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Thursday, September 17th, 2009
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I had a dream I was trying to escape a facility with a friend. It was set to destroy itself in a little over a minute so we tried to get our shit together in time to leave, but then it would explode and the force would shatter my body and we'd have to start all over again (and again and again). Then finally one time my companion went deeper into the place we were trapped and I found him and someone else reading a magazine, I tried to tell them that we had to leave, but as they crawled across the floor on their hands and knees they explained that the article must have had a coded subliminal message that activated their embedded mind control and now they couldn't move.
That was the last time it exploded.
Then I was leaving the base, walking down underground railroad tracks in a strange kind of mall-like environment. I ended up meeting some people I knew (or who at least they thought they knew me), and ascending a few levels to their home on a forest cliff. There were other people around that were about my age, but none of them were interested in anything I was interested in, so we didnt really get along. They smoked weed in front of an old woman that lived here and she didnt seem to care, but it made me uneasy. Behind me, in the view off the back porch built over a steep hill, fireworks and explosions went on and on and on.
I was wandering a wasteland maybe somebody was with me, I dont quite remember. I came across a house after a long time. It was nearly empty. I found a few cans of food, a desert eagle with two loaded magazines (to add to the gun I'd already had with me), and in a few rooms, each propped up in a chair, there were what seemed like mannequins of old women, all of them wearing an eye patch. In the hour I was searching the home one person I knew and two I didnt also stumbled across it. Me and my friend were standing in one of the bedrooms talking, and I suddenly turned and yelled at one of the dolls "WILL YOU CUT IT OUT ALREADY". She burst into tears and explained that she just didnt want to be hurt. She was scared; the owner of the house treated her poorly and was to return the next day. I asked her if there was anything hidden in the home that might help us. She said "Not here, but there is a place". She explain that I would have to travel through Mexico to Peru, and there I would find a mining machine from "the early days of the war". I asked her what was there, she said "medicine". I left the gun I found with the two strangers and walked out alone.
The train station was an old wooden building. Each of the train cars was shaped like an airstream trailer. I stood on the platform and waited. A deputy who looked like he'd stepped from a western was giving a talk on contraband and weapons. Stating clearly that his own shotgun would end up in the mouth of anyone who had the gall to bring either to his station. As I stood he crept up to me and laid his hand on the gun in my pocket and and smiled as leveled the shotgun. Here came my train, me and thirty other broke out into a run to the tracks on the opposite side of the station. It slowed, but it wasnt going to stop. I ran alongside, Too slow! Too late! I kept pace with the train as it left the station, the doors closed but I still knew this was my only option. A girl in one of the windows looked up from her book to see me running along side. She reached a hand out and helped me get myself onto the roof of the train. The wind ripped at me as it came up to its top speed, through her window she kept my hand locked in hers and it kept me from being swept down and off onto the bustling tracks.
I arrived. An old man had heard my story of stowaway from the girl who had helped me and was trying to ask where I was from. I woke up.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
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My mom really wants to divorce my dad, but she cant because us kids are back in the house.
That's how simple my family problems are, but it's driving my mom insane, which is driving us all insane.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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This thing dosnt get much use anymore because after Kansas I honestly felt that I have pretty much run out of shit to say. So I've been trying this cool new thing where I just try to shut up and leave people to make their own mistakes and discoveries. I am thinking that this journal may perhaps find new life as a dream journal. The long, twisted journeys into the heart of whatever hungry ghost lives in the flooded sub-basement of my mind began when I moved to Hays and started sharing a bed regularly. They have not stopped. I think I'll kick things off with a few things that have actually happened in my waking life, but that I would feel so much more comfortable relegating to the land of nod.
Today there was a guy with a beard walking through the parking lot between revolving sushi and 7-11. As we started to pull away in our car he stopped and loudly shouted "I WANT TO DIE" at nobody in particular.
The lady helping me at the Ralph's line hollers over at a co-worker as she rings my things up:
"So there was no bomb?"
"No, I dont think there was."
"Well that explains why they didn't evacuate CVS."
