Quickie Challenge: Horror Poetry

I decided to challenge myself and see if I could write anything decently scary, or at least vaguely suggestive of the right atmosphere in ten minutes or less. Below, you will see the fruits of my labor. It ought not be too challenging, given the atmosphere of the times.

I cannot see
I cannot speak
I cannot breathe
I cannot blink

But I can hear, so very well.
So I am here, and this is hell.

The doctor's sad, full of remorse
I'm in a coma, there's no recourse
I hear her sob, I hear her dread
And she insists, I'll stay in bed.

So here I lie, for all my days
Trapped inside as my hair grays.
They do not hear my mental cry
Or my hopes that I might die.


What do you think? Have I done any justice to the subject? I tried to imagine what a coma might be like, as locked-in syndrome is about the most terrifying thing that I can imagine happening to anyone. I wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy, I think.


Unrelated, but if you're in Russia, greetings! Can anyone tell me why my blog is so popular in your country? I'm dying to know.

A Day in the Cold

How many hours have I been out here? Has it been days? Weeks, even? It's all a blur in this bright, white chaos. I pull my collar to my cheeks, the meager cloth of my garment doing little to stave off my continuing descent into hypothermia.

It stopped being cold some time ago, roughly the time that I had given up any prospect of trudging another damnable inch from where I am now huddled. Presently, I am all too aware that I may never leave this tundra. The warmth is just too overbearing. I remember hearing that warmth is a sign that you're in the final stages. That's good. Nobody ever told me how tedious dying in a blizzard could be.

But still, there's something calming about all of this. The forceful gale around me has a certain beauty as it catches each tiny whisp of snow in its unseen tendrils, tossing them all around me, dusting my beard and hair with the chilled ivory powder.

Never had I dreamt that something so beautiful could presage something so hideous.

The One I Was Too Angry To Properly Title

As those of you who know me or read my blog or are even slightly aware of my motivations and desires may know, as a child, I desired nothing more than to join the military. I knew, though, that with my disability, I'd never be able to enlist as a foot soldier - despite my heartfelt desire to do so. Therefore, at a very young age I dedicated the majority of my talents and intellect to the pursuit of martial knowledge in the hope that I could get some kind of officer position, or, perhaps, a teaching post at West Point. Sun Tzi was my idol, growing up. Hannibal Barca was my mentor. To this day, even, my direct ancestor Ulysses S Grant is a tremendous inspiration behind everything that I throw my efforts into.

I forsook the study of more practical matters in favor of military esoterica. And why shouldn't I have? It interested me and I honestly believed it would pay off later in my career. I achieved - and maintain - a near savant level of knowledge in military history, ranking structure of various international armies and navies, foreign and domestic small arms and political motivations for damn near every armed group in existence today and in the past. However, this was not enough for the United States military. After years of trying, I've mostly resigned myself to the fact that I will never be a soldier.

Even if the discriminatory hiring practices of the US Armed Forces were to end, my political beliefs and disdain for the civilian apparatchik of government would likely earn me few friends in the higher ranks, and I would thus be relegated to the low level bureaucratic grunt work that is rapidly being replaced by civilian contractors. I am mostly fine with this, though I still nurture a simmering grudge against the powers that be for denying me my greatest ambition in life.

Can anything be done about my fate? Likely not. I've lobbied every congressman I've ever had - even when new ones are elected - since the time I was 14. I wrote lengthy missives to my government at every level of representation, their inaction at every turn further fueling my desire to see the useless fucks thrown out on the street. It has never amounted to anything, and were this not something I wanted so much, I'd be content with it.

However, my simmering fury at the matter was brought back to the fore today. You see, one of my favorite places on the internet is /k/: 4chan's board of weapons aficionados and fanboys. I didn't link to it, as their level of decorum is, well, perhaps not for everyone to put it in the lightest terms possible. Anyway, while browsing /k/ today, I noticed a thread devoted to making gun nuts angry. Fancying a good chuckle, I decided to give it a look. That's where I found this:

That's right. You see, despite my immense level of knowledge and expertise with all matters military, I was never able to enlist. However, the United States Marine Corps decided to debase itself by allowing Private Butterball here into their ranks. Take a look at her collar. It's hard to see from this image, but those are at least Private's chevrons. She actually passed basic. Let me repeat that: she actually completed basic training but somehow is still in the military despite being the size of a grounded zeppelin.

