, he couldn't remember which one was the correct tree, so with conviction he took a branch from each of several trees and large bushes around the river side and dipped the oozing limbs into the water. The water went from brown to milky white, then yellow, and finally red, with a slightly acrid smell accompanying it. He watched excitedly as fish approached the surface, mouth sucking up the concoction. "Fuck yeah! I am awesome-" the words however stumbled out of his mouth as the fish began to bubble. The slightly foamy outer coating that was now on all the fish gave way to the fish decaying abruptly before his eyes, leaving only a skeleton, then came more bubbling from deeper. Brandon rose and stepped slowly away from the river, the bubbling stopped and to the surface rose the meatless skeleton of a large snake, which had been hiding in the water at his feet, then more fish, he looked over to see a toucan dip its beak a few meters down from him, it turned its head to stare through Brandon, it seemed to say 'you jerk' then stiffly fell into the river and rose to the surface also desiccated. With growing distance and strength the river gave up its secrets in the form of bones and Brandon walked hurriedly away hoping no one would know his terrible crime against nature.

"I hope B's okay." Tony looked back to the jungle, it had been nearly two hours with no sign of the chef, and the two remaining friends weren't eager to recreate his disappearance. Fortuitously however no sooner had Tony said this than Brandon tumbled out of the jungle a few yards from them, his face covered in mud, branches stuffed in his sleeves and collar, his hands full of small creatures. "What happened to you? you couldn't find a river?"

"No, there's no river, none, and if there was a river, I am certain it would be full of jungle poisons." Brandon approached the now dead fire and began working quickly to reignite it.

"What did you find for us to eat then?" Mephisto asked looking at the filthy little 'things' Brandon clutched, "Also, how did you become so filthy?"

"These!" Brandon lifted the muddy creatures up, "Monkeys, we're having monkey, with a side of monkey, hopefully these monkeys don't have one of those parasites in them that eats your brain. This is why I don't like roughing it." Brandon stepped back as the fire sprung to life. "As for the dirt, I had to trick them. I got naked and smeared mud all over myself, then strapped branches to me, then began imitating them. once convinced I was their God I convinced them to let me sacrifice themselves to reach 'monkey shangri-la'." Brandons eyes looked wildly at Tony.

"Why'd you look at me for that?!" Tony waved a finger at Brandon, "Poor monkeys, I'm not sure I want any of your 'fixin's'." Tony moved closer to Mephisto.

"Well, if anything at least we know that Brandon was able to use madness, albeit madness that came on after an extremely short amount of time, to find food. Now we have little doubt as to whether a completely mad Mr. Trebaol would be able to survive in the jungles." Mephisto patted Tony on the back, smiling with confidence.

By midday they had finished their monkeys and were moving speedily down the road. As the path tripped and stumbled further finally they came to a sign post. The markings were alien to them, but clearly that was an excellent sign and they followed the wooden markers further down various intertwining roads. This continues till the late afternoon, where finally, when all hope seemed lost of arriving before nightfall they pushed through a final copse of trees and gazed in wonder at the lost city of El Dorado.

Golden pyramids lined the street, flanked by gold statues of lizards, gold waterways circled the small gold flecked houses, and all of it set to a backdrop of a golden sunset. They gazed at the opulent city for all of thirty seconds before,

"Great, where the hell could he be?" Brandon threw his hand up at the city, sweeping it grandly over the expanse of the site.

"Well, if he is indeed here, and he lived through the jungle, "Tony and Brandon exchanged glances as Mephisto continued, "Then we will surely find him. Why he's probably wrapped himself up around something again and is waiting for his body heat to melt it down into ingots." Mephisto clapped his hands together and stepped down towards the outer reaches of the city.

The silence of the abandoned streets was frightening. The trees hadn't touched the gold palaces, or invaded more than a few feet within their perimeter. The place might as well have been freshly abandoned, and this unnerving thought was only alleviated by the fact that they had been there once before and knew that unless they were very lucky in their visiting times it was truly abandoned. Proceeding cautiously they strolled down the main boulevard through the city, admiring the carvings on the walls and architectural flourishes on the temples and shrines located throughout. It was in the center of the complex, next to the largest pyramid that they saw something strange. To their left, at the base of the grand pyramid there was a portal of sorts a great archway, leading deep into the pyramid. It wasn't the door that seemed out of place, but rather the shining gold light that licked the walls and neighboring buildings.

"Hmm, I wonder what might be creating that light?" Mephisto asked, turning his full attention to it. Tony stepped forward a little and looked around at the horizon.

"It's not the sun, too low in the sky and in completely the wrong place. Maybe Chris is in there and he has a fire."

"Well, I believe it best for us to investigate. "Mephisto pulled the pistol from his waist and proceeded confidently towards the glow, meanwhile above them, hidden in the buildings shadows, large eyes watched with anticipation.

Mephisto reached the doorway first, Tony close on his heels. Brandon looked around the frame for something and with a smile he reached out and yanked a golden spear from a hook on the doors frame. Mephsito nodded to Brandon, Brandon nodded back waving the spear around and they proceeded into the door. The gold gave way once inside to intricate paintings depicting long dead natives and their various religious figures, sacrificing things to one another. Tony ran a hand along the textured surface, searching for information, the light still flickering deep below them, the source out of sight around a corner.

"These indians were known for their prophecies and ability to foretell things. Like here we see what appears to be a story of when the Spanish first arrived, but its closest to stories about the Earth being formed, so the city must predate first contact." Tony explained, Mephisto looking over the various caricatures, shining bearded men with sticks that spewed fire trampled the natives underfoot. "Here is a strange one, look Brandon, it looks like you." Tony pointed to a large figure, with an ornate apron on, and a short curly beard. "Odd, he seems to be taking vines or ropes of some sort and is spreading death in this river, you can all the bones and the God of the underworld looking down with shame on his face."

"Well, that's funny, because why would I do that? You think I would do something stupid like that and kill everything in a river?" Brandon pushed Tony to move past the uncanny image.

As they reached the bottom of the stairs the air became warm and moist like the jungle outside, they slowly turned the corner and there at the end of the hall they could see a strange glowing light. The light was covered however by some form of a fan, which turned lazily and caused the light to shift on the walls, then at the foot of the light, at the turn of another corner was a leg.

"Is that a leg?" Brandon grabbed Tonys jacket and squeezed.

"It looks like it." Tony gulped and stepped back slowly.

"No men, we must be brave, our friend is counting on us, perhaps Mr. Trebaol has fallen asleep, exhausted from so much gold and history in one place, his body just around that corner." Mephisto took a shaky step forward, then another, Brandon and Tony close behind him. They made their way to the light and fan, then looking over the stockinged leg and buckle shoe they turned the sharp corner and discovered the body.

"Holy shit!" Brandon gasped and tumbled back against the wall. Tony also wheeled around away from the sight. Mephisto alone stood over the body laying on the pyramids floor.

"What do you see?" Tony asked, looking wide eyed at Brandon. Mephisto moved closer and stooped over the body, it wore a gentleman's coat, and a long cloak, though this was dirty and mud covered from the trip, the clothes were ill fitting and draped loosely over body, even the face was difficult to distinguish, changed as it was by the dry hollowness of the rest of its frame.

"I believe that he was killed by a Chulupacabra. He is dry and seemingly devoid of fluids. Here too, look his buttons have the seal of the governors mansion on them, I have no doubts this is Mr. Trebaol."

"Chulupacabras ate my best friend." Brandon murmured, his face downcast, his eyes red.

"Well, he probably went happy, lost in a city of gold, eaten by an undiscovered animal." Tony said tearing up.

"We should probably go." Mephisto stood up and took his two friends by their arms and walked for the exit. Brandon leaned heavily on his spear and Mephisto replaced the the pistol in his sash, the trio made their way back to the long stairwell, ill prepared for their discovery and sad to begin the journey home with such sad tidings. As they turned the corner to the stairs however they found themselves caught bu surprise. there at the top of the stony steps illuminated by the gold light was a group of terrible grey monsters, with concave mouths and bulging red eyes. The sun had set while they were inside and the monsters had left the safety of the shadows to collect on the explorers.

"Holy shit!" Brandon flicked his spear up towards the creatures, "Chulupacabras!" One of the grey creatures bellowed , its mouth opening wide to show the rows of teeth, its tongue lolling around languidly.

"Jesus!" Tony backed against the wall.

"I'm going to make these fuckers extinct!" Brandon charged forward up the first three steps when abruptly the front row of beasts plunged down towards them, followed by row after row of other mangy ghouls. "Never mind, everybody retreat!" Brandon turned and bolted past Mephisto and Tony who followed closely behind.

"Excellent judgement Mr. Frazier!" Mephisto careened down the corridor weaving up and down passages deeper into the ground, more lights and fans flickered different colors and strange smells greeted them at every new junction. Behind them they could hear the horde of chulupacabras tearing at the walls and each other to reach the friends first. Finally though the three adventurers tumbled down a series of steps and into a hard metal room, Tony reached for the edge of the door frame to stop his fall but instead caught a strange symbol etched onto the icy silver wall, behind him the passage disappeared with a 'vwoomf' replaced by a heavy iron door.

"What?" Tony looked at the wall and touched the symbol again, causing the iron door to disappear into the roof, revealing the clamoring wave of creatures racing for them, gnashing their teeth.

"CLOSE IT!" Brandon shouted, laying on his back waving his spear. tony quickly touched the glyph again and the door shut just in time, the sound of furious scratching emanated from it as the monsters tried to gain entrance.

"Where are we?" Mephisto heaved, his adrenaline still pumping, demanding that he continue to flee.

"I don't know, lets have a look." Tony walked down the two deep steps onto the expansive floor. The room was lit by two blue orbs that hung in the ceiling, and provided enough light to discern the surrounding silvery constructs. "Here is something," Tony approached a group of large shiny poles, which ran from floor to ceiling, next to these poles was an open door and a charred and blackened panel. "It appears to be a jail. Though the lock is broken." Tony turned and looked across the rest of the room, Brandon and Mephisto followed his gaze, looking every so often at the door, the scratching and hissing still audible. "There's more!" Tony proceeded forward into an adjoining room, this one bathed in clean white light. "Wow! You need to see this guys!" Tony disappeared into the catacombs. Brandon finally stood up, using his spear as a crutch, then turned and followed Mephisto into the white light after Tony.

They entered into a huge complex of rooms and cages, all brightly lit, though now each cage was either empty, or filled with bones.

"It's a zoo, these natives had some form of zoo here! This is amazing." Tony went from cage to cage looking at the skeletal remains of the animals, there were large furry skins, easily taller than him in one cage, a shiny black animal with a long pointed tail and sharp metal teeth in another. "This is incredible, the jungle is full of really scary looking animals guys, I'm really kind of shocked." Tony looked up ahead and saw that there was another set of closed doors with a glyph next to them. "Come on, lets see what else is here." Brandon and Mephisto hurried forward after Tony, who was already opening the door into the next room.

Room after room they discovered more and more strange artifacts from the natives. Finally, after much searching them came into a large circular chamber, with a cluster of seats in the center and various strange panels on the walls, all blinking, on the far side of the wall was a white rectangular board set against the rest of the silvery fixtures. Above were tubes and pipes running throughout the complex.

"Where are we?" Mephisto asked, taking a seat.

"We are in some kind of ancient indian super city. It's really strange that they lost the war against Spain when they had all of this." Tony tapped a panel, which suddenly flicked all the lights in the room onto a bright white, the white board too changed, it became a deep black. Then abruptly a strange symbol flashed over it.

"What did you do Tony?" Brandon muttered taking a seat next to Mephisto. The screen then changed again, now, to the horror of the group a large brown face appeared on screen, its eyes merely tiny glowing dots in its head, its mouth hidden behind folds of scaly skin, it spoke and the words that came out sounded like the screams of a thousand mewling infants. "OH GOD WHY DOESN'T IT EVER END!" Brandon tipped over in his chair as Mephisto sneered in disgust as the creature dribbled with spittle on the screen. Though just as quickly as he shouted the image froze, then a blue screen appeared. On the screen appeared hundreds of tiny symbols and letters each in a box.

"Wow, this is really not out lucky day." Tony sighed, looking at the boxes. "How are we going to get out of this, down here I doubt there's another exit, and even if we wait till daylight the creatures can just wait down here for us out of the sun." Tony moved closer to the screen.

"You are quite right. We are currently trapped, though hopefully this terrible moving painting will provide us with a solution. Perhaps the chalupacabras are as disgusted with the creature from before as we were." Mephisto leaned forward, crossing his hands. Tony looked closely at the boxes on the screen then lit up.

"Look here! English, and this one over here appears to be spanish, and this one is the indian pictographs. Here let me try this." T0ny lifted his hadn to the screen and touched the box marked English. The screen then flicked back to the horrible brown creature, but now a soft feminine voice emanated from its disgusting jowels.

"Flight controls for the Lytaxian library ship are located on consoles to the immediate right of the viewer." The voice explained, "Engineering is behind the captains seat, communications to the viwers left, and dimensional time controls are located on the console directly in front of this screen." The voice said softly, Tony turned to Mephisto.

"I don't think that this belongs to the indians. I think this is some kind of ship if you will. Controlled by celestial beings." Tony said, his eyes wide, his hands searching for a seat.

"Angels?" Mephisto looked with great uncertainty at Tony.

"Well...maybe, I don't know, but have you ever seen anything like this before, or that thing?" Tony pointed towards the screen.

"Maybe they're like sailors from outer space, and time travelers, "Brandon turned to Mephisto and Tony, his hand moving excitedly. "They said flight controls, so they must fly, and then time controls, so they must move through time. Dude, these 'angels are actually space creatures, and they are going to help us sail out of here." Brandon leapt up and headed for the console on the right most wall. With no finesse he mashed his fist against the board, causing the room to shake violently.

"Well I'm glad we looked at all our options then!" Tony shouted looking at the screen, it now changed to a map depicting their location and series of long bars that were filling with red lines.

