Addicts (Reason For The Season 2024, One.)

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world, a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we'll kill you. Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us; they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom Of Fear (2004)

...

[Cassian Andor and Kino Loy have successfully broken out of their cell block and took over the prison complex's command center]

Cassian Andor: Kino. Tell them what to do. It has to be you. Come on, Kino. You do this every day. Tell them what to do.

Kino Loy: [presses PA system] My name is Kino Loy. I'm the day shift manager on Level Five. I'm speaking to you from the command center on Level Eight. We are, at this moment, in control of the facility.
Andor: Is that the best you got?

Loy: How long we hang on, how far we get, how many of us make it out, all of that is now up to us. We have deactivated every floor in the facility. All floors are cold. Wherever you are right now, get up, stop the work. Get out of your cells, take charge and start climbing. They don't have enough guards and they know it. If we wait until they figure that out, it'll be too late. We will never have a better chance than this and [looks at Cassian, knowing he said it] "I would rather die trying to take them down than giving them what they want." We know they fried a hundred men on Level Two. We know that they are making up our sentences as we go along. We know that no one outside here knows what's happening. And now we know, that when they say we are being released, we are being transferred to some other prison to go and die, and that ends today! There is one way out. Right now, the building is ours. You need to run, climb, kill! You need to help each other. You see someone who's confused, someone who is lost, you get them moving and you keep them moving until we put this place behind us. There are 5,000 of us. If we can fight half as hard as we've been working, we will be home in no time. One way out! [repeats it multiple times as he leaves the command center]

Andor: Come on! Let's get out of here!

~From the series "Andor" S1 E10 "One Way Out."

...

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco

I saw this a few days ago.

Apparently the main guy for that dipshit "Yellowstone" TV show was ranting about how disgusting and immoral cities are, and how much he hates civilization in general.

Bitch, you literally make your money off of how many people watch your dumbass TV show.

I've never seen more than incidental clips of Yellowstone on YouTube, by the way, it strikes me as a more malevolent Duck Dynasty type of shit, but with horses, and I never cared much for the first one, nor the cult following it seemed to generate among certain of my coworkers. Or maybe like a modern version of Deadwood, but without any of that show's many redeeming qualities.

Seriously I've been watching rednecks and rich idiots do dumb shit for most of my life, and I've never found it especially funny. Some of the people me and my Grandpa worked for when I was younger...it sometimes took a lot to ask them just how they managed to put their pants on in the morning, they were so fucking dumb when it came to anything that didn't involve being a business-person or a lawyer or whatever. My Grandpa literally said "ALL these people know how to make is money." And for all the money they had, more often than not they'd still try to argue with our rates, a point to which my Grandpa was more than willing to reply with how much things like a tractor and mower deck cost or how much work it was to do X or Y and that if they wanted to do it themselves the next year, we would more than likely have other clients by then. Funny how when you framed it in terms of "Pay Me" vs. "Do Physical Labor" they'd usually stop arguing and just pay.

Like, we're talking people who can't even drain water out of their pipes for the winter here, who own seasonal cabins and second homes and were a little put out that the only people they could call weren't [Racial Expletives Deleted] who'd do the job for $5 an hour (Just above minimum wage in 1992.) And of course now we have plenty of Black folks and Latino migrants up here and they charge the same as everybody else, if not more, because they absolutely can...because their work is just as good as if not better than what me and my Grandpa did 35 years ago.

(This is a big part of why I don't consider a lot of things Work. If your job is to wear a suit and go to meetings all day, you might be making money but you sure ain't working. That said, having spent as much time in food service and hospitality as I did, I have nothing but respect for a "Suit" that's willing to pitch in and actually do something now and again.)

And honestly, I think I'm just tired of rich white "Conservatives" and their followers and the recent contradictory combination of mania for control and tedious need to be the ONLY people who are even seen. First off, that seems like a pretty boring way to live. Second, most of these fucking people cannot even stand to be by themselves or not have somebody "Other" to argue with. I mean, maybe it's just me but it seriously seems like it'd be cheaper and easier to just get therapy than to go down this lonely path of narcissism and stupidity that these fucking people are lockstep-marching down. I mean, during the COVID-19 pandemic all these people got asked to do is stay they ass home for awhile, and they couldn't even do that.