Mere words cannot quantify my fury and rage at this. I can never in a thousand times express my undying and unyielding hatred for the fact that this person is somehow good enough to serve my beloved armed forces while I am left out. What makes her so much better than me? What, practically, can she do that I cannot? If anything, I'm more capable. Whereas she probably can't walk to her car without getting winded, I rolled my ass two miles in my wheelchair this morning and will do so tomorrow as part of my daily exercise regimen.

I could allow myself not being in the military when they told me that every active duty serviceman had to at least be a capable rifleman. However, it is evident from this fucking picture that this is merely lip service. I am infuriated and incensed. Worse than that, I am livid. But the very worst thing about this is that there isn't a damned thing I can do to overturn this discriminatory hiring practice that I haven't already done and am not, on some level, already doing. Does anyone have any idea what I should do about this? Because I'm at wit's end.

Thanks for reading my very angry post. It's just pretty infuriating to have something that you've desired for your entire life denied to you only to see it made a mockery of by those who probably don't even appreciate what they've got? I mean, how could she even appreciate that she's fit enough to serve? Look at the state she's let herself get in. All of my rage. All of it. Ever.

In non rage related news, I'm bandying about the idea of restarting Red States since my latest job ended up letting me go before I even got to start. Apparently - after assuring me a million times to the contrary - they had nothing available for handicapped security officers to do. Just fucking great. Oh, hey, that wasn't non ragey at all. Oh well.

Thanks again for letting me vent, all.

[Political Content Post]

It has been some time since I've written a political post, so I figure that there's no time like the present to rectify this grievous wrong. If you don't like these posts, feel free to skip it and wait a few weeks for me to post some humorous apocrypha from my daily misadventures or some small tidbit of fiction that I happen to be tinkering with. If you're a subscriber here, I'm sure that that will prove to be more to your liking.

Anyway, I have been thinking quite a bit lately about the state of the world. It's positively abysmal, in the very kindest of terms. Criminals are more powerful than ever, governments the world over are encroaching ever more on their denizens' freedoms and rights and both groups have unprecedented - and growing - power to destroy your very safety and serenity no matter where you might be. Aiding, abetting, and comprising both groups are the ever present and all powerful megacorporations which in effect rule the world. These foul organizations are the embodiment of all that is wrong with the world. They're too big to fail. They're too vast to be accountable to anyone. They're too impersonal to be reigned in by morals. Their only allegiance is to the almighty dollar - or Euro, or Yen, or Yuan. Pick your poison, it's all the same. These multinational corporations possess such capital that they can get whatever they want from governments with great benefit to their bottom line and great peril to our liberties.

It didn't have to be like this, however. Throughout the development of the modern world, we've had several opportunities to avert this horrible present in which we live from coming to fruition. We could have sided with Unions and workers against their bourgeoisie masters in the Depression. We could have rejected Reagan's absurd corporate tax rates. We could have worked with the Soviets to ensure that the Cold War didn't spend them to death. We could have rejected interference in Southeast Asia or kept our noses out of the Middle East. We could have preserved a world wherein there were many poles of power independent of the world of capital. Where if the United States refused to control her corporations, why, the USSR or the British Empire could step in and knock them down a peg.

Multipolarity is the best way of dealing with the world, in my opinion. It ensures that no one is powerful enough to be oppressive but no one is so weak that they cannot protect themselves. Instead, we live as we do now: where the illusion of peace is preserved for the sake of the oligarchy's bottom line.

I close by saying for the umpteenth time that I wish fervently that we had not won the Cold War. I wish we still had Communism as a world power. Marxist-Leninism wasn't perfect, sure, but can the world really be any worse than it is under the Capitalists? Of course not. In any case, the coming resource shortages of the 21st century will invariably prove that Capitalism is the worst way to run humanity. It is insustainable in the long term and immoral for us as a whole.

But who am I kidding? We'll survive. Or, at least, the rich and enough of the poor to serve their needs will live on and the gulf between them will widen. Hell, we'll just rob Africa some more and start exploiting space. "Civilization" will live on.

The Hospital Kind of Sucks

Pardon me, readers, as I beg your indulgence for a bit of a rant.

You ever have a PICC line? It's a delightful piece of work. Here's a Wikipedia article about it if you're curious.They cut open your vein just under your subclaveaen artery on your upper arm and loop this glorified IV through your chest and just sort of poke it to the point where it just rests barely outside of the entrance to your heart.

See, I have one of those now, and for a paraplegic, it's kind of a bitch. Anyway, I had this delightful thing installed due to the fact that I had a small bone infection that had been plaguing me since mid last year. So, with that removed my doctor prescribed an extended course of antibiotics to be administered intravenously. This is an incredibly good idea as it's basically the best way of killing off whatever lingering creepy-crawlies might lurk in the area.