"Wow, this map is incredible, is that what South America really looks like?" Mephisto rose as the room rumbled again. Brandon turend to look at the screen, his hands busily looking for something to grab onto. Tony moved forward hoping he had inferred enough about the creatures 'ship' to use this screen to their advantage. He looked closely at the map and picked out the rough area where Nombre De Dios should sit, then tapped it, a blue line exteneded from where they were and terminated near the city. The room shook again and the screen changed now showing a view from the top of the pyramid, the moon rising in the sky.

"I think we may have got this working." Tony said, as the image shifted, moving up and away from the crumbling masonry that surrounded it.

Outside, the pyramid was consumed in fire, as were the waiting chalupacabras. The pyramids few remaining walls collapsed as the great and strange craft lifted up from the earth and slowly made its way over the city, incinerating everything it passed over.

"This is really quite something I'd say. You have quite the way with new things don't you Mr. Wilson?" Mephisto slowly moved forward, now that the ship had stopped quaking.

"Hey, I'm the one that got it moving!" Brandon smacked the controls again, causing a strange shrieking sound to emanate from the ceiling, as red lights flicked on and off. "It wasn't me!"

The ground in the view screen moved by with increasing speed, until finally the trees whipped by too fast to be rcognized and the town of Nombre De Dios could be seen moving at incredible speed towards them. The craft lifted higher and then arched backwards and dived straight towards the jungle near the edge of town.

"We're going to crash!" Mephisto shouted grabbing hold of the chair behind him. The ship raced towards the earth and finally froze feet from the ground, the warning continued to sound. "What's going on?"

"Self destruct in five minutes." A cheery female voice explained.

"What did I do?" Brandon looked at the controls and punched them again.

"Self Destruct recalibrated, self destruct in one minute and thirty seconds."

"I take back all the nice things I said about you." Tony said, then turned and ran for the exit. Mephisto and Brandon followed the scholars lead through the ship as the countdown shrank towards zero. At last they reached the room full of broken cages and the door leading outside, Tony slapped the glyph the door opened and the three compatriots leapt outside.

Unfortunately however the ship they had been in had created some form of alternative gravity, and theyfound themselves flying first forward upright from the portal, to down sideways from the side of the ship. With a heavy 'whump!' they hit the dirt below and looked up as the ship glowed green and gold, then 'boop' it disappeared without so much as a gust of wind.

"Mr. Frazier, refrain from punching strange new devices until I recommend that as your course of action. Just for future reference though." Mephsito looked at the chef.

"We're alive aren't we? That was all me." Brandon pointed a thumb at his chest then stiffly got back up. The exhausted friends made their way back into town to the Unicorn and asked politely to be ferryed home.

The trip was a long sad one for them as they traded stories about previous adventures, and what they would do now without their resident crackpot. With heavy hearts they returned to the harbor at St. Eustatius, the rows of masts bobbed in along the edge of the piers.

"You think we could go to the underworld and get him back?" Brandon asked, looking at Tony and Mephisto.

"I don't think so, he was eaten, and that kind of precludes foul play, besides, I don't think Hades was gay." Tony said, looking down at the water. Mephisto leaned back and looked out across the harbor, his eyes catching on asomething that seemed extremely unusual.

"What on Earth?" Mephisto ran to the railing in the opposite side of the Unicorn, there in the harbor was Mephisto's new ship the pinnace Incognita, a wedding gift from Governor Logan. It was manned, and flying its penants, making ready to set sail. "Um, Arthur!" Mephisto shouted to the Captain of the Unicorn could you bring us alongside that ship over there. The Unicorn slowly turned and made its way clsoer, till a rope could be used to swing acorss the gap and board the Incognita. Mephisto took a rotting rope and swung over onto the deck of his new ship and grabbed the first familiar face he could find. "You there, Mr. Brambles."

"It's Geoff sir, Brambles retired, ya threw a party for 'im. Do ya remember any uf this?" Geoff sighed, putting down the cask of water he was holding.

"No, well not clearly anyway, moving along, what are you all doing?" Mephisto looked over the deck.

"We were going ta go look fer ya, but apparently yer here, so maybe I should tell the temporary cap'n." Geoff looked over his shoudler and whistled.

"Temporary Captain? What in the blazes, this is all very irregular."

"What's going on!" Brandon shouted across from the other ship, hands around his mouth.

"I don't know, give me a minute!" Mephisto shouted back, not noticing the smartly dressed new captain strutting up to him.

"Where the deuce did you come from?" A familiar voice asked.

"We just got back from looking for Mr. Trebaol, the scholar, but regrettably he died, now who are," Mephisto stopped as he looked up at the new Captain.

"Funny me being dead and all, might make it hard to be alive." It was none other than Chris, the dead scholar.

"Wha?"

"What the hell are you doing alive!" Brandon shouted waving his arms.

"What?!" Chris shouted back.

The ships docked, the crews taking their leave and Chris joined Mephisto, Brandon and Tony in a carriage headed back to the governors mansion.

"So you've been alive this whole time?" Tony asked, with a confused look on his face.

"Yeah, where'd you think I was?"

"We thought you had gone mad and went in search of El Dorado again." Mephsito interjected.

"No, what? No, why would I do that alone, do I have a death wish?"

"Well, your friends thought you did, they said you had gone missing some three days before they came to me." the carriage bumped along the dirt path through the sunny island.

"What? Missing? Wait, I know what it was, I volunteered to teach a class in history and they offered to let me stay at the school." Chris looked around at the confused slightly exasperated faces.

"You never volunteer for anything, and you hate not sleeping in your own bed, these are facts, that we know!" Tony proclaimed.

"Did you not remember how hot it was? Or rather how unbearably humid, the classrooms were in a shady part of town, and I could make the students wave fans at me while I worked, then at night i split them into shifts to fan me and make sure the room stayed cool." Chris leaned back with a smile.

"You enslaved children to keep cool?" Mephisto asked.

"Sounds like Chris." Brandon looked out the window.

"So you guys went looking for me? Why didn't you just assume I was alive and somewhere else."

"Wait, how could that be?" Tony said, looking around a chill running up his spine, "The body was about your height, but unrecognizeable, and it had buttons from the governors mansion, like these." Tony held up his jacket to show a set of buttons emblazoned with the governors name. Chris thought for a minute ten his face lit up, then darkened again.

"Well, I did recently tell Mr. Tiddlecuff, the mansions gardner, about El Dorado, he seemed quite intrigued, then when I was done with the classes him and all of you were gone." Chris frowned, "I think you found him and mistook him for me. After you guys remained missing for so long I went down to the town and started rounding up your old crew, and was intending on setting out to find you." Chris looked at Mephisto.

"Well that explains that. Where were you going to look?" Mephisto inquired.

"Really wasn't sure, I jsut figured it would work itself out, and then maybe Graham would write a book about me, so I suppose I acted out of the most selfish possible reasons. though I would really have tried hard to find you all." Chris smiled politely and looked out the window, "Oh look a bird!"

"Wonderful." Tony said tepidly as the carriage rolled back up to the mansions front doors and the friends climbed out ready to return to their regular duties. So it was, that Mephisto managed to take a vacation from his vacation, assist his friends in a quest, and bring everything to a comfortable conclusion. Comfortable for all but poor Mr. Tiddlecuffs.

The End

Mephistopheles and the Lost Scholar Part 2

2009-05-22T16:27:00.000-07:00

Often, when your goal is a missing friend, one wakes fitfully from sleep, your dreams terrible playgrounds of frightening thoughts. However for Mephisto his sleep had rarely been calmer, he had found the rolling waves soothing and the thought of a day at sea encouraging. It wasn't as though he wasn't sympathetic to Tony and Brandon's plight, Chris was after all one of their closest friends, further Mephisto had received much help from Chris when it came to rescuing Penelope. There was still the unshakable excitement of being out of the house and on his way for adventure, all things considered he had actually spent very little time out and about without the looming specter of doom hovering about his actions. Thus it was with little urgency that the Unicorn approached Nombre De Dios' harbor.

The town sprawled out from the shore, the local forts cannons trained on the sea, waiting for pirates, or British, whichever came first. The locals flitted about the streets with fresh produce and fruits from the adjoining jungle, or with strange artifacts and unique curios from the native populations so thoroughly wiped out after the Europeans arrival. Mephisto bowed to Arthur and gave him a small sack of gold coins, some four times the amount one would have asked for such a trip.

"Well then, we'll just wait here, seeing as how ye were so kind in payment, doubtful anyone else would pay so well for so little." Arthur tipped a little at the waist in acknowledgement of the gift and helped the scholar and chef down the gang plank onto the docks.

"No worries! We'll be back in a week or so, depending on how long it takes us to find the place again, hopefully the road signs are still up." Mephisto waved to Arthur then headed for the nearest Costa Guarda he could find to see if anyone unusual had stopped through. Spotting one well scrubbed officer, Mephisto approached with open arms. "Why hello there! Or shall I say Buenos...beuno...hmm." No, he had definitely no idea how to great someone in Spanish. "Mr. Wilson, I need your assistance with this guard, I don't know how to greet him." The guard raised a bushy black eyebrow at the strange group in front of him, he crossed his gloved hands over his arms, the sun glinting off his armored chest plate.

"I see, just a moment," Tony put a finger to his temple and looked the guard deep in the ey, then began to speak, "Hola allí mi buen hombre, estamos buscando al caballero, cerca de cinco pies nueve, los vidrios, cara huesuda. Era probablemente socarrarla en el oro, él habría podido llegar solamente hace algunos días. Él pudo haber tenido un gato en sus pantalones." With a flourish Tony opened his hands and gestured towards the docks. The guard blinked once or twice then extended his arm, moving Tony aside and turning his attention to Mephisto.

"He said something incomprehensible about a horseman with glasses and cats in pants." The Costa Guarda said in a thick accent to Mephisto, "Now then, what are you English looking for?" He lowered his hand onto the hilt of his sword none too subtly.

"Well, haha, you see," Mephisto smiled and teetered a little, kicking his heels on the cobblestone beside the sea, "Our friend is absolutely crazy with gold fever, and he went missing, so we believe he may have headed here in search of El Dorado, he should have arrived only a few days before us. He's very bony, and thin, he wears ridiculous clothes, and probably looked crazed." Mephisto gestured to Brandon and Tony to nod along in agreement.

"I see, regularly I would escort crazy people, like yourself and your friend, to the prison, but since I do not want to catch whatever must be spreading through the English island right now I'll tell you that such a man did pass through." With this Brandon exhaled a sigh of relief, "Yes, he rowed here."

"WHAT!" The three of them shouted, shocked at such a feat, with neither wind, nor stores of food he had manged to beat a sailing ship making excellent time by using his own unusually high levels of 'crazy'.

"Yes, a thin Englishmen in a cape came to the harbor and pulled his boat onto the shore, he mumbled about a lost city and promptly ran up the main street and into the jungle, following the main path. He was fast as well, you would have a hard time keeping up with him if he kept that pace in the jungle. Then again, he was probably eaten by a snake at this point." The Costa Guarda smiled at the thought.

"I told you, snake snack! I'll never get my money back!" Brandon shook his huge fist at Tony.

"What? You're looking for him because he owes you money?" Mephisto turned to the two companions of the lost scholar.

"Not entirely, but that is a concern, I just didn't want to mention it earlier because I didn't want you thinking we had ulterior motives for this search." Brandon jabbed a finger at Mephisto.

"But you did, quite clearly, not that it's a big deal, I mean I was just terribly enthused by the chance to get outside." Mephisto patted Brandon on the shoulder. By now the Costa Guarda had become worried that these Englishmen were actually crazy, and with little noise he backed away from the conversation and looked for a thief to beat up for money. "So, Mr. Wilson, do you have any other reason to find him?"

"Well, it would really stink if he was dead, but he did also owe me lunch."

"Lunch?"

"Yeah, he told me that if I completed his 'maze of death' he would buy me lunch." Tony looked up and gave a little look around, it was always interesting to see what kind of choices different towns made when it came to road placement and overall civic dynamics.

"A maze of death?" Mephsito looked to Brandon who shook his head showing he had no part of it.

"Oh, he just called it that, it was a hand drawn maze, full of weird little open spots that described some horrible way your character died, like 'lava monster', or 'dude with skulls for eyes'. He made a pretty bad mistake though, because he drew the beginning and ending paths, but forgot to make them branch out, so once you started you automatically would go to the end. So he owes me a free lunch." Tony smiled, Mephisto shrugged this off, obviously Tony was interested in finding Chris and this lunch played no part of it.

"Alright, all of this aside, lets get to the jungle, we need to find Chris before he gets poisoned, or eaten, or poisoned by something intent on eating him." Mephisto began trudging up the street towards the hills at the far side of the town.

As they approached the outskirts of Nombre De Dios they quickly saw the well marked path leading into the jungle. The dirt's was well worn and muddy in spots, the air thick with strange smells and the echoing calls of birds hidden in the brush. The group made their way into the foliage, swatting at flies and keeping an eye open for any of the various deadly animals that prowl the area. Mephisto regretted not bringing his cutlass along, knowing that at best he had a single bullet from his pistol to protect them, provided the powder wasn't too wet, or in a worst worse case scenario the whole gun exploded as they were sometimes apt to do.

The green rarely opened out from the sides of the road, it was merely a rolling, undulating part of the landscape, the gnarled roots appearing as tentacles from under the thorny bushes and long fronds from above. Small frogs hopped across the road ahead of them, and in the distance hills could be seen, also covered in brilliant jade jungles. Tony looked about in amazement as parrots flitted from tree to tree above him, Brandon sighed, the exertion was deeply annoying, as he would much rather be at home cooking crepes.

As the trio passed along the jungle road, Mephisto caught a glimpse of something, nestled in the brush on the side of the road. It was white and hairy, and as he drew closer he could see a small amount of red around what was once its neck.

"What did you find?" Brandon asked, back to Mephisto eyes watching the treeline for danger.

