Thing a Week 33: Late, Sorry, etc.

Due to circumstances within my control, I'm posting a day late, and I'm not really posting anything of value. Apologies to the relevant parties. Anyway, all I've got is some crappy lyrics I wrote a while ago. Have a day.

come to me my little black sheep
come to the fold
come to sleep
lay your head down
let your weary mind go (you don't need it anyway)
let us make your freedom for you
wear the chains of our democracy
forged in the fires of hypocrisy
you don't need your thoughts
when we've got better ones for free
you'll find a gilded chain can be made just as binding,
if you don't like your policies the other sides just as binding
and if you you turn a circle round,
you'll find by circle you're still bound
so come to the fold
come to sleep
my sheep.

I don't even remember why I wrote it. I think I was angry. It might have been during the election.

Thing a Week 32: Cursing the Black Daystar Since 1992

So, I'm posting this a day late. I don't really have a reasonable excuse, but in my defense:
1) I was pretty dang tired yesterday.
2) I forgot.
3) I had a sunburn.

Or any of these good excuses? Not technically, if you're the kind of person who wants to be getting technical all the time. But it was a pretty bad sunburn. I really hate sunburns, but I get them every summer in spite of myself. I suppose you could say that it's my fault, because I hate the feeling of sun screen and always avoid wearing it. You could say that, but I wouldn't listen, because honestly? I blame the sun. Stupid sun, always shooting life giving rays at my tender, pasty flesh. What really confuses me is this: I'm all American, which means my ancestry is a mix of about 300 European nations, mostly British and Nordic. Of the two, I'm pretty sure Nordic dominates. So, I have the salty blood of the vikings flowing through my proud veins. And here's where I get confused. The Vikings were known to always be spending time at sea, getting tans and pillaging and misnaming Greenland and Iceland just to annoy future generations, those jerks. SO if they were always getting tans, WHY AM I SO PASTY? I can take off my shirt and blind people 300 yards away. This does not seem to me to be the workings of a logical mother nature.

Thing a Week 31: Tesla was my Homie, Until He got that Restraining Order

Recently I found a new website which I find (unhealthily) fascinating, called Damn Interesting. Suffice it to say, it is. However, the main reason I'm using this topic as the excuse is this article, on the Wardenclyffe tower that Nikola Tesla tried to build. You might want to read the Wikipedia article on it, since I'm typing this at two in the morning and I strongly suspect my elucidative abilities are currently somewhat sub-par. The gist of it, as described by Tesla, is this:

"It is intended to give practical demonstrations of these principles with the plant illustrated. As soon as completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place. Millions of such instruments can be operated from but one plant of this kind. More important than all of this, however, will be the transmission of power, without wires, which will be shown on a scale large enough to carry conviction."
In other words, it would be a bundle package of the internet, telephone, radio, and WIRELESS ENERGY. In case of any of my readers can't tell at this point, Tesla was basically the most awesome scientist in the history of ever. Who want's to go drool on his memory with me? I don't really have anything other than this to say, but I hope to leave anyone who reads next weeks article with something more than a slightly dirty feeling received from close contact with shamelessly creepy fan-boying of long dead scientists. Maybe.

Thing a Week 29: A Poem of Sorts

So, I actually have a piece planed out for once that I want to write, but (probably because I want to write it) it's proving difficult to pin down on paper. Analogue. And because I'm a sensitive, poetical kind of guy, I decided to share a poem... about a bug.

I was kind of stripped of ideas, OK?

Hello, little bug
in the crack
of the floor
of the room
that gran'ma died in.
You know I can hear
your skittering
as you find
new holes
to hide in.
Maybe one day
you'll find the dark place
that leads
to the hole
that lets light in
and you'll crawl
through the hole
that seeps light
through the dark
and then find the
place where the
night ends.
Wonderland!
Perhaps,
at least a place
that a bug
does not
belong in
but crawl through the cracks
and you'll find in the
blackness that
other holes
have their own tales.

I realize that for the last half of the poem the meter sounds a lot more awkward, but that's because I designed the whole piece to have palindromically syllabic lines. You can check for yourself, I got it through the entire poem. And then I ruined it by using "tales" as the last line. I hate when you try to make a syllable based poem and a word slips in that seems to be 1 1/2 syllables. Pisses me off.

Thing a Week 28:: Further Revelations on Super Heroics

I wrote a post a while ago on different awesome types of superpowers, and most of the things that I said I still agree with. However, as I have to continued to dwell on this indescribably important topic, I have decided that it's probably a good thing they don't exist. I'd like to say it's because we as a whole would turn them to nefarious, world destroying of pure black-hearted evil, but I really don't think we would.

