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Word Doodle #02: Superheroes

What is it about superheroes that makes us humans aspire to become one?

Green Lantern

Pros
Courage, Confidence, Willpower, Action

Cons
Thinking, Fear, “Nerdy”, Weak

What is a “Word Doodle”?

This is a new blog segment idea I came up with in the shower. Maybe others have given it more thought than I have, but whatever.

For me, it’s associated with the ideas that I write out, but then they get nowhere. Maybe I had great ambition for the thought, but I only ended up with a sentence or two. Frustrating as it may be, posting them may also be a good idea, so I figured I would.

They’re just like other doodles you write on your paper when you’re bored at school or work. In fact, the one tattoo I have on my arm started as a doodle.

Big works can come from small notions.

Word Doodle #01: Clothes Make the Man

For the longest time, I’ve hated the idea that my clothing is what dictates how other people see me. But we live in a superficial world, and there’s nothing that can be done about it. Not in my lifetime, and not while I care about it. We’ll leave that for future generations to change, while facilitating it now.

I’m currently wearing a TapOut t-shirt, and by the cut and design of it, I look far more physically fit than I normally would with a $2 t-shirt. I have received compliments from just wearing this shirt while still wearing the same shorts I had on prior to changing shirts.

EL

*tip* *tap*

*SPLAT*

*growling, gnawing, crunching*

The blood kissed tongue and teeth, trickled into a gaping maw, exciting fervor. Frantically, it tore into the flesh of its victim.

Pinned to the chain link fence, the prey hopelessly writhed in anguish and mortal fear, eyes agape, not understanding what was happening, screaming in her head:

“OW! Why is this thingy hurting me? What is this thingy? This thingy smells gross. This thingy is so scary. Mommy will help. Mommy always helps! Mom-meee!”

*     *     *     *     *

*hysterical scream*

“That Monster is EATING my baby!!” screamed a nearby woman.

The sight was gruesome…horrible…unimaginable!

Pinned against the fence, a young girl about the age of six or seven, was helplessly trying to wriggle out from under the creature that was devouring her. Bluish-black, the size of a house cat, flat and bulbous. With four vicious claws, accompanied by several undulating tendrils springing forth from its body from seemingly random locations, it wrapped the tiny child in a vice-like grip, clinging to the fence as it chewed away at the tiny girl like she was saltwater taffy.

With black, uncaring eyes, the organic mass engulfed the little girl with unbelievable strength. As it chewed on her flesh, it looked about, prying eyes looking for other predators that would try to steal its meal. Stopping a moment, it pulled its head away from the girl’s arm. A gout of blood sprayed onto its face and torso, spilling to the ground, dripping.

The creature stared at the nearby persons, only to be met with indifference or sheer horror, as was the case of the child’s mother.

Only a hunter could determine the nature of the glance of this beast. The thoughts behind those hollow black eyes protruding from the grisly face were unable to translate. Squat and round, tiny ridges bursting from the skin, horns on the outside corners of its eyes and nose, and near what could be ears. Ears? Flaps of flesh that ran down the sturdy neck on towards the middle of the back, stopping a few inches apart from each other. Like weird little cranium wings.

Only a hunter could decipher this monster…but there were no hunters. The only audience this creature possessed was the hunted.

*split* *tit* *tit*

*split* *tit* *tit*

Pieces of flesh and drops of blood from the child’s arm fell to the concrete below, a gruesome melody. He continued to gnaw at her elbow with protruding teeth, sharp and conical, shaped like the tip of the ubiquitous pencil. The snapping of what sounded like rubber bands caused the mother to turn away and retch. Tendons, ligaments, popped as the little girl’s arm was crushed between its teeth.

*     *     *     *     *

*nrsh* *mraw* *grgk*

El’s teeth bore down into the little girl’s arm. She was ten times his size, but she was no match. Pulsating, his body slowly grew the more of her he ingested. What a meal! Delicious, tender, dripping with flavor. As he savored the little girl’s flesh, his mind began to ponder:

“This small creature feed me for weeks. I grow to twice my size, maybe three times! Bigger meals to come. Thank you, delicious treat!”