HOWEVER

I have the wonderful distinction of having had most of my veins destroyed early in my life due to the extensive surgeries required by my spinal defect. Kinda shitty, but whatever. Anyway, this means that I can't really be getting new IV ports stuck in every 3-5 days for a month as my antibiotic course would require. Hence, the PICC.

I just got home from the hospital. My arm is as sore as a whole heap of motherfuckers and a rant seemed warranted. So thanks for reading. Now you know where I was and just *what* I was up to. I feel a nap coming on.

A Trip to the Fabric Store II: Trip Harder

Earlier this month, I related to you all my descent into the very heart of darkness and despair as my girlfriend and I defied all common sense and journied to Jo-Ann Fabrics in order to acquire various materials for our assorted projects. As anyone who has read the aforementioned article, has been to Jo-Ann, or has read the not so subtext of this introduction can attest; this was an enormous mistake. This, however, is not about why I awake screaming every night. No, this is about our trip to Micheal's.

You see, a couple of weeks ago, we decided to give Jo-Ann's main competition a chance and the nearest location that hadn't been converted to a meth lab was in Buford. We piled into our car and traveled south along 85, Googling the directions to the store and putting them into my GPS because my phone is crappy I refuse to enable location services. We arrived at Exit 4 and, as anyone who knows the area can confirm, we knew our search had begun in earnest since everything worthwhile in Buford is just off the exit. It was only once we got closer to the end of the GPS's trail that we realized that something was terribly wrong.

It turns out that Micheal's, according to my GPS unit, was in the middle of the Mall of Georgia's parking lot. This is not only a terrible place to try to sell anything but suspect oranges and counterfeit consumer goods, but it's also precisely where Micheal's wasn't. Upon confirming that we had, in fact, gotten the address correct and retrying it in the GPS, we decided to simply burn a few hours in the mall because our time is quite abundant.

It was as we were leaving that we saw it, directly across from our favorite exit to the mall. In giant letters on an obnoxiously plain sign, the plainly written word Micheal's. Rolling our eyes (in perfect unison, as is our custom) we drove into the parking lot and entered.

Now, let me tell you that Micheal's is a completely different world from Jo-Ann's. Literally the only thing they didn't have was fabric. Jo-Ann's Fabrics understandably has an advantage there, but we still refuse to ever visit again. Instead, we got X-acto knives, a model AH-64 Apache, a few art pencils and a few other supplies. We were, overall, quite pleased. The only oddity in this store was that for some reason an eighth of the women there were pregnant. So, really, we knew that we'd found our store because at least the patrons of Micheal's can get laid.

Submitted for your approval.

Musings: Space

This will prove inordinately difficult to believe, but I like to consider myself an optimist - at least when it comes to certain things. One of those things being humanity's needs and eventual prospects in space. Ultimately, I believe that we'll end up assuming a more settled place in the cosmos; spreading our seedy tendrils from rock to rock and star to star. If we don't annihilate ourselves or exhaust our planet before our technology reaches a suitable point and we aren't too shortsighted to see the need for it, it is utterly inevitable.

However, something that people don't consider is how completely terrifying space actually is. I mean, it can't be just me who thinks this, right? Consider: known space is nearly completely and totally empty. The distance between Earth (or, more precisely, the outermost edge of Earth's space junk debris cloud) and our sole moon - infinitesimal in astronomic terms - is so devoid of matter and content that it completely surpasses any void you have probably ever encountered in your life in terms of its utter desolation. That's just a cosmic stones throw. Consider the distance, now, from us to our nearest star: a distance greater than the sum of all distance ever traveled in human history. The distance from our galaxy to Andromeda, the distance to the next galactic cluster, and so forth are all exponentially more vast. It's all so empty.

Now consider what dwells in the other percent of a percent of a percent of space. The rocks. Most of those are, as well, desolate and devoid of life. Many of those aren't just desolate, but they are in fact hostile to life as we know it. They're bathed in radiation and clouded in toxins. It's just a completely and utterly awful place for us as a species.

At last, consider what *isn't* empty or deserted or desolate. Consider the rocks that have life. Consider the one-in-a-septrillion rock that has thinking, breathing life upon it. Life that can form and exist in ways that we can hardly conceive of with our brains that have spent billions of years condensing out of Sol's stardust. Think of how we treat each other and think of what these strange and inconceivable creatures might do when faced with this.

Just my two cents.