In my experience, most people would simply act like jerks. I mean, think about it. it's like winning the lottery. People just don't consider the actual ramifications of such a sweeping development. At first they're all "Yay, i won the lottery, now I can be rich and happy forever", and then in three moths they're all "Aw man I lost it all to taxes and now I'm dying in a gutter alone and unloved". People who developed super powers might start meaning help defend truth, justice and the American way, but they'd probably end up shaking down the criminals they beat up for lunch money. It would just be too easy to abuse things like that.
I realize this is hardly an original thought, but what mainly brought it on was easy it would be to be a jerk if you DID decide to abuse you superpowers. Think about the kind of snarking you'd be able to do when you were fighting criminals!
"Oh NO, you bound my arms in three inches of steel chain, how will I be able to use my superstrength NOW- oh wait, it's SUPER strength. Wouldn't want to flex too hard, I might break these chai-OH SNAP. Too late now. Guess I don't know my strength, eh EH? It's funny because I'm about to beat into an unrecognizable pulp!
"StrongDude, you're kind of a jerk, you know that"?
"Hey, SHUT UP"

Awesome.

Thing a Week 27: Kind of a Post?

So in the first place, I'd like to apologize. This post probably won't be very long, and there is only one thing to blame it on (well technically, you could blame me, but I like to think that just because I'm the cause of an event doesn't mean I'm responsible for it. This attitude probably explains the current condition of my life). "BUT ROBBIE!" I don't hear you scream, "Surely the blame rests on you for not preparing a topic or doing any work on the post before 11 o'clock on Saturday!" riposte i thusly:
HA! and again, for unnecessary emphasis because I have childish love for hyperbole HA!!! WHile you could make that argument, and while it is a valid point, I just so happen to have a point fo my OWN. And I like to call it... Omegle. it's a site where you connect to a stranger, and then have a conversation. It is also addictive like donuts glazed in crack. To give you an idea of how addictive it is, I started this post at 11:20, went to get the address of Omegle at 11:25, and came back to finish this at... 12.
The thing is seriously like a crack sammich. I first heard of it at XKCD, where it's described thusly:
[It feels like that scene in Fight Club where the narrator sits down next to Tyler on the plane. Two strangers meeting, laying out their personality and sizing each other up in just a few words, with no expectations, and — thanks to anonymity — no consequences.

Except in this case, a lot of the time Tyler just screams “COCKS”, punches the narrator, and jumps out of the window.]

It's an apt description.

Seriously, though, the site is amazing. It's impossible to describe the feeling you get when you just connect and have an interesting conversation you will never meet again. More often, you'll get a bot spamming, but it's still a very enjoyable and addictive time waster. You should check it out!

Actually, you shouldn't You really shouldn't. Once you taste the forbidden fruit, you always thirst for more. And like some Lovecraftian horror lurking in the murky begrimed depths of the sea, when you look into its eyes....

it consumes you.

Thing a Week 26: "She Likes Cloth"... That'd be a Good Band Name

Something has recently been floating at the top of head, and I have therefore decided to broach the cask of my mind onto the Internet so that I may reuse he space for more valuable thoughts, like whether or not I should go make some toast (currently leaning towards not quite yet). Anyway, the Thought is this: Do other people try to turn all of their most awesome sounding phrases into albums/song titles?

I realize this may sound trivial (because it is), but the answer could have dramatic repercussions*. You see, I like to base my existence on the basic presumption that everyone else is a slightly (sometimes drastically) inferior copy of me, that thinks in the same ways as me. Some might call this presumption, or solipsism (technically, they would be wrong on that. Solipsism is the belief that I'm imagining everything else, whereas this is the belief that I am the pinnacle of everything else); I like to call it reality, and I'd appreciate if the rest would make a bit more effort to catch up on the scene.

This philosophy has always served me well except for the many, almost continuous times that it hasn't, but recently it hit a kink. Namely: If not everyone else is in on this Higher Truth, then they might be making an effort to individualize into NotMe's, which kind of throws a wrench into my plan to turn all of you into the drones of my hive mind. Therefore, I have decided to release the into the wild, where you may browse upon it at your leisure, and I can use your reactions to test the validity of the theory, so that eventually I'll be able to herd you all back where you belong. Underneath me.

....So, originally I was planning on turning this into a rant on band names, but I actually like this more. I will therefore cop out at this point, and leave anyone reading this with the following observation: The best album title is Curse the Black Daystar. WHy? It just is!





*Wouldn't Dramatic Repercussions be a sweet band name