*     *     *     *     *

The little girl’s mother tried to clamor towards her baby, fearfully, through the pool of her own stomach contents, she heard the sudden *CR-SNAP* of what sounded like a large candy cane - followed by a tortuous scream from the child.

Her arm was bitten clean through.

*     *     *     *     *

*crack!*

EL heard - no, FELT! - the window of his mind splinter and shatter. Clenching his teeth at the sudden pain, he shook his head to shake off the shards of pain. Slowly, the world repaired itself. EL, stunned, glanced about when -

*CRACK!*

The sound was closer. The pain was the same, but there was no splintering. Someone was throwing rocks at the window of his mind. RUDE CREATURE!

EL found the culprit, and glared.

*CA-CRACK!!*

A bullet pounded El directly in the forehead, right between his hollow, solid black eyes. Barely phased by a third pistol round, EL glared at the Police Officer who shot him, taking a deep breath:

*     *     *     *     *

It was a cacophonous sound of three parts

• Silverware scraping against ceramic plates

• Glass grinding and crunching beneath a metal slab

• One’s skeleton shuddering and trying to leap from their body.

The sound was nauseating, and shook the police Sergeant to his core. Dropping his pistol, he fell to his knees, clutching his stomach. “Oh God, the pain!” he thought. Coughing fitfully, blood sprayed from his lungs. Everything hurt, his insides felt as if they were on fire.

“Am I going to die?” he thought. Looking up, he saw the creature once more, and passed out.

*     *     *     *     *

“EL unhappy his meal disturbed by this VERY RUDE…thing!”

Turning back to the child, he opened wide and clamped down, hard, on the child’s shoulder. Still hanging on to the fence with his blubbery tendrils and hugging the child with the mass of his body, he wriggled against the child briefly. Yanking his head in the opposite direction, EL ran at full speed. Tearing the child apart.

The child’s screams quieted. The force of EL’s retreat caused her body to sunder. Her head, shoulder and underlying bones, upper arm, and left most portion of skin and muscles from her armpit to her waist were ripped from her body, exposing shattered ribs and massive internal damage. Her spinal column stretched and snapped at the base of her skull, the skin tearing off in chunks, leaving a portion of her face completely rent. The remains of her body fell to the ground; heart and lungs and spleen spilling out onto the cold concrete.

No longer distinguishable, the little girl’s head lolled up and down as EL sprang forth and fled the playground.

Shower Serendipity

Showers are a nice place to relax and allow your mind to wander.

Today, a culmination of conclusions seeped into my brain region and provided me with a bit of insight that I hope I can remember while I type this.

I am depressed, but then again, I’m not. I am homeless, but I call it “Urban Camping”. I’m not job hunting because I deny my capabilities in the working environs that I understand exist. This is cognitive dissonance, ladies and gentlemen. I could also be deluding myself, but who isn’t these days?

I am actively trying to make myself feel better about what would otherwise be considered unbearable circumstances. Does this make me better off than accepting my fate and just “bucking up” and doing what’s socially considered “right”?

Rhetorical.

Who wants to give me an amazing blow job?

Not rhetorical.

My mind is wandering while I type this, and what came to me in the shower was all manner of wonderful, but it is fading from me like that one dream you had this morning.

I want to educate myself, and I will continue to do so. For all of my life, I never knew what I wanted to do. Oddly enough, many were encouraging with their remarks, “You can do whatever you want if you put your mind to it”. Too bad I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and their suggestions were things I had no desire to do. I’ve got something of a better understanding now, but it’s by no means comprehensive.