Honestly at this point, it just seems like they're sulky mad that they cannot simply own the rest of us.

But at the same time, how they think they could somehow reenact the Antebellum South without knowing something as simple as the stars in the sky (A subject that's surprisingly important to agricultural societies lacking modern technology) I have no idea.

And yet Larry Hogan was supposed to be one of the smart Republicans, and some kind of a responsible government official?? Bro, I've known what the Constellation Orion was since I was like...five, maybe??

Are these idiots just that self-centered that they never look up??

Don't answer that. 

I've happened across one or two astronomy books written by and for Evangelicals and yes, they absolutely are ridiculously narcissistic. Like these people really do think the Universe was made just for them by a "Loving" God who only loves them and hates everybody else.

I get it, all this Thirst Trap bullshit makes the people that do it money. But "Conservatives" seem only to have internalized how important and special and "Saved" they are. Somebody needs to stop catering to this garbage. These fucking people are like half a step from saying they're the only people in the Universe.

I long ago figured out there has to be other life in the Universe, and I long ago figured out just why they don't want to talk to us.

I mean for fuck's sake here's Roseanne trying to say that if there's Aliens, it must be some kind of government conspiracy to institute "One World Government." I mean...what?? So, you're telling me if hostile aliens showed up, she wouldn't believe it??

(These fucking people's threat receivers appear to be entirely calibrated towards threats to ego rather than, ya know, life or physical safety, but I digress. It's gonna absolutely suck for them if the shit does hit the fan soon, just sayin.' It's like the Empire from Star Wars, but with Rebellion Deniers?)

Bitch, this is America. If you haven't figured out by now that the only way anybody in this country would ever agree to "One World Government" is if it got to be us and we got to be some kind of ruling class, you're fooling your own damn self. And by the way, Roseanne is allegedly Jewish, so I have no idea where she gets off claiming this drain cleaner-adulterated Christian End Times Prophecy BS, but I suppose that's simply the language of the entire Right at this point? Fuck if I know, I've been out of it for too long (and I sure as hell don't want to go back.)

And,  of course, when you pitch your religion as being "Alone in a lost and dying world" I suppose after awhile, you get what you get. FAFO.

You want the crazy shit to stop?

You want things to get better?

You want to be able to have nice things again? Maybe rejoin the rest of the civilized world??

Well, that's not gonna happen until we, as a nation, stop jerking off and get over our fucking narcissism and our addiction to conspiracy theories, fear and selfishness.

But ya know, I'm an addict. That cost me my Air Force career and almost my life, then a marriage and my mental health for quite a few years. You don't get over it, or even start to want to, until you realize you have a problem and get tired of either literally or metaphorically waking up on the goddamned floor and your life being a goddamned dumpster fire.

And to get there, you usually gonna have to hit the bottom first, probably more than once.

And for fuck's sake, we're a week away from Christmas and I've barely heard a word about it this year.

I'm afraid to ask what it's going to take to make this shit stop, and when enough will, in fact, be enough at this point. But I've been that guy for enough holidays, I think I have some idea.

Just never seen it done on a national scale, before.

This could be a little rough.

Слава Україна!

Look! The moonlight shows us for what we really are! We are not among the living, and so we cannot die. But neither are we dead! For too long, I've been parched of a thirst with nothin' to quench it. Too long I've been starvin' to death and haven't died. I feel nothin'. Not the wind on my face nor the spray of the sea, nor the warmth of a woman's flesh. [steps out into the moonlight, revealing his skeletal form] You best start believin' in ghost stories, Miss Turner. You're in one!

~Hector Barbossa, Pirates Of The Caribbean; Curse Of The Black Pearl.

Last Post

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?" No point mentioning those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough. ~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.