"It looks like," Mephisto moved a leaf from the animals head, " a goat?" Mephisto stood puzzled, it was a goat, laying on the side of the road, with circle of red holes on its neck, its body emaciated and dry looking. "Something sucked this goat to death." Mephisto pointed, waving Brandon and Tony over to see.

"That's gross, don't touch that." Tony leaned away from the dead animal.

"Man, I can't cook that, what are you trying to do here jungle, mock me?" Brandon looked to the sky, half expecting Thor to drop down laughing prepared for a rematch.

"Mr. Wilson, any clue what this animal might have been attacked by?" Mephisto squatted by the furry white body.

"Not really, strange beasts were really Chris' forte. It does appear to have been sucked to death, so we are dealing with an animal that dines on goats, and has a rounded toothy mouth, which once attached to the goat, suck the blood from them."

"Yes, I really can't remember any previous mention of such a creature."

"Well, since we are likely dealing with a new species we should name it, something in the local tongue so they'll know what to look for." Tony nodded to Mephisto, it seems they had stumbled upon an important scientific discovery and were duty bound to record it.

"Well Mr. Wilson, what is the Spanish words for 'Goat Sucker', as that is both its prey and chosen method of consumption." Mephisto rose to his feet, lowering the leaf back over the goat.

"Ughh," Tony's mouth opened instinctively and his eyes narrowed, he stood motionless and made a low 'umm' sound, finally he remembered and gestured down to the goat, "Chulupa-Cabra, I believe that's the proper term."

"Excellent, we must then be on our guard for this Chulupacabra, and hope it has not mistaken our friend for a goat." Mephisto began trudging back up the path towards the location of the lost city of El Dorado.

"What do you think the chances are of Chris being mistaken for a goat and getting eaten?" Brandon gave a look to Tony.

"I'd prefer not to think about it."

"You're right better than average."

End Part 2

Mephistopheles and the Lost Scholar

2009-05-21T16:54:00.000-07:00

St. Eustatius cooked under the hot summer sun, the bricks and white walls flickered in the heat, small lizards stepped onto the stone paths leading to the governors mansion and promptly dropped dead from heat stroke. To further aggravate the situation for the islanders it was exceptionally humid as well. It was on days like these that Mephisto sought out the comfort of the secret catacombs under the mansion, where the air was cool and there were fewer dead lizards. He had created a small space for himself in a large chamber, which presumably lay somewhere between the catacombs entrance in the outlying hills and the mansion. In this space he had a few books, maps, a large chair, and a rope leading to a bell which when pulled would notify someone in the mansion that he needed assistance. To light the space, rather than depend on candles Mephisto had consented to allow the scholar Chris to attempt to fashion a series of mirrors that would bring outside light in, provided they were angled correctly. The scheme had worked after a fashion, though it was extremely complicated and prone to random failure when a bat or bird would fly into one of the mirrors and knock it off center.

It was here that Mephisto sat in his chair, sipping tea and reading a book of poetry he had received from Orpheus a short while after the wedding. It was alright, he thought, though terribly morose, and still very whiny. He pondered how Eurydice must have felt to have him back, no doubt she preferred he remain at the bottom of the sea. Sitting languidly in his chair he read the book, though with little focus being paid to the page, his mind was wandering as the words flicked by. He found it easier to day dream this way, to him sitting in a chair and simply letting the mind wander was a hard feat, no, he needed an object of attention that he could neglect with his little mental adventures. When Penelope returned from her trip to England she had assured him that they would depart immediately again for someplace out of the way, as they had both been bitten by the bug of adventure and could hardly spend two days in a single spot without seeking something new. Mephisto flipped a page, carefully balancing his mind so that he wouldn't think too hard about the words, or how many pages he had eyeballed without absorbing any of it. He thought of how he could quickly call the crew back from whatever they were doing in town and they could set out for the jungles of Brazil, or go to the far side of the continent and climb the mountains in Peru searching for lost things, and on the way, to keep the crew happy, they could capture Spanish ships. Yes all of this would be nice he thought, he had let his mind wander now so far from its original place that he had only barely noticed a slight ringing. It was this ringing that now snapped him back to 'reality'. Glancing up he saw his 'bell' was ringing fiercely, meaning someone in the mansion needed his immediate attention. In one swift motion he was up from his seat, his arms akimbo, his right hand snatching the poetry book he had just launched into the air. He laid it quickly down on his chair and yanked the chord next to his bell to let the person on the far end know he was on his way. Before completely exiting the chamber he snatched up his ornate pistol and pulled back the hammer, one could never be sure when a visitor was an old opponent out for revenge.

"I wonder who this could be?" Mephisto mumbled to himself scrambling up the sloping stone steps, the heat become more and more palpable the closer he got to the exit. He saw the light ahead, emanating from the open door leading into Penelope's former bed chamber. He could see figures in the brightly lit room, gesturing at each other wildly, Mephisto pursed his lips and lowered the pistol a little closing in on the exit. Bursting from the shadowy hole Mephisto could now clearly see who his desperate visitors were, to his left Brandon, the world class chef, his brow heavy with sweat, and to his right Tony the scholar, who appeared equally damp.

"We need your help!" They both exclaimed raising their hands in the air.

"With what? What's wrong? Pirates, Spanish? Are there ghosts? Giants? Giant Spanish ghost pirates? I heard they might exist...maybe." Mephisto searched his memory for any reference previously made to such an oddity, he knew there had to be some time it had come up and it,

"Chris has gone missing!" Tony pointed out the door.

" Really, he never goes anywhere, at least not without one of you two."

"I know, since I talked them into moving back to St. Eustatius from Port Royale we've been inseparable! But now Poof!" Brandon swung his arms wide depicting the bodily disappearance of his friend.

"Hmm, well, what happened? When did you know he was missing?" Mephisto gestured for the two men to take seat on the bed, if for no other reason than they seemed about to faint.

"Why this morning it finally settled in to us that he might have disappeared." Tony said, cocking an eyebrow at Mephisto. "He disappears every once in a while, but usually gets lonesome and shows back up in less than a day, well it's been a full three days and no sign! He just walked out the front door of the shack and never said a word...now, now we just don't know."

"He coulda been eaten by jaguars! Or snakes, you know how tiny he is, he's like a appetizer for jungle animals." Brandon clenched his fist for emphasis.

"Well, there must be somewhere he went, one doesn't simply vanish into this air. Think, both of you, where would he wander off to, especially for any length of time, and without telling you where or why he was going?" Mephisto grabbed a stool and positioned in front of the chef and scholar.

"There's no place on the island I can think of, anytime he wants to go do something he takes one of us, and he's got no other friends here except you, but since you're here he mustn't have come to see you. Besides, what's he want to talk to you for? It's not like you guys have a hell of a lot in common!" Brandon sighed and scratched his head, Mephisto frowned a little, he always thought he was a very good friend and would make a great person to visit.

"So you think he left the island, and kept his destination secret? Where in the Caribbean would he go to, any ideas?" Mephisto thumbed the handle of his pistol and noticed it was still cocked, carefully he pulled the trigger and holding the little flint arm lowered the hammer, he didn't want to have to retrieve any more people from the underworld unless he absolutely had to.

"The Caribbean sucks, there is nothing here anyone would want to visit. All there is here is Spaniards, mosquitoes, pirates, blistering heat, jungles and gold. Waitaminute." Brandon turned to Tony, who opened his eyes wide as well. the two friends blinked in disbelief, had they solved the puzzle? "Chris went to El Dorado!"

"What?" Mephisto narrowed his eyes a little, glancing at the two now extremely animated men.

"Of course, when we stumbled on it all that time ago, we almost had to leave him he was so attached to that gold statue! He's got terrible gold fever. Maybe he's been secretly plotting this all along, he was just waiting, waiting for us to drop our guard, then whoomf! He runs off to the golden city!" Tony shrugged, he was certain now Chris was doomed. "He's probably on a little boat, headed for Panama, then he'll wander into the jungle hoping to retrace our steps back to the city."

"You think he would do something so completely irresponsible and insane?"

"Have you met him? Gold fever aside he's the poster child for stupid plans!" Brandon rose to his feet, "We've got to go to Panama and see if we can catch up with him! There is no way my friends going to get kileld in a jungle, unless I'm the one killin' him...out of love. i added that last bit so you guys wouldn't think I killed him or something." Brandon bounced a little on the bed looking from Mephisto to Tony, abruptly he raised his fists.

"Of course not, I don't have any reason to believe you would kill Chris Mr. Frazier." Mephisto rose from the stool and turned for the door, "Come on, lets head for the docks and see if we can get a ship to take us to Panama." Mephsito gestured for his two cohorts to follow.

"You aren't going to gather the crew?" Tony asked inquisitively.

"No, we'll keep this private, the crew would want at least some kind of prize, besides the city of gold mind you. Just getting there they'd want to attack something, so I think it best we travel in secret." Mephisto walked briskly towards the front door of the governors mansion, his shoes clicking down the flight of stairs, his hand extended to grab his coat, which hung neatly on a hook by the large door.

The three men arrived at the docks via carriage, not without undue adulation at the fact that they didn't have to walk the three miles in the sweltering warmth. Stepping from the carriage Mephisto snapped the door shut and asked the driver to return to the mansion, and to leave word with Governor Logan that he would be back in no time at all.

"Now then, lets see if we can find someone to take us to Panama." Mephisto led the way onto the wooden piers, his eyes skipping from ship to ship, noting which ones appeared to be leaving, and which had only just arrived. Amongst these he noted a small sloop, in need of careening, making ready to leave port, the name on the stern read Unicorn. Mephisto skipped ahead a little, noting an older man barking orders to the three visible crewman, the mans face was extremely care worn and weathered, burnt into leather by many days like this. "Excuse me!" Mephisto gave a shout the man glanced over his shoulder and eyeballed the three men.

"We're leavin'! No need to further tax us on the account of our departure, we have had full enough thank ye very much" He coughed at them, backing steadily towards the gang plank.

"No, we aren't with the Port Authority, we're looking to charter a ship." Mephisto explained waving his hands, his long legs kicked into rigid attention upon reaching the squat old man.

"Really?! You want us to take ye somewhere?" The old man beamed.

"Yes, we were actually hoping to go to Panama, Nombre De Dios to be more exact."

"No problem! Climb aboard, we'll leave at once." The old man began guiding Mephisto by the arm to the gang plank then turned and began quickly undoing the ropes keeping the Unicorn moored.

Once out to sea Mephisto settled in comfortably at the bow of the small ship, Brandon and Tony on the deck playing cards, while the old captain smoked a pipe contentedly.

"Ye truly are a blessing sir." The old man smiled, scanning the horizon, "Before ye came along we had been stuck in port for two weeks, nobody wants to hire us because they're afraid we'll fall ta pieces due to the rot in the hull."

"Oh, it's no problem, my old ship was full of holes for quite some time," Mephisto thought back to the Incognito and its mostly wrecked upper decks, "I simply needed this done quickly and without complaint, we have a friend to rescue." Mephisto looked out to the South West, pondering where in route Chris was.

"Well, don't ya worry, if yer in need of a trip back we'll probably be right where ye left us. My names Scrubrush by the way, Arthur Scrubrush."

"Ahh, very good, you can call me Mephisto, everyone else does, my associates are Mr. Frazier and Mr. Wilson." Mephisto turned to his friends who looked up and waved.

"Nobody but him calls us that, I'm Brandon and this is Tony, if you need help in the kitchen ask me, if you need help teaching your men how to read ask him." Brandon pointed to Tony who coughed a little.

"Actually I'm a history and government scholar, you know, 1066, Magna Carta and all that." Tony smiled then turned back to his game.

"I see, well glad to have ya aboard all the same." Arthur said, dumping the burned up contents of his pipe out over the sea. Mephisto carefully pulled himself onto the bowsprit and lightly made his way over the moldy safety net stretching out on his back to watch the sky turn from blue, to gold, red and finally the deep purples and black of night. It was good to be off the island he thought, if only for a little while.

end part 1

West Coast Style

2009-05-12T19:30:00.000-07:00

So I was explaining a term I used today, the term being "Bro-ham", which I suppose in a traditional spelling would be "brougham", though the meaning is different than 'carriage'. Anyway, Bro-hams I consider to be the appropriate term to use when describing a American West Coast Townie.

You knows townies right? There the people you see in bar scenes in movies that take place in the mid west. They wear shit kickers and cowboy hats, drink bear and have truck nutz. they're the people in the movie that get inevitably beat the fuck up in the bar fight, like cannon fodder for whoever the tough guy is. They're a little less idiotic than rednecks, but not by much, they are simply local people who never got out of town and have drunk their few good brain cells away. Well the term Townie only really works on those people, on the West Coast we need an entirely different term because although the mental acuity is identical, the physical description is different.

Thus I use Bro-ham, or Bra-ham, these gentleman wear dickies or board shorts, are deeply tanned and wear sunglasses at all hours. They hang out at all the "local" bars and eateries, instead of working on a farm and drinking they surf and drink. Also intriguingly enough is that Bro-hams are very age exclusive. You can get a 40 something Townie, but Bro-hams kind of fizzle out around 30. They lower their trucks, ditch the board except maybe on weekends and work as a middle manager at a kinkos. The interesting thing however is that movies still will use townies in bar scenes in west coast locales, when the reality is that our seedy bars don't have townies usually, just washed up hipsters there for ambiance.

So if you go to Dukes and there a guy with sun bleached hair, no shirt and sun glasses, with a shit eating grin...he's a Bro-ham.

Car Trouble!

2009-05-07T17:47:00.000-07:00

"Have you ever had trouble with your automobile?" Adam Ant

So yes, I am now the owner of a 1986 Cadillac Sedan Deville, which as it turns out is a much maligned car. You see the car itself looks fine, and has no real noticeable issues, even its spare is in excellent shape. However as it turns out there is a monster under the hood.

