Tag Archives: mass media
Two books for the end of the week
- MANGA CROSS-STITCH > Make your own graphic art needlework, by Helen McCarthy, designs by Steve Kyte and Helen McCarthy (Andrew McMeel Publishing, Kansas City, 2009)
- MAKE ‘EM LAUGH: the funny business of america, by Laurence Maslon and Michael Kantor (Hachette Book Group, New York, 2008)
Phil Silvers (Fischl Silverstein): “What’s television? Burlesque with an antenna — that’s television.”
More laws for the n00b in all of us
Clips and Cuts: Robotic Surgeons, Inc.
The Committee of 7.5 had held off meetings for three months to avoid being seen in one place, even virtually.
Events forced them to convene ahead of schedule.
“We have a leak.”
“What?”
“Yes. The group of volunteers we had interviewed had gathered and cross-examined one another, creating a fairly accurate picture of what we’re going to do with them.”
“No way. We purposely included a lot of bogus questions so they couldn’t do this.”
“I think that’s the problem. The questions were too bogus.”
“‘Too bogus?’ You mean all the inquiries about their sports interests and fashion choices?”
“No. The ones about their computer coding skills and knowledge of mechanical design. It looked like we hadn’t looked at their CVs, when they knew we had.”
“What does this mean? Is the project on hold?”
“No. But we’ll have to come clean.”
“You mean be honest? Is that in our nature?”
“Well, it’s certainly not in our bylaws.”
After talking amongst themselves for ten excruciating minutes, I joined them via secure telecom.
“Gentlemen, ladies and child, thanks for attending this emergency meeting.”
They grunted and nodded.
“Does anyone have objections to the candidates? I still haven’t gotten yeas from all of you.”
Silence.
“Okay, what’s the problem?”
“Don’t you know? The candidates have figured out our real agenda!”
I looked at the electronic images displayed on the simulated computer screens in my ‘mind’s eye.’ The Committee members were visibly excited.
“But you assume you know what the agenda is, don’t you?”
They smiled in unison.
“That’s right. I am keeping you in the dark and I have asked to be kept in the dark so that the ISSA Net can accomplish the true purpose for this mission.”
How easily we forget that we’re never fully in control of our plans no matter how much we micromanage the minutia.
“So, what do they think?”
“They think we’re establishing a forward military base to thwart the advances of an unseen enemy they are sure we know about but aren’t telling them.”
“Very good. And they have no idea that we’re going to ask them to give up their reproductive organs to prevent accidental additions to the first wave of builders, settlers and explorers?”
Silence, the absolute sign of agreement in our group meetings.
“Excellent. Then move on to step two. Let’s transfer the candidates to the training facilities as soon as possible. Remember, we want them in place on Mars before the next 13,627 days have elapsed. Triangulating a giant antenna between Earth, Moon and Mars is tricky business, as you well know. Don’t forget what happened when the last alignment occurred thousands of years ago!”
Blank stares answered back, just as we had rehearsed, knowing we were being watched, throwing false comments into our meetings to give any persons who consider us their enemy a whole set of paranoid delusions to feed upon and leave us alone while they pondered infinite possibilities about planetary alignments and imaginary galactic foes.
“Dismissed!”
What if…
What if a group of armed citizens set up a protective unit around James Yeager, the protective unit gets its own concentric circular layer of protection, etc., until every armed citizen was backed and protected by every other armed citizen?
Our subsubsubsubbasement supercomputer is having a lot of fun plotting out futures with this scenario in mind.
What if a security company, in order to promote its protective services, offered protection for James Yeager and his arsenal?
What about all the trained mercenaries who have nothing better to do with their time than go to shooting ranges and gun shows?
Would they be willing to take a stand in the name of James Yeager?
Where will the line in the sand be drawn?
What was that old colonial American revolutionary saying about standing together or falling one by one?
Where’s a good buffoonish plot ploy like Janet Reno at a time like this?
What have the enclaves like the Montana Freemen learned in protecting themselves for the last couple of decades?
Who will be the next David Koresh and his Waco followers dying at the hands of an overzealous government?
Vaccinated for diplomatic immunity
SO, here’s the story so far…
The Urbanki Bureaucracy, fearing its populace, has fallen right into the hands of the Ruralites’ plan to demonstrate they’re being oppressed by “The Man.”
How?!, you might ask.
Let us look at the recent facts in the storyline and tell you what could happen next.
First, paranoid suspicion of an indefinable entity such as a large bureaucracy is, like fear of the dark, a natural reaction by many.
The imagined hierarchy of bosses in a large corporation.
The terrible police and paramilitary troops that patrol your province, their faces hidden behind uniforms and equipment.
The social hierarchy and anarchy of insects that swarm in dark spaces underneath your domicile.
These fears are as inbred in us as any tribe isolated in the densest forest.
Where there is fear, there is also the chance for escape.
Let us take two data points from the same source, for an example.
Look at this guy, James Yeager, who exercised his free right to express himself but, the local state bureaucracy, so full of itself and fearful of its people all coming to the same conclusion, decides to take away the guy’s gun ownership permit.
Well, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum comments afterward.
James has many options.
First of all, the ACLU can step in to defend James’ rights.
