> Effin' Epic, Steve. Well done!
<shucks> "don't let me get off on a rant here..." /Dennis Miller/
<establishing that I have my own inner toxic-masculine>
As long as I'm on an toxic-masculine (and technophilic) anecdotal romp....
I used to like to chide my Liberatarian friends when we'd have a
beer or meal by offering to pay, but then with the caveat:
"but only if they accept Gold or Bitcoin or will barter for
a Chicken"...
leaving them to take the check since they were on oldSkool *fiat
currency* or worse *unsustainable credit* cards which were pretty
much the only fungible modes of payment at the time.
I certainly didn't believe anyone would be prepared at any level to
accept either as payment... maybe a server *might* have a digital
wallet ready to broker the transaction, but I felt pretty safe.
Nobody was likely to have an assay kit on hand. In either case
they'd have had to impose a large transaction fee to facilitate that
exotic exchange.
As of few weeks ago, I could at least buy a Tesla (Cybertruck
anyone?), and it looks *now* like I can soon buy a GM product (all
Electric Hummer?) with Bitcoin!
https://www.gmc.com/?evar25=gm_com_our_brands
But *now* my bluff is called:
https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/crypto
Is paying with Crypto going to be the 2020s equivalent of bellying up to
the bar with a big ole bluetooth earpiece and projecting your voice into
the room so everyone knows what a big swinging d0rk you are in your
world?
GenX Alice:
"Here, let me pay with my฿ " <gestures phone toward touchless
pay-terminal>
GenZ Bob:
" No, No!, Let ME pay... " <makes a show of checking
smart-watch> "my Ξ just went up by more than the price of the meal
since we've been sitting here!"
Millenial Server:
" Kewl! But that new article on Salon.com came out 7 minutes
ago on Cardano, and my ₳ went *exponentially ballistic* since I
brought you your check and I just completed a transaction to buy
this dump from the #$%#@%@$ bourgeoisie owners. Everything is on
the house today!
Boomer:
"doh?" "I dunno what you just said, but at least I got the
Vax <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hekDuCBxCc>! Nya Nya Nya!"
- Sieve
>
> On 3/30/21 11:25 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
>> Dave, Glen, et (gun-toting) alia -
>>
>>> When I bought the pistol, 1969, I could get armor piercing, black talon,
>>> heavy grain, light grain, different gauge shot shells, flares, and a
grenade launcher (bullet with screw in top that took a rod to which the grenade
was attached). Best friend at the time was a genius savant in electronics (3M
fellow while still an undergraduate) and full-bore survivalist. We had a lot of
fun together. He was the "researcher" that wired up a modular computer the
psych department received sans manual, and I was the
"lab rat" in my first LSD experiments. You produce some interesting brain
waves when on meditation and on LSD.
>> And this was during your SDS/Weathermen years, right? At least nobody died
>> (as you tell it).
>>
>> And even more fascinating if you are fondling your .357 whilst on your
LSD trip, jacked in to a jacked up TRS-80's? /The heft, the grip, the caress
of the cold metal! / How does that translate when inhibitions and conventions
about reality are lifted? Maybe complement that with a WWI Trench Knife or a
Katana in the other hand! Surely there are some such studies out there of how
the brain lights up when you have the capability to "end" one or many people at
the twitch of the wrist or an index finger? And does it matter if it's loaded
with snake-shot, mercury-filled hollow point, armor piercing, or a grenade (or
one of each)? Do some light up our sense of importance, power, domination
more than others?
>>
>> And how about them Rods from God (nod to Marcus). Does any
one check the payloads on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy launches?
I think a full complement of Gods Rods comes in at the standard 6-shooter
revolver cylinder load of tungsten telephone poles. If you can't use them to
excise Pence and those traitorous lawmakers from "the People's House", maybe
take out Putin in his summer house, or Epstiens island, or Khomanie or XiXhing
or little Rocket Man and his sister, or ... how *must* it feel to be Zeus or
Thor hisself? Oh the problems we could solve with enough ballistic dominance!
Just think how fast we could have cleared the Ever Given clog in the Suez?
<bwah ha ha!> <ha haaaa...>... <ha!>.