The 86 Cadillac Deville has an HT 4100 V8 engine, which as I understand it has quite the history of random catastrophic failure, mainly due to airflow issues wherein the air intake fan simply never flicks on. Besides this there are problems with coolant leaks in the engine and other such and such. This however is not my current concern. You see I purchased the car on Monday, drove it home and found to my surprise the following morning that it was completely dead. Fortunately I could tell it was the easier to fix kind of dead. There was no power, none at all, and I determined that the battery must therefore be the problem. What to do eh? Well in the dead of night i tried jump starting the car, but without any flashlights or source of visual reference blindly affixed the cable to what I had determined to be the positive and negative terminals, I was completely right incidentally. However the car would not start. So today I set about with the toolbox and decided I would remove the battery, take it to Kragens and have them dispose of it whilst also giving me a rebate for the new battery. Once I opened the hood however I discovered that I had affixed the negative cord to a 'metal' rod, that was actually wrapped in plastic. Perfect I thought, and quickly set about trying to jump start it again. This time it worked, with the negative clasped to the vehicles metal interior edge.

The car started and I went driving, if for no other reason than because I needed to charge the dang thing back up. I pondered what had caused the battery to drain, seeing as how I could not accurately identify any light sources that were on. As I drove though I noticed an acrid smell. GADZOOKS! It was the lights in the ceiling, they were burning hot, to place a thumb print of water on them was to watch it disappear in a evaporated mist. Poke the off button on them as I may they would not stay off. Then after leaving the car for a time i noticed that an additional two lights in the back of the car were trapped in a permanent 'on'!

So I quickly decided to bump up the inspection on the car by my mechanic at Dikes-Thornton Automotive. The car will be left there till Monday, its wiring will be inspected and then the engine and other bits will be looked over and I will decide what bits he finds worth repairing will be repaired.

Such trouble! Hopefully the catastrophic engine failure will miss me.

Unveiling!

2009-05-03T17:04:00.000-07:00

Well then, my two tests have been completed. I know what my car will be themed after, and I also have a rough idea of how many people read this. I probably have 5 readers (so impotent), and my car shall be themed after a British Spitfire. The car in question will be a 1986 Cadillac Coupe Deville, showing here...

So it will be something of a task converting this vehicle to the more classy Spitfire.

Wanderlust Kings

2009-04-28T15:29:00.000-07:00

I have begun to feel that the adventurous mind is a diseased mind. The adventurer sacrifices safety and comfort for the perilous, often dangerous. They seek to pit themselves against odds stacked against them, they like to walk as close to death as possible and come back to share the story. How then can such people be thought of as reasonable, even cultured. Of course there are many types of adventurer, there are the mad, the vainglorious, the courageous, the list could go on and on. However it is the willingness in most to strive beyond normal goals that makes them so intriguing.

Of course fame and privilege is a powerful motivating factor in many such people, they will only leave their doorstep if it means they will come back with money in hand. I am more interested in the people who trek without expectation of reward or recognition, they plunge head first into the wild places to see them. Though now we live in a culture that thinks that adventuring is a cathartic process, meant to be an almost religious experience, a person communing with nature. I don't like that idea, when I explore a new place I look at it in wonderment, I marvel and consider who went before me. To hope for an afterlife for myself would be to surrender to the possibility that I can see all of this when I am dead, to put off what I should do in this life for another, to surrender to the fear of the unknown.

I am so badly inflicted with this disease, this need to explore I am certain it would be the death of me in any other time. If a person suggests that a passage is impossible I will be the first to volunteer to conquer it. Is it though, conquering, do I seek to subjugate, or control what is deemed beyond me? I think I want to show the limitless potential of humanity, a path deemed unworkable has its way, we need only apply ourselves to it. I burn with the desire to shuffle off the trappings of society, the pathetic joke that is 'modern life' for the places rarely seen, the mile just beyond the horizon.

Perhaps this isn't a disease, a corruption of thought. Perhaps the explorer isn't a vestigial part of society, in a world downloadable to a desk top. Perhaps we simply too keenly feel the need human urge to learn, to know. I want to see the world, but not as a tourist, I wish to see the peoples and culture, I wish to understand their society and their history, swim in their lives and envision their history. I am not the Victorian explorer, I can't judge the lives of those I meet by my own standards. We cannot discriminate against the cannibals and naked peoples of the Amazon or East Asia. We are only worthy of viewing it, containing our fear or misunderstanding and returning to the world and informing. I want to fill in the blank spaces on the map, though non are left, they are the holes in my map, my understanding of this world. I want to see the crown jewels of Europe, the seats of Empires long laid to waste by time and environment. I wish to pass through the deserts of Arabia, to feel the blistering heat of the Nefud, so I can understand what it meant to those who would dare to have done it. I wish to see the decadence of the oil barons, their poor hidden from the rich contractors, man made islands, like Ozymandias warning against the desire to be timeless. I want to see the spice markets of India, the open sewers, and the jungles in the north that hid the Thugee from British view. Nepal, Burma, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Ulanbatar. I want to ride a train into Siberia, and ponder on the Romanov's, visiting Moscow I would look for black cats and checkered suits. Africa, the jungles and gorillas, the booming diamond industry, the crushing debt and fear of witchcraft. Name the town and I wish to see it, no matter how small or far removed ask me to go there for a day and I will, so that I can tell the world what lies just outside their border.

The rainbow array of flags, tied to the mountains, when each one blows away a wish is granted. Gold hammered day and night into thin strips to be applied to statues of the Buddha. the bones of Saints and pieces of the 'true cross, in reliquaries, thousands passing by in reverence. Xingu tribesman, sitting in a canoe, fishing with a string and hook, a trick they learned from a dead Englishman eighty years ago, they store the catch in ceramic pots, identical to ones they made seven thousand years ago. I am desperate to not read these stories, you cannot hope to ever know it all, but knowing even a fraction of what it means to see the sun rising over Alexandria, Tokyo, Kinshasa or the Mato Grosso can sustain a soul their whole life. The search is endless, the empty space in a persons knowledge can never truly be filled, but it is the journey that makes it worthwhile.

I cannot be one of those who satisfies themselves with stories, with imagined empires, I cannot sustain my being with mere illusions as so many do, with games, movies, half hearted promises. I fear I will burst if contained too long without the road before me, locked in a job, locked in a life not even worth contemplating. I live only in fear that I will never leave these shores, or that if I do, I will never come back to tell my story to my close few friends who would care to hear it. i sit now, looking out the window at the trees, blowing in the wind. In my mind I am floating past them, over them, looking forward, traversing the miles in seconds. Rushing over everything, taking it in and I am seeing the world fly by, the people, the animals, the rugged mountains and soft green hills. Yet I am here, and must remain here, with this one tree. To me now, the rest of the world is as distant as the Moon, visible, but too far to touch, to see the powdery silt of its surface fall through my hand and fall like a microscopic snow. This is the anguish of an explorer, to know that there is a beyond, but to not have the means to attain it. It is what brought Walter Raleigh to the executioners block, it sent Magellan to his death at the hands of natives, it guided Percy Fawcett to his unmarked tomb in the Amazon. So it is for the explorer, let the mind perish with inactivity, or send the body to perish in pursuit of the next horizon.

I am not an ordinary man.

A Car/Fighter Plane Dilemma

2009-04-27T15:53:00.000-07:00

So in the coming weeks I hope to be getting a motor car, with which I intend on motoring places. It occurred to me after a genial discussion of fixing HUD's to dashboards to reflect onto the drivers window that I may want to have a themed vehicle (though of a slightly more extravagant variety) So then I decided I wished to use the details of a fighter plane from the 'great' World War II, but the question arose of which one? So after much internal debate I will offer up to you, my three+ readers to decide. Naturally I will show you the details of both planes to assist in your decision.

First off we have the British made 'Supermarine Spitfire', my original choice to use for the car.

The color scheme would be maintained over the body of the car, including air group lettering behind the passenger and driver side doors. The hubcaps would also bear the concentric circles representing the Royal air Group as seen on the wing and fuselage.

However there would be an anachronistic element added to the car for effect. I would include the mouth displayed here on a P-40 Warhawk, over the wheel well.

Quiet stylish wouldn't you say?

Now then, that would be the sum total of the work done to the car if I decide to go with the Spitfire. We must now look at my other option, the Japanese A6M 'Zero' fighter plane.

This particular design is from mid war, land based Zero's, as opposed to the solid green or silver ones from carrier groups. So in this case the body of the car would have a similar pattern, with a grayish strip running along the bottom. The large Rising Sun would replace the concentric circles on the Spitfire car. Beyond the detailing for the design I would also go a step further and add a bit of detailing like this.

The whitish areas at the front of the craft, and leading wing edge are areas of wear and tear. On the car these would be created using a silver "undercoat" of paint that would be slowly covered by the actual aerial camouflage.

Now then, the biggest problem we face is not so much, which looks better, but what will people think under specific circumstances. With the British made Spitfire, there is really no considerations made as to what the car represents, but with the Zero we have war crimes and senseless brutality and aggression. The only reason the zero is a possibility is that we here in America have short memories when it comes to the Japanese War. We ignore the brutality in a way, but still cling to our loathing of Nazi's. Anyway, that's beside the point, the Mitsubishi A6M Reisen was a great plane, and had an interesting design element.

It is thus that i have placed a poll up on the right hand panel, it will close in a week, and the winning plane will be my eventual design scheme for the car. So please vote, if you have any other ideas list them, mind you I will ignore fighter jets, because I hate them.

God Damned Auto Safety Fuckers!

2009-04-25T10:18:00.000-07:00

So I happened across a news article today, a little piece (of shit, if you looked at my title) of reporting about small cars and safety. Just reading the tag line lets you know what this article is all about. Basically it says that this not-for-profit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has done a few tests on all the fuel efficient small cars on the road and has determined them to be death traps, designed to enclose the driver in a metal cage, then hurl them into razor sharp spikes. Those ballsy motherfuckers at Honda have been trying to kill us for years and now we have the proof. Oh wait, I sense something, perhaps there is an ulterior motive behind an independent study, done by a specialty group, against a class of vehicle with stunning findings.

At this point I am used to this, I haven't had the unwavering faith to trust any "independent investigation" that claims to have stunning evidence of such and such bullshit. You see in the past 8, hell 20 years it has become the norm to have these not-for-profit companies created, then funded privately by certain groups, with certain interests, and then the group creates a series of tests or an investigation and voila, you have tailor made numbers for whatever pet crusade you adhere to.

So too with this.

You see the report says that in testing car safety, automotive companies only apply industry standards, but do not test for certain outlying problems, which for them is what happens when you hurls a Dodge Ram at a smart car? Now mind you the smart car will usually get wrecked, but the driver generally will walk away. This is not the study that they are performing, they are hurling larger vehicles, head on at an already speeding smart car, at speeds that most accidents of the type they are depicting don't occur at. The result of the findings then are shocking because they reveal that everyone in the smart car is dead and the medium to large SUV's are coming out tip top. Never mind the fact that it is exceptionally rare to have two cars driving DIRECTLY AT EACH OTHER AT FORTY MILES AN HOUR, with both drivers avoiding stopping or turning. What we have is a company playing chicken. Now they say that because the smart car can't stand such force it is inherently much more dangerous than the SUV. They ask you to please ignore the fact that most of us don't play chicken while hopped up on 'ludes. Their recommendations for the problem are to beef up small cars, into more medium sized cars, and to not fall for all that bullshit about 'green' this and 'peak oil' that.

So basically this article is character assassination against all the small cars that are coming out, and which are being pushed for to change our shitty shitty environment for the better. Now when I read this I had to stop and consider who did it, a group of independent insurance companies, all trying to get the best results. Well, I decided to dig a bit deeper, because why would these particular insurance companies be actively throwing a wrench in the gears of vehicles that, if they become the norm, will probably be safer, and cost them less money to pay for if they explode, after a hummer rams them at 100 mph.

Well, a quick review determined that one of the board of directors, Mr. Gary Kusumi, works for GMAC insurance group, an insurance company whose purpose is to provide coverage to large SUV's, motor homes and high end off road vehicles, you know, the good guys from the articles. So in effect you have a slightly partisan fellow directing the company, and Christ knows where the funding for the study came from.

Naturally the IIHS sent out notices to all the companies that make the cars they tested, Toyota, and Honda (do I smell a GMC conspiracy?) to which the quality and safety communications manager for Honda sent a letter back to the press, "The IIHS test is equivalent to an 80-mph closing speed (with opposing vehicles traveling at 40 mph), a speed and energy higher than 99.1% of all real-world crashes," fun. Also Honda pointed out that the tests also depicted "unusual or extreme conditions", so yeah, seems kind of like this was just a series of tests to start turning public opinion against cheap smart cars, and more towards slightly more expensive American medium to large cars.

I mean seriously people, I hate shit like this, I should make a company that tests large cars for safety. I'll drop nuclear subs on them, then point out how they were unable to stand up to the force of impact against large objects. Or better yet, I'll take a SUV, and then launch baseballs at it, at 1,000 mph, then show unequivocally that small projectile, possibly kicked up from the road, will impale your car, and cut you in half. Fuck you independent studies, you can all eat a bag of dicks.

God damn you all to hell!

History! April 24th + Time and Space

2009-04-24T15:21:00.000-07:00

Well at least one thing that happened in the past was interesting today. however here's something that has always intrigued me, time and space. You see I love history, and the thought that at a point in time in a certain place something happened where real living people, with lives and plans met and something happened. Naturally then I have an interest in the idea of traveling through time. Now then, that's slightly complicated when I think about it, and it's something I've never really noticed explained or considered in time travel fiction, that thing being your 'place' in time. You see the Earth isn't just spinning around the Sun in space, the whole solar system is also moving and spinning, so where we are now is not where we were a thousand years ago, dig? This creates for me a concern, if you drop me off at a vector in space, at a point in time, wont I be dropped off gasping in the void, even if the Earth is relatively close by even an error of a few miles or minutes could kill me in horrible ways. So then, if you have heard someone speak about this issue please raise your hand, I would love to know the solution.