Things are getting bad and strange all at once, everywhere. At times the sights I see every day seem more detached and fantastical than my own night-time visions (though I'd be hard pressed to give you more recent specific examples than the ones above). But for me, it's late, and dammit all I'm tired, so good night. and sweet dreams.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
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3:15 am
And I'm laying in bed
Kept awake by a drunk, snoring brother
My body itches and shakes
As it starts to lose shape
And I know that I'll never get another
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Thursday, December 4th, 2008
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SYSTEMS FOR A WEARABLE HABITAT:
Note:
This unit would not be light, and should be thought of as more of powered suit than a piece of cloth dress. Coat element would probably be only 5-10 pounds heavier than typical cold weather gear (assuming empty bladder), back stowage estimated 15-25 pounds depending on kind, size, and number of batteries used, and what materials are implemented for other assorted parts.
UNIVERSAL ELEMENTS:
-Power provided by AC hookup and Nobori-style collapsible solar cell array mounted on a telescoping rod (rod should optimally be titanium for best weight and durability)(also contained in back stowage).
-Collar mounted water tube connected to a water bladder in the torso.
-During wear, straps keep unit to comfortable fit, straps can be opened or loosened to expand the unit into a space large enough for one person to tuck themselves into it. Trunk and appendage openings constrict through use of similarly adjustable elastic straps.
-The back and sides of the hood are inflatable through air provided by the user to form a pillow.
COLD WEATHER:
-Powered electric heating component in the lining (batteries carried in removable back stowage)
-Interior bladder to store and melt gathered snow via body heat/powered electric heater (travels through charcoal filter before depositing in main bladder)
-Fog resistant plastic stowed in top of hood, can be pulled down and buttoned to collar to form mask. (useful for user comfort and containing generated heat, though preventing fog and condensation would be a problem, perhaps a snorkel like device to keep core temp and humidity down?)
-(optional) Interior/exterior thermometers would be a great addition but I'm not sure where I'd put the display (see tech)
WARM WEATHER:
A warm weather unit would be much easier and cheaper to fabricate because the exterior condition are not actively trying to kill you.
-Powered air conditioning fan built to be able to vent air in or out at the users preference (batteries carried in removable back stowage)
-Water collection bladder which feeds through a charcoal filter before depositing in the main water bladder.
Optional tech:
-GPS transponder
-Bluetooth functionality to transmit weather and temperature data (would also mean that you could easily be integrated with any bluetooth cell phone.)
-Transparent hood element could be made (in whole or in part) with a flexible OLED display
Of course, a very simple unit with no powered elements could be sold for its benefit as an instant one person shelter, and could be distributed as disaster relief, all other units more suited to a survival type situation because of their cost.
All these elements are for a jacket-type unit, of course a matching pair of pants angled towards a similar focus (and able to tap into the main unit's power supply) would be useful, but it's not something I've given too much thought to.
If you can think of anything you would add, please chime in in the comments.
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008
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Can you honestly say the world would be worse if everyone got a tazer at 13 and a handgun at 21?
(assuming, of course, they are taught a proper respect for each item before hand)
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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"The symptoms ebb and flow over time. Psychologist J.H. Rohrer studied isolation in the 1960s and described three progressive stages of how people handle it. The first is high anxiety. This is followed by a spell of listlessness, when the crew becomes mired in routine. The final stage is characterized by anticipation of the return home, spiked with aggressiveness, emotional outbursts, and rowdy behavior. Interestingly, the stages appear regardless of the actual length of time in isolation–when people know how long they will be cut off from others, they spend equivalent amounts of time in the stages, whether the isolation period is 24 hours or one year."
I found this in relation to "Winter-over syndrome", a bit of madness that hits some of those staying in Antarctic bases through the six month night. I find it interesting because of all the different times I've been absolutely secluded and isolated from all human contact for extended periods (Longest is about a week), I dont think I've ever really felt any of those stages listed above, or at least not in the ways they are described here.
"Men are driven deeper and deeper inside themselves for materials of replenishment. . . . For there is no escape anywhere. You are hemmed in on every side by your own inadequacies and the crowding measures of your associates. The ones who survive with a measure of happiness are those who can live profoundly off of their intellectual resources, as hibernating animals live off their fat."
