There's a thundering hailstorm in Phoenix today, sending drops of frozen hate clattering across the skylight and beating the life out of weak trees. On the outskirts of my peripheral vision, I caught a glimpse of something white and jagged -- the future.
Life as a human right now is akin to having woken up inside the chute of a woodchipper. We may not even recall how we got inside the woodchipper in the first place. The one thing that is clear : the inevitability of the blades.
A feeling like saws chewing into my neck. The sounds of weeping just outside my door. And a cold light knife into my pupil reminds me : This is a world divorced from hope.
When facing a suffocated reality of nonexistent future, what do you do? Here are some options :
1) Lie down and wait quietly for the ice weasels to come. 2) Cry until you're too tired to cry any longer, then die. 3) Fight until death. 4) Put on heavy metal records and rock out for as long as possible.
Now, I don't know which of these sounds most attractive, or which you, the reader, may already be doing. I choose option #4. Here's why :
* Metal music is brain floss. * Metal music improves blood flow to the face. * Metal music is not a norm. * Metal music has no sympathy for your suffering. * Metal music remembers when you were only an animal. * Metal music hasn't heard about your regrets, but it can drench them in molten @#$%^& * Metal music will survive long after the Universe is toast. * Metal music recognizes your true form and can restore it if lost. * Metal music connects you with that aspect of youself that you forgot about. * Metal music is truth erupting from a sea of lies.
There's no future. But with metal music, the present can be made to rock. In these bleak and doomed days, everybody looks for help. Some go to shrinks, some watch TV, and some try in futility to numb the pain with drugs. Well, you all are welcome to your 'cheese' heroin, 'lean,' and amphetamines. I'm an Earache man myself. (47,188)
The storm is coming. You've heard it on the radio; seen it on the TV show. The Latewire has been humming warnings for a long time. A dull echo catches you by the ear -- what's that? That's the sound of hope retreating. It flees because it's impossible to prepare for this kind of storm, even when it's known to be on the way.
Total dissolution of the contemporary lifestyle is about to happen. We're about to be plunged into an era of base servitude and complete debasement. We've managed to use our preference for self-enslavement to facilitate a future of real enslavement -- think "Spartacus" without the good soundtrack and with more degrading "oysters vs snails" problems.
The people who facilitated the collapse did so because the knew that their actions had made it more likely, and that if they bet against our survival, they could win big and move to Tahiti while we get introduced to a new life of total abjection.
While you're waiting, think about how much information about yourself you choose to advertise or give away. It's always used to further demolish your autonomy.
Even though it's far too late to do anything to prevent utter catastrophe, there are steps we can take in a last-ditch effort to survive and stay human: Learn new skills pronto. Trust no interface. Stop the hemorrhaging of your information. (49,385)
This is one I uploaded in 2004. I'd forgotten how excellent it was.
BOOK FORUM Tuesday, December 14, 2004 12:00 PM (Luncheon to Follow) Featuring Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, Senior Judicial Analyst, Fox News, and Author, Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws (Nelson Books, 2004); Gene Healy, Senior Editor, Cato Institute, and Editor, Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything (Cato Institute, 2004); and moderated by Tim Lynch, Director, Cato's Project on Criminal Justice The Cato Institute
In Constitutional Chaos, Judge Andrew Napolitano maintains that most Americans take their constitutional rights and liberties for granted and are largely ignorant of how the government breaks its own laws and gets away with it.
In Go Directly to Jail, Cato Institute senior editor Gene Healy shows how the government has been criminalizing more and more citizen conduct. With more than 4,000 federal offenses on the statute books and thousands more buried in the Code of Federal Regulations, Healy points out that there are good reasons to be alarmed by the government’s perfectly “legal” restrictions, investigations, and prosecutions.
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