So, lets get back to the point, History!

1184, the Greeks use the Trojan horse to enter the city of Troy, where they go batshit insane and kill everyone, 'cuz that's how the Greeks roll.

Go get 'em lads.

1558, Mary Queen of Scots marries the Dauphin of France at Notre Dame, afterwards she pleasantly remarks "Man, could life get any better? There is no way I'm getting decapitated the way things are going."

1800 the Library of Congress is founded, John Adams told congress he needed 5,000 dollars to buy all the books Congress could potentially need. After that initial investment was burned in the War of 1812 Thomas Jefferson supplied the replacements, because he pretty much owned every book in North America, not that he found time to read between writing pamphlets and being a dick to his slaves. Now the Library of Congress has millions of books, all at the disposal of our legislative body, in case they need them to understand government, for example I'm certain the epic political tome "Are You There God, It's Me Margaret" is a favorite amongst representatives.

Dashed bad luck that.

1898, Aww shit, President McKinley gets his wish and America declares war on Spain. So today marks the beginning of the Spanish American War, this being like the fourth completely unnecessary American war, right after the War of 1812, the Mexican/American War (However I do like living in California, thank you Polk), the Indian Wars, and of course now this shit. McKinley wanted an excuse to flex Americas muscles and show the world it was hot shit and that everyone needed to be nervous. At the same time Teddy Roosevelt (a rival and major nuisance to McKinley) was all hot and bothered by the prospect of a war that he could be in. So we marched off and beat the ever loving snot out of Spain, a country that hadn't had a good day since the Armada got blown of course in the 17th century. Roosevelt incidentally beat so much ass that America fell in love with him, and to keep him from getting his hands into government McKinley offered him the vice presidency when he ran for re-election. This was of course a brilliant stroke, because vice presidents can't do dick, and they usually fade from the spotlight as a result, that is until you get assassinated by Leon Czolgosz (pronounced Sholgosh).

Oh look at them laugh.

1915, we see the beginning of the Armenian Genocide, which according to earlier ads from Turkey on my home page, never happened. Yeah right Turkey, like I believe you at all.

1916, the Easter uprising begins, wherein Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, and Joseph Plunkett all start gettin' up in the faces of the hated British in Ireland. I recommend you all now go and listen to as many Irish nationalist tunes as you can find.

1918, in the now dwindling World War I we see the first tank to tank combat of the war, when three British Mark IV's ran into three German A7V's...the fight was probably really confusing and boring, here's the contestants...

That just screams Britain doesn't it, like a big 'ole pot of stew, in a pub with a bulldog squattin' in a corner licking his unmentionables.

Well, isn't that just so...efficient? No wonder you lost the war, you built toaster ovens instead of tanks.

1926, the Treaty of Berlin is signed, it says that Germany and Russia wont go to war for five years if a third party starts shit, you know, if the cause of World War I happens all over again, 'cuz everyone just stone jonesin' for a fight. Never mind that the thing you should be really worried about is the crippling economic conditions or the annoying guy shaking his fists and screaming about Jews.

1953, Winston Churchill is knighted by the Queen. Really, not you know, after the war, like the week it ended...'53? What was it even for the war, or did you just give him the knighthood because he gave you a really cool record player as a birthday present. I mean Christ, he's so fuckin' British he owns that pub with the bulldog licking itself. He calls it the Freckled Dick, the pub, not the dog.

1967, Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies on the Soyuz 1 when his parachute doesn't open. This is the first human to die on a space mission. America, insulted that they lost this particular honor in the space race promptly kills all the astronauts in the Apollo 1, with fire, because that's more brutal than just falling to your death, when there's so much pure oxygen in your spaceship that a static shock will blow your ass to kingdom come. Way to go, America number 1.

2005, we got our new shitty Pope, you know the one who looks like Emperor Palpatine.

Feel the power of this fully armed and operational Vatican.

Random Article! 4/23/09

2009-04-23T19:58:00.000-07:00

So history was slow today, unless you love Turkish succession issues or the minor battles in Spain (pre renaissance). Naturally with such a void I will have to create a new feature, with which to exercise my wit, or lack thereof. So now i am proud to introduce the "Random Article" feature, in which I hit the random article button on wikipedia and discuss the topic I get. Now this may get boring really fast, I once spent ten minutes hitting that button and got nothing but s steady stream of soccer teams and soccer competitions from around the world. I'm pretty sure wikipedia is 70% soccer related material.
So lets countdown to a new feature in...
5...
4...
3...
2...
1...
Liftoff (this is ground control to Major Tom)

HAHA FUCK!
(Today's article)Tiefland(elcitrtA syadoT)

So this article is about a movie directed, scripted, produced and starring Leni Riefenstahl. You probably don't know Leni, here's a picture, of her, next to another sporty chap who is not Charlie Chaplin. Alright, so Leni was a Nazi, and may have made a little movie called "Triumph of the Will" about how Nazi supermen are our superiors. Real classy lady.

The film is based on a play with the same name, Leni here decided to write a little script in '34, but didn't actually start production till '40, wrapping in '44. Even then it wasn't until 1954 that it was released. This was the last full length film she directed and starred in.

So lets break down the plot for all of you out there...

Wait, reviewing the plot now is confusing the hell out of me, lets try this anyway...

Pedro is a loser, who herds sheep in the Pyrenees (mountains between France and Spain) he awakes to find a Wolf just stone killin' his sheep, so he summons what energy he can to choke the bitch wolf out. Mind you I think that Pedro here represents the Monarchists, and the wolf Nazi airmen assisting the Fascists, but then again it doesn't because if that were the case Leni would have the wolf eat Pedro while efficiently doing gymnastics like a spaz. Anyway, in the lowlands a little community is getting its ass handed to it by a rich land owner named Don Sebastian. The Don, as his friends call him, has built a canal that is depriving his people of water for food, but is making his prized bulls very happy? Is that really a good reason to build a canal, do the bulls even notice? who will pay rent when everyone is dead from starvation? Anyway, the peasants are all like "Please don't starve us!" and Don replies with a chortle "No way, my bulls need to be all jazzed up, before I kill them with swords in a completely fair fight." However Don does have a serious problem, he is broke and owes some people money, apparently he's engaged to a woman named Amelia, who is wealthy and totally grossed out by his shit eating grin, so he does the smart thing and takes a local "beggar dancer" (a common job in Spain), Martha, and locks her in a golden cage at his 'pad'. She dances for his amusement, like people do, and begs him to stop killing his peasants. Naturally he says no, because seriously, why get out of debt by charging rent for the land you have all these peasants on, hell sell a bull you douche. So Martha runs away where she meets Pedro (Spains premier wolf throttler), but Don finds her and brings her back. Now deeply in trouble with his bookies he arranges to marry Amelia (because she changed her mind or some shit), but he also wants Martha, so he marries Martha off to Pedro, and gives Pedro a mill to live at, so he knows where to find his fuck buddy Martha. Well Martha fucking hates this plan and gets all up on Pedro's case for being a party to this ridiculous affair, to which Pedro responds "Uh, I love you, so that's kind of why i let him marry me off to you." Martha is all like "Bawwww", when suddenly Don walks in looking for something to fuck. Pedro uses his mad skills and chokes Don to death and then he and Martha go and live in the mountains, choking wolves by day and having dirty 'beggar dancer' sex at night.

Now the details of making this masterpiece, this triumph of the will, if you will. Leni wrote it in 1934, but she got involved in propaganda film making right about when the war started, so that really sidetracked her. Wikipedia says that she was disturbed by atrocities and didn't want to make any more propoganda films (I frankly have no clue, I prefer painting her a s a total Nazi). So she made her own film company, using her clout as 'Hitlers Favorite'. So she spent years making this film on location, facing numerous set backs, Goebbels was all like "WTF, why does Hitler dig on you so much?" For example Leni couldn't find an actress to play Martha, so she simply took the role. the major problem with that is the fact that she was 40 at the time and Pedro (as played by a guy named Franz) was 23, way to rob the cradle 'beggar dancer'.

Of course there's controversy too. Apparently the villagers used in background shots were Italian gypsies, selected from internment camps, hand chosen by Riefenstahl. Now this isn't the half of it, apparently once shooting wrapped for those scenes they were promptly deported to Auschwitz, there's a feel good hit if I ever heard of one, "Tiefland, 3 out of five cast members dead in the Holocaust". Also it says that James Cameron's shitberg Titanic echoes Tiefland in many ways, this makes James Cameron a Nazi in my book,so you better watch out Cameron, I'm on to you.

So I hope you enjoyed this first installment of "RANDOM ARTICLE", I'll see you the next time there's nothing good on this day in history.

Stuff I Find to Eat...II

2009-04-23T19:35:00.000-07:00

So I suppose since I earlier suggested that whenever I find things to eat at work I should list it i guess I should explain what I found today.

Whilst cruising round the western tributaries of the office I happened upon an interesting collection of tin foil wrapped sundries. One appeared to be small cookies, roughly the diameter of a nickel, and writ above them an undecipherable foreign language. Deeming the writing to be Middle Eastern in origin I happily opened the lift to the tin foil container, reading the words in English further down the package "Rice Cookies". Plucking one from its nest I ate it whole, hoping to be surprised, but unfortunately the cookie was unsatisfactory. It exploded into dust in my mouth, and was sugary in a bad way. I set my eyes upon the next container, labeled in farmers English "Baklava", I was enthused as i had never had baklava before and it looked decidedly edible. Opening the lid I took the tiniest of pieces, not wanting to disturb the overall ambiance of the display, nor arose suspicion if the previous owner had measured the dimensions of their pastry. Placing the small bit in my mouth I discovered that it was quite delicious, but also that since its packaging suggested an Eastern European version of Sam's Club as its original home, then real fresh baklava must be even better.

Swinging back around to the East side of the office I happened across a half eaten chocolate cake, as well as an enormous bag of off-off brand tortilla chips. I decided to grab three chips and return later for cake. Leaving the area I happened across a bag of chocolate gold coins, taking one from the twenty or so in the bag I finished my patrol. With the main part of my evening complete I returned to the cake and took a small piece for myself. At my desk i sat to eat it, pleased that I hadn't had to rummage through garbage to get any food, but disappointed that everything was a 10 on the sweet scale. Unfortunately the cake was poorly made and used almond oil. This is the bane of my pastry world, it's often found in cheaply made cakes and buns at places like Albertson's and Safeway, the flavor created by almond oil, or almond extract as it is sometimes referred to on the labeling is one akin to 'artificial cherry'. Now if you have known me for upwards of ten minutes then you have probably heard me decry the evils of cherry. Cherries are the devil, when you put them in your mouth you are making a contract with Satan to buy a timeshare in Tobago. Don't fuckin' do it.

This meant that the cake was by and large rather disgusting, with its god damned artificial flavors, what happened America, is real chocolate in my cake to good for you. The cake is a lie.

History! April 16!

2009-04-16T19:26:00.000-07:00

So today we have more history, and a guaranteed visit from a Kate Beaton strip. So if you don't like Kate Beaton, you'd better get the fuck outta the way.

73 AD, Masada falls to the Romans. You may know Masada, it was a Jewish stronghold during the Jewish Revolt in the Holy Land. The reason you may know Masada is that the history channel carts it's antiquated ass out all the time show the amazing skills the Romans had for sieges. Also, in case you were wondering, the Romans won.

1746, the battle of Culloden is fought between the Scottish Jacobite Rebels and the holier than though British. the Scots had been toiling under Hanoverian British rule for some time now and were rather hoping to restore one of their Stuart monarchs to the throne. So one of the rightful heirs to the Scottish/English throne was Charles Stuart, known to his friends as Bonnie Prince Charlie, or 'The Young Pretender', not to be confused with his father 'The Old Pretender', or the Freddy Mercury cover of 'The Great Pretender'.

Charlie raised an army of Scottish rebels (called Jacobites) and defeated the British Army in Scotland, failing however in the long run to defeat the garrison in Edinburgh. Mind you many Scottish people at the time weren't particularly enthused by the prospect of another rebellion, they had had quite a few and they usually ended with everyone dead. So to assuage the fears (most people steal Shakespeare quotes, I steal Lincoln) of the rebel army and the locals Charlie explains that "We are going to get help! Yes, tonnes of help from the British Jacobites, what you've never heard of them, well...they're a silent majority in England and with this excellent news that I won they will rise up! Oh, and also the French will invade! They have nothing better to do right?" So the army marches along happily waiting for a force of French troops to come briskly to England and start kicking ass, never mind the whole "ENGLAND RULES THE WAVES" thing. Well Charlie marched South and moved ever closer to London and King George II, but trouble was comin' for him. Charles was informed that the French invasion fleet was still being organized, that the garrison in London outnumbered him by 1,000, plus cavalry, and that there were two separate armies headed his way, one led by George's son, the Duke of Cumberland and another led by George Wade. There were also spurious rumours that another army was flanking them, but this was fiction. Oh yeah, and those awesome English Jacobites, they never came forward, but more highlanders were beginning to mass in Scotland to join up when he returned.

Charlie decided then (with deep resentment, because he's an idiot) to hand over command to Lord George Murray, who says "Let's go home and see if we can actually win this rebellion." Well the Army headed north and kept getting harassed by British troops, as well as lack of footwear (all that marching really wears holes in your shoes made of paper). Cumberland arrives in Edinburgh and tells everyone "Listen up, I'm in charge up here, so we're going to head to Aberdeen and train, then go and kill us some wild Scots." After the cheering died down they went and did this. Charlie, being the prick he is, demanded that the army be placed back under his control, he wanted to fight a defensive action against Cumberland.

So lets look at the two armies shall we? First off we have the Jacobites, an army comprised of Scottish clans. these clan based regiments bore the name of their originating family, and were led by officers from that clan, while the soldiers were all people who were tenants of the clans land. Generally to get the men to fight you had to be at the front of the ranks, which naturally meant an enormously high mortality rate for officers in the Jacobite army, so I suppose leadership was one of their biggest problems.