-1930s American expeditionary Admiral Richard Byrd
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Saturday, November 29th, 2008
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Table of Strategies
Do this:
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To get this:
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Keep the public ignorant
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Less public organization
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Maintain access to control points for feedback
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Required reaction to outputs (prices, sales)
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Create preoccupation
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Lower defenses
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( Read more... )
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Saturday, November 22nd, 2008
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I noticed that the first half of the new Watchmen trailer is set to the score Philip Glass wrote for Koyaanisqatsi.
That's awesome.
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
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I just wish we could have had a real candidate this time.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, October 30th, 2008
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For once the internet cant help me with something.
I was very lucky to have been exposed to computers from a pretty young age, unfortunately it seems that many of the gaming gems of my childhood have faded from the pages of history like Prodigy has from the world of ISP's. I'm coming to find that even some hard-core archivists (and dammit all, the internet at large) contains no trace of a few games I remember fondly.
Prince of Persia? You bet your sweet ass
Stellar 7? Sure
Secret of Monkey Island? Of course
even Zany Golf? Why not.
But "Hyperspace" is proving to be elusive.
It was a wire-frame space sim/adventure game with a amount of depth and complexity that was pretty beyond me at that point, but still managed to stand up to me throwing loads of time at it. I started looking in hpes of maybe finding it on some abandon ware site and giving it a play for shits and giggles, but it might as well have never existed. It's rather frustrating.
Fortunately I still have the hard disks and manual at home, along with a few other vintage gems.
Unless my my Mom declared them worthless and threw them out in my post-leaving cleaning holocaust.
Which is pretty likely.
Shit.
EDIT: Of course, as with nearly all computer related frustration, the cause was "human error". I was mis-remembering the name. It was actually "Hyperspeed" And I'm now downloading it for my personal leisure.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
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| Time: | 7:26 am. |
| Music: | Life During Wartime. |
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“Modern science has imposed upon humanity the necessity for wandering. Its progressive thought and its progressive technology make the transition through time, from generation to generation, a true migration into uncharted seas of adventure. The very benefit of wandering is that it is dangerous and needs skill to avert evils. We must expect, therefore, that the future will disclose dangers. It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties. The prosperous middle classes, who ruled the nineteenth century, placed an excessive value upon the placidity of existence. They refused to face the necessities for social reform imposed by the new industrial system, and they are now refusing to face the necessities for intellectual reform imposed by the new knowledge. The middle class pessimism over the future of the world comes from a confusion between civilization and security. In the immediate future there will be less security than in the immediate past, less stability. It must be admitted that there is a degree of instability which is inconsistent with civilization. But, on the whole, the great ages have been unstable ages.”
—Alfred North Whitehead, ”Science and the Modern World,” 1925.
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
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I can see my breath inside.
So here I am eating breakfast (rice and vegetables), looking like this:
And just because I'm such a big fan of one-man theme parties, I'm sharink breakfast with this:
The humor here is compounded when you take a moment to consider the last image I saved to photobooth:
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Comments: Read 6 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, October 9th, 2008
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My sink situation is becoming fucking DIRE.
And god help me I have no strategy.
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, October 7th, 2008
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Today there was a man at the park across the street from my house.
He had taken a whole toilet, set in the the middle of a field, pulled down his pants, and began to read a newspaper.
A person in a pizza delivery uniform came up and took a picture of him with their cellphone. The man picked up the toilet and tried to ram them with it.
WHAT?
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, September 30th, 2008
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Monday, September 29th, 2008
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Thursday, September 18th, 2008
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The rules, culture, politics, and indeed even warfare that springs up between websites these days just keeps getting more complex and entertaining.
( Read more... )
Within a few hours of the information leak, the site had been pulled and replaced with a simple IRC web interface. The owner of the site waited within. It was at this point that things got down to a much more personal level.
Tahko> because I'm a big fat loser that hasn't had a job in a while
Tahko> I smoke
Tahko> I don't drink
Tahko> I've never had a liscense
Tahko> What other flaws do I have?
NiggerJew> You're a fucking idiot
Choice.
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, September 17th, 2008
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And in a flash it came to me: Guilt.
Not my own, but the idea of it.
For some reason it was right then, picking trash up off the floor and rethinking my routine for making new, fast friends, that it occurred to me how many people's lives and interactions are ruled by guilt.
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katet_of_99's journal