Second, James can accept an offer from the “country” of NSK for immediate citizenship and a diplomatic position in its tiny bureaucracy, which leads to James having diplomatic immunity for ownership of his arsenal.
James might have to give up his U.S. citizenship and move his property into an estate or trust but…
Guess what!
As a martyred exile in his former country, James becomes a beacon of escape for his other oppressed patriots.
As more and more patriotic exiles join NSK for the sake of protecting themselves against the entrenched tyranny of bloated, overtaxing and indefinable bureaucracies, the NSK will be the first nongeographical country to declare war on a geographical country, opening up the door for the Inner Solar System Alliance to publicly announce its existence in order to declare all nonEarth territory offlimits to claims of ownership or protection by Earth-based bureaucracies, to prevent further land-based wars.
Wars based purely on ideology will continue unabated.
Meanwhile, a secret executive committee commissioned for consideration of calamities to cause after the next Urbanski Bureaucracy inauguration has released a preliminary agenda that shocked the pundits who were allowed to briefly glance at the agenda written in 2-point font.
From what they saw but cannot officially talk about, the Bureaucracy plans to incite the anger of the populace more and more and then, at the right moment, divert attention from itself by saying the primary goal of its first administrative term of office was to flush the LGBT and illegal immigrant community out into the open so that angry, armed citizens could easily identify these communities as causes for whatever problems the citizens believe are inflicted on them by the Bureaucracy. The Bureaucracy will imply but not state that no harm will come to armed citizens if they take the law into their own hands for a brief time to eliminate the “cause of their problems” as long as it’s not directed directly at the Bureaucracy.
The Bureaucracy did not detail whether NSK citizens were included in the announcement.
One of the signals they will send to signify this brief window of opportunity will appear in the classified section of one of the few profitable newspapers still being printed in the U.S.:
“In The Loop” + “Salt” = “Falling Down”
Bunka, not bunko or bunco
Thanks to my sister, I now know the embroidery style that her mother in-law uses to create fascinating works of art:
I think the kits that her mother in-law used were called Matsuhato.
Which leads to the next thought.
In times past, battles were remembered by bards with ballads and seamstresses who sewed elaborate tapestries.
In the battles to come, let us remember our fallen warriors — whether under cyber attack or defending our physical freedoms — using Bunka or whatever means our warriors’ family, friends and supporters may have at hand.
Who amongst you will create the kits that will feature the flaming fields of war?
Who will sew the tartans to drape over the weapons newly-forged in Ruralite furnaces?
Who will create the sinewed covers for the field drums, whether made with animal skin or simulated on tablet PC screens?
My friends, it is too late for the war of words.
The battle cry has echoed in the hills and valleys, shook the shaky foundations of the once hallowed halls in Urbanski territory.
The trumpets of Jericho wait no longer!
TO ACTION!!!
“As God is my witness…”
The year was 2013, the Year of the Underground Gunsmith Shop Revolution.
The rallying cry: “The West wasn’t won with a registered gun.”
Revolutionaries met in secret, creating their own version of the Underground Railroad, hiding from the tyrants of the Bureaucracy, following in the ghostly footsteps of the Prohibition Moonshiners.
The late-night hammering and pounding in front of DIY forges rang out in Ruralite territory.
After building their own weaponry and ammunition, members of the UGSR took the law into their own hands, hunting down the criminals themselves, dumping the bodies for all to see that no longer would the people, the REAL people, not the contented sheep in their flats, semi-Ds and McMansions, no longer would they let the weak and the mentally ill decide the fate of lawful gunowners.
The weak and the mentally ill who used to rely on random violence to give themselves a sense of purpose because they could not stand up to their own internal damnation or physical bullying by those mentally stronger than them would, no more, torture the innocent or make splashy headlines.
The land would soon be free of them and their filth.
Viva la Underground Gunsmith Shop Revolution!
Their logo — Charles Darwin calmly seated in a rattan chair, holding an AR-15 rifle in his hands, the weapon propped on top of a knee crossed over one leg, the motto written in bold type above his head: DARWIN SAYS, ” GO AHEAD…MAKE MY DAY!”
Take it from a former slave…
Anyone remember Epictetus, the Greek philosopher who was born a slave?
Well, his insights were ageless then and just as poignant now.
However, let’s all pretend that modern psychologists can justify their lofty professional salaries by polling the people and rewording the writing of ancient Greeks, as if there’s something new to be said:
“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will. ”
― Epictetus“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
― Epictetus“First say to yourself what you would be;
and then do what you have to do.”
― Epictetus“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems”
― Epictetus
Back to the drawing board again for the very first bored time
In the mail yesterday I received a book called IDRAWCOMICS SKETCHBOOK & REFERENCE GUIDE by Matt Marrocco, which finally came because I financially backed the creation and publication of the book through KickStarter.
I also received a BIC pen with the IDRAWCOMICS logo as well as an IDRAWCOMICS sticker — better late than never, or better slate than clever.
I am no famous comic strip, graphic novel or webcomic creator but I like to draw doodles.
Time to put my doodling to the test of time and see if I can convert my text sketches (i.e., blog entries), which are readable by the blind, into something with more visual impact while keeping the text blog entries for my blind readers.
If you tell stage performers to break a leg, do you tell comic sketchers to break a lead?
treetrunkdings 