On the other side we have the British Army, a well trained constantly mobile, brutally efficient fighting force. I mean Christ, for most of the campaign the Scots had pitchforks and axes instead of guns.

Onto the battle! So Today in History Charles decides that it's best to organize his men in a flat marshy area near Culloden. The one tactic that made the Scots dangerous was their feared 'Highland Charge' which primarily involved enormous bearded men running at break neck speed down a hill with swords until either they were dead, or the other guy was. So fighting on pock marked flat terrain was the antithesis of what a person in charge of 7,000 Scots would want to do. The council of war asked Charles to 'please reconsider, we could fight a guerrilla campaign' to which Charles flatly refused 'No bitches, this Cumberland be all up in my shit!'

So how did the battle go? Well the British stood around with long range guns and picked off highlanders, until of course Charlie demanded a charge. So now the already beleaguered Scots moved towards the murderous fire, until finally bloody and beaten they retreated. So in total some 2,000 Scots were killed in the fighting and retreat, oh, and Charlie, he fled the battle quick as a bunny and made his way East towards Skye. The British lost 50 men, bummer for the Highlands.

Charles made good his escape from Scotland and returned to France deciding it was against his best interest to ever come back. Meanwhile the now totally pissed off British proceeded to put the screws to the Highlands, raiding family residences and searching for signs of rebels. it was straight up Star Wars in Scotland after that, except I guess Luke goes back to Tatooine in this one. Now here's your comic...

Alright lets carry on then, oh and visit harkavagrant.com

1917, Lenin rolls on into Petrograd after his exile in Switzerland, looks like shits about to hit the fan in Russia!

1943 Dr. Albert Hofmann discovers that LSD makes you turn into a Ralph Steadman painting.

1947, the term "Cold War" is coined, and thank heavens, the runner up was "A War Where Neither of Us Shoots Because We're Afraid of Causing An Apocalypse".

1990, Dr. Kevorkian does his first assisted suicide, fun times.

The Great Race!

2009-04-16T17:26:00.000-07:00

What's that, you don't know this film? Well you should watch it! Because if you don't you probably won't understand what this is all about, but then again this isn't actually about the film "The Great Race" it's about another race.

Apparently for the last few years there has been a race going on, which I have not been made aware of, and which by my understanding would be precisely the kind of race that I would expect to be involved in. In essence this is an event or activity that is essentially me, an adventure so intriguing that I feel compelled to find a way to make it happen.

The race is called the Mongol Rally, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_Rally, and it appears to be perfect in execution. You select what is described as a "crappy car" and arrive in Hyde Park in London. When the flag drops and the 200 contestants "go" as it were, you begin a trek to Ulan Bator in Mongolia. There is no route, no plans, just people all trying to make it there in one piece. Some take routes through Istanbul, others have gone to the top of the world to try and make it. Many racers are forced to quit, and once you've arrived your car is left and given to the government of Mongolia to use as it needs.

Imagine the adventures that await you, you begin huddled in your dilapidated hunk of junk, held together by duct tape and glue then speed off over uncertain roads and strange vistas. No guides, no plans, no rules except get there!

Apparently the whole thing is organized by this company, http://www.theadventurists.com/index.php

Who although being something akin to an "organization" have what sounds like my kind of philosophy. There isn't a competition on there I could think of that I wouldn't want to try. these are the things dreams are made of, harrowing pursuits for fortune and glory, dusty places better left untrod, unexpected events and unlikely scenes.

Standing astride the mountains of mundane thumb biting mollycoddles I would stretch my legs and take long bounding steps in fine pin striped slacks and immaculately polished boots. Brushing the heads of the common crowds, content to watch their prime time TV my black frock coat would catch the breeze and direct me like sail. Perched crookedly on my brow a top hat, to let everyone know that this was not a gentleman to be taken with a grain of salt, oh no! This was an extraordinary gentleman with extraordinary plans! People would look to me and swatting at malaria infected mosquitoes, their t-shirts clinging to their backs and say "What's this, the ghost of an adventurer! Isn't he hot under all that wool?!" and I would stoop to greet them, my filthy Fiat rumbling behind me and I would toff my hat to them and say "Never hot! To be hot is to be nervous, to be nervous is to have lost faith in the adventure! Here my good men, take a sup of water, my treat." and before they had time to eek out a 'thank you' I am gone in a cloud of dirt and the sound of distant brass bands.

Deaths...

2009-04-15T18:27:00.000-07:00

Today in history, 1,500 people died on the Titanic including her Captain Edward Smith.
Abraham Lincoln died across the street from Ford's Theatre in a boarding house bed.
Gaston Leroux, author of the Phantom of the Opera died from a urinary tract infection.
Jean Paul Sartre, famed French philosopher died from an oedema of the lung.
Pol Pot, feared Cambodian dictator died under house arrest.
Joey Ramone passed away from lymphatic cancer, at the hospital he listened to "In A Little While" by U2 before leaving.

Why I Am Dumb

2009-04-14T20:16:00.000-07:00

There are quite a few reasons I am dumb, my rudimentary math skills are certainly a strong sign. Then of course there's the unbelievable notion that more than four or five people come here in a given week, one of them is usually me might I add. However these reasons aren't completely satisfactory for my description of myself as being dumb.

I rarely visit ebay, usually I cross paths with it when I have a need unfulfillable by regular businesses. This equates to me walking away from the standard economy of big box stores, past the home town economy of Mom and Pop shops, and straight into the shadow economy of guys with neck beards and cheetoh stained fingers, living in lightless caverns selling rare trinkets. About 90% of the time things work out, I make a deal with the pasty Deep Ones and go about my business, but every once and again I make some foolish discovery and then through a series of idiotic decisions I end up in a world of hurt.

So, in the past few weeks I have been analyzing my need to adventure and cut a figure again. Which then leads me to wonder what I don't have, that I have wanted in the past, but previously been without the means to acquire. In this case, I have been reading The Lost City of Z, the story of intrepid explorer Percy Fawcett and his quest to find a lost city in the Amazon. Naturally he dies and no one sees him again, but the mystique and intrigue around him is tangible and potent on certain weak minds. In the book there are a handful of pictures of Fawcett, and although in my own anachronistic nature I have steadily come into the possession of plenty of interesting articles of clothing, one which has eluded me, Jodhpurs, otherwise known as riding breeches. You still probably have no clue what these are, so I'll further the description, they are those riding pants which flare at the thigh and tie at the knee, creating something of a puffy side.

I decided to head to ebay to look for some antique breeches, as modern riding breeches are merely tight white pants. Well, much to my surprise, and future chagrin, I found two pairs. The first pair is made entirely of wool, unlined, light green in color, it's from early 1918, and belonged to a poor enlisted American officer. The second pair, from the same dealer, are made of a more traditional and vastly less itchy material, and are from 1927, also U.S. Military in nature. Both in fine condition. The dealer also had a woolen sleeping bag from World War II, which I decided would do well in the back of any future automobile I had, because you never know where you may have to lay your head when adventure calls you.

So, based on previous experiences on ebay I assumed that all of these items would soon be on the block and skyrocketing in price. so i placed a single bet on each, with the intention of maybe only actively focusing on one, but leaving it open to snatch another should my main attention get to far ahead. Well damnation, no one has bid but me, or rather the one person who bid, bid a dollar more and gave up, not even making it close to my upper limit on the item. So now, with less than 23 hours to go i am winning all three items, when I really only intended on getting 1. Now I could simply buy the one I actually wanted and leave the rest unpaid for, but that's bad eggs isn't it? I don't want to get on Lady ebays bad side, she's probably where I will be getting my next car from.

Now I will also add a little addendum, riding breeches only come to the knees, and I have no knee boots (decidedly more expensive than breeches), so in the end to actually wear them I will have to find a low price pair of knee high boots, which will then open another line of reasoning...black boots or brown? If black won't i look quite a bit like a Nazi? But I would assume it would be easier to find black. Oh well, this is all in the future and who knows, maybe you've always wanted a pair of riding breeches and now I've informed you and you can save my bacon.

Extra History! 4/14/09

2009-04-14T18:10:00.000-07:00

How much more horror can we pack into a day? I'll show you!

So, right now it's 6:10, and in an hour and 25 minutes it will be 11:35 in the north Atlantic and back in 1912 the RMS Titanic will strike an Iceberg. It will not sink until tomorrow morning taking over 1,500 passengers with it.

2000, Lars Ulrich, human shit receptacle, sues Napster.

History! 4/14/09

2009-04-14T17:19:00.001-07:00

Could these get any more boring? So why do I continue? Because I will it.

1775 (starting off a bit late huh) the first abolitionist group is founded in America, Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, otherwise known as SRFNUHB, or Surfin' A Bee (all lies). The founding members were Benjamin Rush, and Benjamin Franklin. Franklin did it to get laid, Rush did it hoping he'd get some of Franklin's left overs.

1846, the Donner party leaves Springfield, Illinois on their way to kick ass California. 150 years later elementary school children everywhere will recreate their journey with the only fun educational game in existence, Oregon Trail.

1865, an actual important event and I'm glad I brought it up. I should probably make an individual post about this as well. Our 16th President Abraham Lincoln is shot at Fords Theater by the assassin John Wilkes Booth. Right now it is about 9:35 back East, and at this moment Booth is waiting at the theater. He arrived 30 minutes earlier and, because he was once an actor he is waiting for the right moment to climb the stairs to the Presidents box. At 10:15 Mary Todd, Lincoln's wife, will note that he is holding her hand, and asks what Miss Harris (a guest of Lincoln's) will think, to which Lincoln will say "She won't think anything about it." Moments later, during an outbreak of laughter from the audience (timed out by booth) Booth will shoot the President at point blank range in the back of the head with a dillinger. Major Rathbone, soon to be husband of Miss Harris, tries to grab Booth, but is stabbed. Booth attempts to climb forward towards the railing, but Rathbone grabs him again, and is rebuffed by Booth's knife again. Booth attempts a graceful leap from the Presidents box to the stage, but his riding spur catches the American flag bunting on the box and he lands awkwardly, breaking his fibula. Limping forward he turns to the audience and shouts "Sic Semper Tyrannis!" Latin for "thus always to tyrants!", the state motto of Virgina. He then fled the stage and made good his escape. Lincoln, now is non responsive, but a group of three doctors are quickly on the scene and after removing a clot from the wound he is moved across the street to William Petersen's Boarding House. Lincoln is placed on a bed there at an angle because he is too tall to lay straight up and down. At 7:22 am, on April 15th (3:22 am our time) Abraham Lincoln passed away, United States Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton was there and commented "Now he belongs to the ages."

I'll throw this up now and follow up with more in a little bit.

The world must know!

2009-04-10T19:42:00.001-07:00

Jones' Big Ass Truck Rental & Storage

History! Lite! 4/10/09

2009-04-10T17:45:00.001-07:00

So today we're going to be looking at just a few dates from history, because a few important things happened and little else.

1865, Forgot to mention but yesterday Robert E. Lee surrendered his troops at Appomattox court house. Today however is the day he last addressed his soldiers. I picture the two events like this...

1912, OH SHIT! The Titanic leaves Southampton to go and see New York. I wonder what will be in store for them?

1919, Emiliano Zapata is shot dead by Government agents in Morelos. This marks the beginning of a trend in Mexican film making where the brave Robin hood type is gunned down battling the corrupt government.

1925, The Great Gatsby is published for the first time, in New York. Two weeks later it is required reading for all High School freshmen.

1970, Paul McCartney announces that the Beatles are splitting up, Death excitedly begins sharpening his scythe.

Also, in the holiday section of the post today is "Good Friday" the supposed day Jesus was crucified on Golgotha. What makes this a "Good" day I can hardly guess.

I had to do that! It was just sitting there on Wikipedia for gosh sakes. I'm not made of stone!

Ghost Story...

2009-04-09T20:52:00.000-07:00

This is a true tale of spirits and unexplained events. I can guarantee its truth by the virtue that none other than myself was there to experience it. Of course if you don't know me that well then you can easily dismiss what I'm about to tell you, but if you know me you can vouch for the veracity of my claims, and my composure to recognize what could actually be "out there".

There was a time when I would go prowling around at night with a select handful of friends and seek the unexplained and paranormal. Generally speaking we returned empty handed, or when something did come up it was easily dismissed as something natural. However one night, apparently cursed, my fellows and I ventured into the ruins of an abandoned hospital and witnessed a singularly terrifying event.

The players in question were...

We were old hat at the business of ghost hunting, two of us had advanced degrees in Ghostbusters quoting in fact. Unfortunately this would not prepare us for what we found inside the old hospital that quiet spring night.

Funny thing is the place we went to, Old Saint John's Hospital in Oxnard, CA, we had been more than once, or rather Mike and I had been. I had taken photo's and explored the nooks and crannies of the place. I had a degree of familiarity with the site that kept me from feeling nervous about what I might find, in spite of the gruesome stories. Rumours abounded, told by former employees that the unnatural events plaguing the hospital was partly the reason they built a new site across town. In the microbiology labs faucets and decontamination showers would spring to life simultaneously, forcing the night crew to go through and turn off each handle. An old man would ride the elevator with you in silence, before disappearing as you were about to reach his floor. In pediatrics a little girl would sit with the sick children and talk about their days, confounding the nurses who had no recollection of such a girl being in the ward. In the basement, beside the morgue where the autopsies would take place tools would go missing, strange shuffling sounds could be heard all the way in cardiology down the hall. Shadows prowled the rooftops and hallways at night, and every so often, on the third floor in the maternity ward a pale and bloody woman would wander the halls with her stillborn baby. Suffice it to say it scared the hell out of the night shift nurses.