Unlike many other successful persons in this world, I didn’t figure something out that I want to do with my life at a young age and then just spend the rest of my life doing that.
(Unless you count being educated by varied sources, and then, I suppose…)

Currently, I’m in the process of obtaining a unique domain name so that I can build upon it and possibly make a profitable endeavor from it. We’ll see. I also have this fanciful idea that learning how to better cook/prepare food for a more appealing experience would be just dy-no-mite! And I want to do wine tastings and understand proper paring of cheeses with wines for not just dining purposes, but for the pleasure of it.

Maybe I have more of an idea now than I ever thought I would in the past. But the quandary with all of this is: when will I just forget about it and move on to the next thing? Perhaps the best thing to do is to just do it while I can, while I’m thinking about it, and maybe I’ll get a really good experience out of it.

One can dream.

Devil’s Advocate: The Disposable Society

You should recycle that plastic spoon you just threw away! I can’t believe you just throw stuff away and you don’t recycle it! Hell, maybe invest in a real knife so you don’t even need to do that. Oh? The real knife is cheap and flimsy and there’s no need to buy one? Yeah, well, corporations are engineering our world so that it’s disposable and so they’ll make huge bank.

Wait…what?

How exactly do you know this? Are you in on the secret, too? Or, is this just supposition and/or information based on reinforcing information from biased resources? Be honest…

Maybe the reality is that the majority of people in the US or the world want something a little easier to deal with. If anything, a disposable society is the preferred kind for a world with limited resources and scarce options.

Think of the “Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle” PSA back in the day — it applies today.

Once we start getting used to items that have less longevity, we’ll be more and more inclined to recycle them, and allow ourselves to stop trashing things so much.

If you’re a proponent of “keeping things around” for longer, you’re indirectly allowing the landfills to stay the way they are. Items that take longer to decompose and biodegrade are great for longevity, but also are the main volume in landfills.

I say that we should embrace a disposable society with less than durable goods. One day, it’ll let us recycle old sandwiches into new tasty sandwiches.

“Mindless” Video Game Sims

Have you spent untold hours playing Facebook apps like Farmville and ChefVille?

I gave these games some consideration after having a talk about jobs, and why I hate mundane tediousness.

From my experiences, everyone seems to work for one major goal: money. Now, money may just be one manifestation of accomplishment, we do, after all, have achievements in gaming, and that tends to work out pretty well as a reward system.

What got me thinking about this was how the service and production corridor seemed to have been changing. The US produces fewer and fewer physical products, and derives more and more services from the resulting void. What if you could get people to work for you in another way? Perhaps they’re doing something that will be automated in the future. Or maybe the consumer base just needs to replace a lack of physical mundanity with a virtual form?

We’ve replaced tedious work with virtual tedious work.

Perhaps those people are a new kind of employee…?

[photo courtesy: gamerstyle.net]

Cyber Warfare: Follow-up

For context regarding the following Q&A, please see my original post titled Cyber Warfare.

_________________________
K: So you’re saying that the strategies gamers use in combat may be the strategy used for cyber warfare in the future?

Me: In a way. But more importantly, it will be the main method of warfare. Perhaps replacing physical persons entirely, like drones.

K: Oh, so it will all be automated?

Me: Drones aren’t automated, they’re still controlled by people. As long as humans have a stake in warfare, humans will have some manner of control in it. A virtual war.

K: Ok, so a virtual war with drones controlled by humans for the purpose of getting or preventing someone from getting intel.

Me: Essentially.

K: Can’t people just use computers? That’s what they do now right?

Me: They will. The computer is the method that allows for the control of the avatar/drone.

K: Ok wait, so real warfare (currently happening with soldiers, not online with people hacking) will be replaced by drones? O_o

Me: And if the computer technology becomes like that of the tech in H+, the “in game” death could have the potential for severe psychological effects, more so than they do already. Hacking and gaming will integrate. They will become the same. It could play out in a similar fashion to that of current warfare games, or evolve into something entirely unforeseen.

K: Hmmm…

Me: Hell, hacking and gaming and piracy all merge in an onslaught of warfare… The future, but not too far into the future. Fifty years tops. Twenty minimum. Full integration of outright cyber warfare could take centuries as countries and factions develop at differing rates. But could also happen far sooner due to the nature of the beast. Hard to say with real certainty.