So in spite of such stories we had never experienced anything, well, nearly anything. We had heard doors, crashing open and hurried footsteps down hallways and stairwells. I attributed the sounds to a confused crack head, and found a route that kept us parallel and away from whatever was thundering down the corridors. On another occasion we followed an unusual patch of shadow through the building, it waiting in doorways and fleeing silently down ramps and stairwells. These were however minor things, unusual, but not terrifying.

So it was with an eagerness usually reserved for bad movie night we went back, with Brandon in tow. Brandon hadn't been on a hunt for ages and wanted to see what the fuss was about. We pulled open a hole in the fence and he wriggled through then we approached the south side of the building. The place was shaped like an 8bit letter A, a hollow courtyard, with four long corridors around it, two of which extended South , the direction we would enter from. This meant you approached the broken glass doors, their interior pitch black, flanked on either side by three story walls, with inky black windows staring out at you, hiding anyone or anything that may be watching.

As I said the air was completely still, not even a trace of breeze touched the trees, and as we crossed underneath a small arch in the parking lot, a cross perched atop it Mike and I froze. A icy shiver had gone up my spine and I was frozen in fear, an entirely new experience. Mike was equally motionless, staring ahead, mouth open.
"Hey Mike." I muttered.
"Yeah?" He mumbled.
"Did you just?"
"Yeah."
"Ever happen to you before?"
"Nope."
Regaining my composure I tapped Brandon on the shoulder, he had managed to move a bit further along while Mike and I were stuck in place.
"What?"
"Mike and I got a real bad feeling about this."
"So?"
"No, as in, I have never experienced such a case of complete dread at entering the building before."
"Well what are we supposed to do now?" Brandon shot a glance at the two of us.
"Well, we need to decide if we should head back or go on, because as it stands something bad might happen."
"Well, what do you want to do?" Brandon leaned against a short wall.
"I say we keep going." I replied, Mike approaching waving a hand in dismissal.
"Woh, lets think for a minute. We need to get some sort of guidance here." Mike explained crossing his arms.
"From who?"
"The big guy." Mike pointed up. Brandon began chuckling.
"Really? So you, a practicing Catholic, are going to ask God if we should enter the Hospital. you know according to your own religious tenets there are no ghosts." I laughed off the idea.
"Shut up, alright, you all keep quiet and I'll ask for guidance, then we'll wait here, for three minutes. If God doesn't want us in there, he'll give us a sign." Mike leaned against the wall and began praying, I nodded in silence and looked at Brandon. For three minutes we stood and waited, and just as my watch was about to run out of time for our request a single leaf scrapped across the ground towards us. Mike's eyes were wide, Brandon's equally so, I pursed my lips and shrugged. the leaf continued towards us, then abruptly turned 90 degrees and followed the path back to the parking lot. We were all still, then...
"Ready to go in?" Mike clapped his hands.
"Yeah, lets get in there and see what we can find." I pointed into the shadowy recesses of the hospital door.
"What about the fuckin' leaf?" Brandon looked to the parking lot.
"What leaf?" We said and made our way forward.

Once inside the door there is a long corridor dead ahead, that terminates at an elevator and a sharp left leading to the cafeteria. Along that same entrance corridor is a right turn that runs alongside what used to be a gift shop, empty, even its fixtures long gone. This little passage will then open up into a T intersection, to the right a few rooms, to the left a long black hallway, occasionally stained by light from the street lamps outside, shining through broken windows. At the end of this left most hallway is the haunted elevator, a stairwell leading to the upper floors, and microbiology wrapping around the Northern most expanses of the hospital. We followed this particular hallway, leading to the stairs, our destination either the basement or a more complete look at the other floors. As we moved stealthily along the hall the dread in us grew, Brandon's eyebrow cocked like the hammer on a pistol, his eye darting into and out of rooms on either side. It was important to, no matter what, not picture a pale face looking back from the other side of a empty room, slumped in a corner, hollow black eyes seeming to recognize something in you, more frightening that it simply saw you and knew you were there. As we made our way we heard something and stopped. Scratching, quiet at first, the with speed and vigor it sped towards us, along the roof, scratching and clawing sounds, circling over an empty hole above us.

"Pigeons." I said, there were pigeons in many of the rooms, and assuredly they probably got inside the panels as well.
"Yeah, pigeons." Mike said, looking back down the hallway. the sound stopped as suddenly as it started, and we moved forward a foot, when again, the scratching returned, this time from behind us, rushing towards us at an amazing speed, tumbling around over us then stopping.
"Alright, when I said pigeons I may have been optimistic."
"Well, which way do we go?" Mike looked up and down the corridors. Abruptly the entire hallways was filled with scratching and movement. I stood silently, eyes furtively looking around, the whole length of the corridor seemed alive with sound. Suddenly it stopped.
"We should head deeper in, take the stairs and check out the third floor, obviously we have a busy night." I said, looking down the hallway.

It should also be important to point out that we had no lights, or rather none to speak well of. Brandon had found a communion candle in his car, its light less powerful than a match's, and Mike and I had acquired a single lantern Unable to illuminate more than a few feet in any direction. We simply couldn't use these either as the light they cast made it difficult to see what lay ahead.

With only moonlight and our own ability to see in the dark we headed down the hallway, expecting more strange sights and sounds in no time. We reached the stairwell without incident, and carefully pulled the door open, the walls were cracked and decaying, leaves, papers and weird stains covered the floor. We bunched together and moved inside, taking the stairs a few steps at a time, eyeballing what lay above us. We slinked past the second floor and arrived at the third floor landing. I looked at the door knob, Mike looked at me, Brandon peeked back down the stairs.

"Well, open it." Mike pointed. the sense of doom had been slowly filling us since we had entered, and now all of our cups were running over with terror. We had never been so collectively immobilized before.
"No way, what if she's right fuckin' there." I stared at the door.
"I'm not opening it." Mike looked back to Brandon.
"Stop lookin' at me, I am not touchin' that door." Brandon never even looked at us, keeping his eyes steadily below us.
"Alright, we'll both open the door." Mike said flatly.
"Deal." We extended our hands and grabbed the doorknob, then pushed, Brandon turned his attention away from the stairs and gazed over the top of us. The door inched open as we pushed and then furtively we looked into the third floor. Directly in front of us was a nurses station and a very long hallway running to the opposite side of the hospital, the doors open, letting slivers of light through. To our right was another hallway running the width of the hospital, door also open. We cautiously placed our feet onto the rug and took our first step inside. At that moment we could hear it. A low far away sound, in the back of our ears, nothing close, but there none the less.
"You hear that?" Mike asked, raising his foot.
"Yeah." I lifted mine and we moved forward one pace, now the sound was clearer, and even more disturbing. It was mumbling, a long off unintelligible gibberish bubbling from the darkness. Our eyes bulged from our sockets and we took our third and final step into the third floor. now the sound was growing in intensity, new voices joining, male, female, inhuman mumbling, and at the end of the corridor directly in front of us a door slammed. The light cut off, then another to our right, with each door that closed the sound grew louder, and closer. It wasn't coming from the halls it sounded as though it was coming from our own ears, malevolent chanting inches form our heads. Doors slammed slowly at first moving closer. We were frozen in complete indescribable terror, no near death experience or other incident has ever pinned me so completely. Blanched white, we couldn't move, we simply trembled as the slamming doors sped up and got closer. Then footsteps, tumbling away down the stairs. Pulling my eyes from the shadows ahead I saw Brandon fleeing at breakneck speed down the stairs. The spell temporarily broken I leaped down three steps and hurtled at Brandon's back, Mike the last one looking into the abyss abruptly realized he was alone and charged after us. We could here the mumbling becoming more distant, the slam of the third floor door, then horrible shriek as it opened again, slamming harder this time. whatever it was was on the stairwell with us, in pursuit for who knew what reason.

"Don't exit here!" I yelled at Brandon as he reached for the first floor door. "Keep going down the bottom door leads outside!" We tumbled after him a river of limbs flinging ourselves down deeper into the shadows reaching the door and rushing outside. SAFE! We fled from the door and out into the still silent night. I shook uncontrollably, my hair on end, no one could say anything.

"What the fuck was that!" Brandon punched at the sky.
"I have no clue." I said still shaking. Brandon and Mike produced packets of cigarettes, lit up and started puffing furiously.
"Did you hear that shit, it was in our God damned ears!" Brandon looked up at the third floor, ominously blank windows looked back.
"It sounded like chanting." Mike looked out at the street.
"So what we're dealing with is either some seriously fucked up thing in there or, worse yet a cult who we caught off guard." I began looking around the planters and walkways.
"If so they're probably waiting for us in there." Mike motioned at the door.
"Then lets leave." Brandon threw down his first cigarette lighting another.
"Guys," I came from behind a planter, with an unfortunate discovery, "We have to go back inside."
"Fuck no!" Brandon said with a scowl.
" We don't have a choice, there's no exit here, the fence doesn't have a gate or an exit." I pointed, on all sides a thirteen foot high chain link fence encircled our position, topped with barbed wire it was all but impenetrable.
"Aww shit. Game over man, game over!" Mike looked back at the building.

We stood out there for thirty minutes, Brandon and Mike both smoking their whole pack. We had settled on a plan, scrounging around outside we discovered a long metal rod, it was extremely heavy. We then found a lead pipe, a quarter of the length of the rod, Brandon took the rod and Mike took the pipe. We then formed ourselves into a defensive ball, Brandon would lead us, whilst I watched the doorways to our left and right, pushed against Brandon's back, Mike would face the rear and keep his back to my shoulder. We would move slowly down the hallway, and should anything approach we would destroy it instantly.

Plan settled and weapons ready we approached the door back to the stairwell, and discovered an unusual surprise. Pinned to the door, keeping it shut was a long bench.

"You put that there?" I asked Brandon.
"Nope."
"You?" I turned to Mike.
"Nope."
"Fuck it!" Brandon grabbed the bench and tossed it away, the door creaked open.

We maneuvered inside and began the arduous trek back up the stairs and down the hallway. Brandon waved the bar, a wooshing sound penetrating the silence. I would turn left and right, fists up waiting for some lunatic wearing a goat skull mask to pop up. Mike cautiously followed facing down the receding hallway.

"Whatever happens, don't leave me behind." Mike asked.
"Sure." I said.
"Sure thing." Brandon inched along.
It took us around an hour to reach the split hallway leading to the cafeteria and the exit, a span that took us less than ten minutes to span only a short while before. Brandon and I could see the shattered glass and the moonlight, the portal outside was right there, we were fifty feet from freedom. Simultaneously Brandon and I had the same thought. 'What if something was waiting patiently at the blind turn next to the exit.' Brandon and I had the same thought and acted in the same second. He thundered forward at breakneck speed and I followed behind him, certain that if anything popped out he would knock it over and I would slip by right behind. We burst through the shadows and into the open air, just behind us we could hear Mike.

"Do you hear that guys? Guys?" He turned and saw we had left him, the sound he was so worried about was our retreat. "Fuck you!" He ran after us.

With that we left, Mike and I knowing that someday we would return to unravel more secrets about the place. Though for the time being we were just glad to be free. We hadn't paid attention to the time that we had entered, but now returning to the car we knew we had gone in shortly before midnight, and could be almost certain that at the stroke of twelve was when we had entered the third floor.

I've seen shit that would turn you white.

Death of Adventurism...

2009-04-08T16:56:00.000-07:00

"Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look

behind the ranges-"
Rudyard Kipling

Perhaps it's merely me, or my human brains own ability to create links between unrelated events, but I think part of the decline of society as of late stems from a few things. Of course the obvious one is that the economy is in the dumps, then there's Fox news asking that we plunge a stake into Obama's heart because he is a vampire coming to take our guns (no lie, their words, not mine). then there's the surveillance and internet censorship...I could go on for days about all the manifest ills that plague the West and modern society. But maybe, just maybe, this is all because we have colored in the map all the way.

Perhaps once satellites went circling and the last of the explorers returned home to their societies is when the nervous energy started building in us. There were no more monsters, or ruins to be found in lost places, untouched, unseen in jungles or deserts. We were asked to look skyward and in the deep oceans for uncharted expanses. The problem with space is that once you're in it there is really nothing there, no ruins, no animals, no sound. Every planet we reach is dead, and all the places we can see are beyond our grasp or intellectual facilities to fathom. Also, as with the deep, we cannot go there. Less than a handful, a fingernail sliver of society can go either to the stars, to sit idly looking back at the completed map, or into the deep (more satisfying I'd say). But the common cannot do this, we can't set our sights on a distant place spoke of in rumor and shrouded in a fog of mysterious talk, they no longer exist. Now when gripped by that need to venture far from home, or seek new shores we turn to media, or worse yet we bottle the need and redirect it towards our fellows unexpectedly.

That is to say that exploration, mapping, true Adventurism is dead. It was natural for people to want to learn more about their world, and the things within, but how sad it is to know that when the last photo was taken on a flyby that the world shrunk, and shrinks still.

How cloying it must be to all who want to read the exploits of an explorer, or if we have the resolve to, explore ourselves. I'm of course not implying that we look inward for vast unexplored areas, you can only explore those by interaction with your fellows. Nowadays when you think of nature or the wild it is painted as quest of man versus his own demons. Hiking, climbing, kayaking are all sold as therapy now, they are for us to look inward and connect with that part of us that wants to explore. What then arises is an industry and an ideology around it, with expensive gear, GPS navigation, pole-less tents and the like, sending businessmen off on weekends to exotic places so they can be back to the gold course on Monday and tell of their "adventure". Adventure isn't like that, it's going where you don't know what's behind the next turn, and bringing back the information for others to follow in your footsteps, it's the pursuit of illumination to lost secrets. Today we have tarted up adventure to sell pick up trucks or energy drinks.

Or I'm probably just rambling, but I know what I want. I want there to be sights unseen, I want there to still be blank spots on maps and ruins in the jungles. I want to explore, and show the world what was once missing is now found, but I can't, because mankind has moved on. We don't care for stories like that now, we have our internet and can connect with any place we want, sate our needs with photos or videos.

I want to go on an adventure again, to outfit myself with a means of transport and a loose idea of what lies on the other side of the mountains and go for a little while. To pick up ideas and memories, holding myself to no schedule but my own, and stopping at my whim to see what is out there. But can I is the question that is most troubling, for at some point a persons life is traded out and replaced with a new one whose sole responsibility is to be responsible. Everyday I hear about the accumulated wealth of my neighbors and fellows, I hear about their doctors appointments and concerns about whether they'll be back from lunch or dinner on time. They talk about short vacations and weekends as if those were the only thing to live for, two days here and there for however many years they have before them. How then does someone weigh their life against this, when afraid of such a life a person lashes out and pursues adventures and irresponsibility to escape or to retain their identity.

I however don't know, I am uncertain about all of it. Perhaps I would be dead in a jungle somewhere if born earlier, more than likely I would. That is part of the adventure, to move past fear and keep going, battling against a world set on killing you. Weekend adventurers never have to fear about going this far, neither do I, because there is no point and no place to push oneself that way, or at least if there are there's no actual purpose to do so.

So perhaps in no short time I will gather my resources and disappear for a week and explore the countryside on my own, perhaps then I won't feel as though I'm not putting my youth to good use. We only have a single life, and death waits around every turn, if you can't do what you want in life why are you doing what you're doing?

We're going back! To the past? History! 4/3/09?

2009-04-08T15:23:00.000-07:00

That's right, because blogs are about demands, as has been explained to me by one of my readers I am now forcefully (lest a petition be created) required to give you "This Day In History!" for April 3rd (the cads birthday!). Naturally you may wonder why we are doing this on April 8th, and the answer is...I don't know, this is just dumb. So on to the incongruous past!

1043, APRIL 3RD! Edward the Confessor is crowned King of England, he is the next to last Saxon King of England. Amusingly he died in 1066, the same year the Normans invaded and conquered the country, but that failure was King Godwinson's fault.

1865, Jesus that's quite the jump, but it's still in the PAST BECAUSE IT DID NOT HAPPEN TODAY, IT HAPPENED ON THE THIRD! Anyway, Richmond is captured by the Union army. Yay!

1882, Jesse James is killed by the coward Robert Ford. Ford becomes famous by depicting his attack on the outlaw, until depressed and alone he is shot in the throat with a shotgun by a drunk. EVERYBODY WINS!

1917, NOT TODAY, A FEW DAYS AGO! Vladimir Lenin arrives in Russia after an extended exile. This marks the beginning of the Bolshevik control over the Russian Revolution. The rule of thumb is that if you have a local Lenin and he's not allowed into the country or town...DON'T LET HIM BACK IN! UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!

1922, Fuck all, Stalin becomes the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. shortly after this Trotsky gets the fuck out of Dodge, you know, right after he sees that they've been editing him out of photos.

1968, Martin Luther King Jr. gives his "I've been to the mountaintop" speech, he is assassinated the next day. There is nothing funny about this.

1969, We pledge to begin "Vietnamizing" the conflict in Vietnam, namely putting the responsibility of fighting on the South Vietnamese themselves, giving them weapons and training for the task. Naturally this totally works and we win Vietnam.

1982, the United Kingdom sends a naval task force to get the Falkland Islands back. The British probably flipped a coin on whether they would send a bunch of wooden ships to handle the Argentinians or an actual fleet.

1996, Ted "Cool Professor From Berkeley" Kacynzki, Kazinski, Karamazov...whatever, is arrested in his little shack in Montana. This is what happens to people who teach at Berkeley, you've been warned America.

So that's that, this is all the remotely interesting crap that happened on April 3rd. I hope you jackals are happy. BECAUSE IT IS THE 8TH!!!

Stuff I Find to Eat...

2009-04-07T19:20:00.000-07:00

So here's a new fold in my blog, I have decided to start writing about food I find and eat at my work. I am something of a symbiotic entity at my work, I provide day to day protection and security and the detritus ejected by the office provides me the energy to engage in this service. In essence to guard the site I need scraps to be left in common areas so that I don't pass out or worse yet, die from malnutrition. Now you would think it would be relatively easy to find food in an large office complex, but you would be extremely mistaken. Being that I am a external entity to the company (Security) I have to select my targets carefully.

Examples are as follows...
Birthday Cakes: Can't eat them, unless there is less than a tiny sliver left, or better yet it has been thrown in a trash can. Otherwise I am taking what amounts to a gift from someone I do not know.
Fridge Food: An assured no, I, unlike other office workers would never dream of taking food from the many fridges on site and eating that which does not belong to me. Also most of the fridges contain terrible odors, certain;y caused by their contents.
Food left in empty cubicles: these are items left in clearly unoccupied cubicles, no one works in that spot and thus the food is kind of a mystery. Usually foods left in these spots are cupcakes, bagels, cakes, and donuts. These under no circumstances should be taken, as their presence suggests that one or more of the employees in the immediate vicinity purchased them earlier in the day for everyone there, and thus they are private property.

What food can I openly consume then in my searches? Well after a certain number of cubicles there is a guaranteed "Break Area", where there is usually a coffee pot and odd food stuffs, this is a communal offering, thus any items left out in these areas are open for the taking, however in moderation. Exceptions to this rule are boxes of donuts on Friday night, or rather most food on Friday night. If the food is left uneaten after that point it will simply go stale and be thrown away, meaning I have an obligation to consume that which I find.

If such items are found at any other time during the week discretion is to be made in choosing what to eat. There are six donuts left, three are chocolate, one has some form of creme in it, and another has a piece missing and knife next to it, sometimes the piece that was cut out is also there, suggesting a bad donut. The rule of thumb is to take one from the plentiful group, and if particularly hungry take the least popular donut available. Thus in the morning if anyone still wants them they'll find the more popular donuts still available, and the shitty one no one like is now gone. Also this opens up another chance, if you come back the next day and the donuts are either in the trash, or still there it is open season as they will not be edible by day three.

A rare occurrence is leftovers from a pot luck, or pizzas left on these stations. One of the worst sights to behold in such an environment is the days when a pot luck occurs, or a number of employees purchase a dozen pizzas then walk out with everything, leaving not a crumb. Sometimes if luck is in the air then an employee or two will offer a single piece, at which point it is important to decline, but if persistent it can be acceptable to take the offering. Food from Human Resources is to always be accepted as well as terrible vegetarian sandwich party samplers brought into executive meetings. The bread may be soggy and they may taste like feet but they provide important calories needed to live!

Another common fear people must overcome is the notion that the handful of trash receptacles around the "Commons" areas are "HANDS OFF", in most offices the cans are cleaned every day and lined with plastic, meaning there is little in way of filth and moreover food is often thrown away en masse. There have been quite a few occasions in which pizza boxes and cinnamon roll containers are stuffed into a tiny can, uneaten and still fresh. these must be consumed before discovered by the janitorial staff, who will certainly throw them out as the original owners intended.

Unfortunately however food is scarce most days, and with economic conditions going haywire, many of the previous occurrences or largess by employees is disappearing. It is standard to find food in the building twice to three times a week, thus it will prove necessary to have enough food at home to survive for the days where nothing is available at work. One also must never break the rules about what you can eat on site when starving or desperate for nourishment, to break those rules is to invite unwanted dangers to ones job! Most of those situations that are regarded as no fly zones require that you potentially steal someone else's food, and that's not how etiquette works. So despite what delicious treasures you see in a fridge or empty cubicle, if it is not at a "Commons" area it should not be eaten!

This brings me to today's installment, now that all the description of life here is past. today I was offered, or rather left some form of energy bar made by noted "Crappy Organic" juice company Odwalla. The "Odwalla" bar as it was called, was of the "Choco-walla" persuasion. I am always suspicious of these types of bars, they are usually a puree of disparate items that are then covered in a thin powder of minerals and baked. They are abhorrent to the palate in most cases, and have consistencies akin to chalk mixed with old brownie. The choc-walla however was superior to the companies disgusting juice line, but just barely. It is "chocolaty", in a very conservative way, and has many bizarre after tastes. Reading the label I discover that it is 29% organic, which to me means precisely dick. To me a measurement of "organic" should be either zero or 100%, and I'm sure the people who care about "organic" products predominately feel the same way. To these people seeing that 29% tells them that the remaining 71% is unfit for human consumption, and was probably manufactured on a conveyor belt that it has to share with sides of shit covered beef. This is generally why I dislike people from the "organic" set, they go from zero to crazy in about three seconds when it comes to food manufacturers. So putting the percentage of hand grown wheat germ and stuff aside lets look at the ingredients...
Brown Rice Syrup (i have this to thank for the consistency), this is the largest ingredient in it, there is more syrup in it than oats.
Chocolate chips (made from evaporated this and congealed cane cut that)
Variations on the themes above. Oh yeah, and of course, pureed Dates, Plums and Raisins. those are my least favorite...whatever the fuck they are, berries? Yeah, you could kind of taste the plum behind everything, nasty.

Thankfully it was 240 calories, which should provide me just enough energy to make it home where food is waiting.

I will also point out that Odwalla Inc. is located in Half Moon Bay, California. I was unaware that Half Moon Bay produced the Odwalla line and am saddened by this, it's a really nice part of the state. Also if you happen to be in Half Moon Bay I recommend giving Odwalla a miss and going instead to this breakfast place on the side of the road. Its name escapes me, but it was quite large and the food was better than anything I've pulled out of a trash can here. Then again that makes the food sound sub-par, which is unintentional, the food at this particular restaurant was fabulous!

So in the end, the choco-walla is edible, but so are lots of other things.

I would be lying if I said this wasn't HISTORY! 4/6/09

2009-04-06T19:24:00.000-07:00

Fuckin' hell, I got a new phone and now I feel compelled to review the times before the "phone" tax was in place. The "phone" tax being the ridiculous amount of money you need to spend to have a phone, but since it is necessary to function in modern society it is not much more than a tax on living. Also I had a cutie, they are either tangerines or some other bizarre genetic mutation of a once normal plant. I had two last week and they were like delicious little oranges, I found two in the office today and discovered that they were like monkey shit and artificial flavoring combined. Fuck you store bought cutie, I need to find the source of last weeks edible fruits.

46 BC, Caesar kicks Scipio and Cato in the face at the battle of Thespus, Scipio and Cato being rivals of Caesar, in the times when Caesar wasn't "lord of everything" and was just "Julius the Politician". there is a strong possibility handling political rivals in this manner is what led to the stabbing a little while later.

1199, Famed "Super Cunt" Richard the Lionheart, dies from an infected arrow wound. You may remember Richard from the third crusade, or that time he was kidnapped, or heck here's one, he was the "Good" King at the end of any story you've seen about Robin Hood. In reality he hated England, was terribly French and had a terrible attitude towards anyone on the wrong side of his sword, thus he was the perfect crusader.

1327, Petrarch sees Laura for the first time and falls in love. Laura is married to a count and so understandably says "No thanks" to Petrarch, who then spends a significant portion of his life writing poems about her, but rather than persuasive poems these are fancy poems that only seek to illuminate the reader to the beauty of Laura. Moral of the story: in the renaissance, when your famous, you may still never get the girl. I'm lookin' at you too Dante.

What's that? You would like a Revolution? Alright, on this day in 1793 the Committee of Public Safety becomes the executive body of the Republic of France, which means today begins...THE TERROR!

You can find more at http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php

Anyway, 1814, Napoleon abdicates and goes straight to Elba, where he dies from stomach problems. More than likely the stomach problems were the result of eating the shitty food available to him on campaign.

1862, The bloody battle of Shiloh begins between Confederate general Albert "Not Ulysses S. Grant" Johnston and Ulysses S."Don't Fuck With Me" Grant.

1895, Oscar Wilde (Noted Playwright and Man About Town) is arrested outside a hotel, he had just lost his libel case against the 9th Marquess of Queensberry. This is a sad turn of affairs for our first Alien playwright (see Velvet Goldmine).

1917, Woodrow "Ku Klux Klan" Wilson gets his wish and we enter into war with Imperial Germany. Wilson immediately begins setting aside his favorite suits for the eventual peace treaty conferences, he is quoted as saying "It will be great, I'll make sure everyone walks away happy and no one is saddled with all the war debts!"

1984, Cameroon's Republican Guard try to overthrow the government, it is widely suspected they stumbled upon a TV with the power to see the future and witnessed this!

Anything after that day is being saved for next year...oh yeah, and if you don't get the above joke might I recommend Rupaul's Drag Race.

History! 4/2/09

2009-04-02T19:49:00.000-07:00

May God have mercy on my soul, why do I do this day after day, like Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back comically to the beginning. Dear phantom audience I know you are not out there, I know that of the millions of pages on the internet the probability of finding this one is slim to nil, so please if you receive this message in time know that I have no dignity, because I write History!

1513, Ponce de Leon, noted Spanish explorer douche about town steps foot on Florida, the first European to do so.

1804, The HMS Apollo runs afoul of rocks off the coast of Portugal. The Apollo was leading 60 other ships and a slow speed pileup ensued killing many and destroying forty ships altogether. the Cause of the accident was a large cask full of metal on the Apollo that interfered with its compass, as well as the captains terrible addiction of over the counter pain medication.

1863, Richmond erupts in riots as a bread shortage forces women to the streets demanding emergency supplies. Meanwhile their men folk are being shot in the face by Union soldiers. So Jeff Davis, are you happy now?

1865, Jeff and his cronies are forced to flee Virginia as the Union army closes in, a confederate soldier is heard to remark "AGHHH! MY FACE HAS BEEN SHOT!"

1917, Woodrow "Ku Klux Klan" Wilson asks Congress for a declaration of war against Germany, most likely because Teddy Roosevelt wouldn't stop calling demanding America "Get its War on!"

1930, Haile Selassie is crowned Emperor of Ethiopia! This results in the formation of the head shop industry. You have no clue what I'm talking about do you?

Everything after that is kind of meh, maybe I'll care next year. Probably not.