K: Definitely uncertainty…

Me: And then comes the holographics. Complicating and changing the whole format entirely.

Occupy: Hipocrisy

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” - Ghandi

Occupy Sandy [link] is a very good example of this message, and should be emulated.

The following is an example of how not to portray this message…

The visage of Ghandi is being besmirched by a good portion of Occupy Wall Street: Los Angeles Edition. Now, this is not by all persons affiliated with the organization, but of such a significant number, that it must be spotlighted.

Why do I even bring up such an accusation? Because people are fucking hypocrites, that’s why.

If the “change you wish to see in the world” is that everyone should yell and scream profanities at strangers, and accept physical violence towards specific members of society, then so be it. I’ll tell you this much: if/when someone comes right up to me and starts calling me “white devil” or “some fancy pants rich college kid” or that “your people are ruining this country/world” because I’m a white male, then I’ll tell them to fuck off, or ignore their obvious inability to connect with me as a human being.

Such behavior is called prejudice. Yes, many of the LA Occupiers are unabashedly practicing something they so dreadfully oppose.

But, it’s not their fault, it’s the fault of their inability to rationalize irrational behaviors. One major form of their prejudice revolves around the police. They see a police officer, and their first response is to shout profanities and attempt to intimidate the officer. Their reason? Because police are a symbol of the oppression of the government…also the City Hall raid on November 30th. Because of the actions taken by the LAPD, as well as any politicians connected with the raid, they now distrust and absolutely abhor anyone wearing a police uniform. Some of this is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and those suffering should get treatment, which includes disconnection from the stimulus – the LAPD.

Others are fueled by their hate.

This hatred is rooted so deeply in them that the mere explanation that the police officers are actual human beings of flesh and bone will cause raucous exclamations of “fuck the police”, as well as accusations of “you’re a cop”. But the simple fact is, no matter the circumstances, police officers from all over the US, and the world, are, in fact, mere humans.

This idea is repeatedly rejected, and even violence against police [link] is endorsed. I say endorsed because so many are willing to concede that the police officer “may have deserved it” for some out-of-context behavior that was not witnessed. This is how you wish to “change” the world? Violence against other human beings in a nonviolent movement is not acceptable.

Simply put, Occupy Wall Street: Los Angeles Edition contains bigots.

Again, not all who are affiliated are bigots, but a numerous quantity of them are. This kind of behavior is reminiscent of racial and homophobic bigotry. Yeah, someone from a specific group did something wrong to you, or others, and such behavior has been spotlighted on the news. You wish to tell the rest of the world that this is bad, m’kay? I get that. But that doesn’t mean each and every single person wearing a uniform is going to bludgeon you, mace you, pepper spray you, tase you, or kill you.

If you think this way, you’re a practicing hypocrite, and perhaps you should give up selling death sticks, go home, and rethink your life [link].

Maybe I shouldn’t be making light of too serious a subject.

It’s not right that police brutality exists. It’s also not right that civilian brutality exists towards police officers. You’re all human beings, all of you!

If you think that showing Ghandi’s face at a rally while simultaneously shouting “Shit’s Fucked Up! Shit’s Fucked Up and Bullshit!” or “Fuck The Police!” is actually going to win over the public, you’re sorely mistaken. And persistently telling them to “wake up”, or other sideways insults to their intellect, is only going to upset them and have them fight back against you and whatever attempts of “progress” you wish to make.

If you want peace and harmony; love and generosity; compassion and fairness; then you need to show the rest of humanity what that looks like. Lead by example, not with fists raised in the air, showing that you’re ready to physically assault that which is above you.

Open your arms and embrace one another. Otherwise, you’re only fighting fire with fire.

“An eye for an eye leaves the world blind.” - Ghandi

[Photo courtesy of: orangejuiceblog.com]