>>
>> Some of my lucid-dreaming as a pre-teen included carrying a fully automatic
>> weapon of some kind (my father's era Tommy Gun, or the contemporary
M16 ?) I didn't watch many movies and no TV but somehow I knew the
image/swagger of having a firestick in my hand that in principle could
eliminate all foes just by waving it in their direction with the trigger held
tight. Unsurprisingly, the subjects of my attempted elimination were
"deserving* of such, because in fact they weren't just out to get *me* but to
"get" innocent people and *I* was the only thing standing between the two.
Where did I get *that* image? I was the proverbial "good guy with a gun"...
what an archetype for my developing young male psyche! Taken straight from the
engraving on the barrel of Glen's own obje't d' desire is the phrase "The
Judge". Yes, it is compelling to be judge, jury and executioner! After all
we *individuals* know best right from wrong and Ayn Rant(sic) tole us that it
was our public
>> duty to pursue our private interests to their fullest... and what greater
>> proof of that is the willingness to take someone else's life with a flick of
>> a wrist and twitch of a finger, for our idiosyncratic sense of greater-good!
>> I wonder what our last two mass murderers were fixing up? Getting rid of
>> those little exotic women he felt to be his temptation? Getting back at
>> the bullies from high school that *might* have been in the supermarket (or
>> school playground, or theater or ???) that day?
>>
>> Of course, true to form (in such dreams), the more important a willful
act was, the more ineffectual my ability to respond. Most of us know how
ff'ing hard it is to *run* in a dream, but in this case, that
ineffectuality was extended to the bullets in the rifle... they were
definitely "ultra-light grain loads" and in fact the harder I squinched
my eyes or ground my teeth, or thrust the weapon toward the target, the more
lame the trajectory until the bullets were barely able to make it out
of the barrel! I vaguely remember in those dreams (paradoxically) having the
fear that I would actually *hit something* with my limp waterhose of lead. As
I tried in vain to raise my aim enough for the pathetic stream of tracers (yes,
somehow I knew about tracer rounds) to reach my targets, I had to ask myself
the question "are these truly
my enemies, and is complete annihilation by lead (and tracers) raining down
from the sky (consider my trajectories) the best answer. It was
>> usually at this point in my dream that I began to exert my will a little
>> more effectually and quit picking at *that* Gordian Knot. I think by then
>> my enemies were usually bored enough with watching my
pathetic attempts to "hose them out of existence" that they had quit whatever
Snidely Whiplash activity they had been gesturing toward and I probably woke up
out of my own boredom with the whole scene. I don't think kids who play
MMORPG FPS (massive multiplayer online role playing game first-person-shooters)
have the same dreams I did... maybe if I'd had more encouragement in my
hero-wannabe-ism I would have become a gun nut myself?
>>
>> I should probably be telling all this to my therapist, not this crowd...
>> though i think while her code of ethics requires her to keep it all to
>> herself (unless I or someone else is in imminent danger from my ideations
>> and intentions)... and here, this just goes into the archives for all to
>> read (including my neighbors who probably already know I'm a danger to their
>> god-guts-n-glory 2nd amendment rights). They are probably scared to death
>> that I'm going to back my antique dump truck through the front wall of their
>> house and hook a logging chain to their gun safe and yank it out of the
>> wimpy little lead anchor-bolts holding it down to their 4" floor-slab...
>> come the apocalypse (only) of course. <sidebar> Apocalypse rules: Might
>> really DOES make Right! Maybe if they hadn't seen me welding steel plates
>> over the doors and windows of the truck cab, they wouldn't have thought of
>> that? Paranoia provides such a glorious endorphin rush! /If only I had
>> some cold hard steel
>> to fondle as I contemplate all the horrible things in the world that "a good
>> guy with a gun" can fix up/ with just a little exertion of will... and
>> what better scenario than a world run amok where *everything* is an
>> opportunity to "do good" (by some twisted logic).
>>
>> The saying goes: "You don't see any motorcycles parked in front of a
>> therapists office". I suspect you don't see many Diesel Duallies belching
>> black smoke and sporting TruckNutz or NRA stickers either. I suspect an
>> inflated sense of power over others might be just the antidote to the
>> existential angst and ennui those without the big-iron feel? Maybe this is
>> the answer to Marcus reflection on whether Rupublicans are happier than
>> Democrats? Go sit astride a 100 horsepower Iron Horse or in the cab of a
>> 400HP coal-rolling pickemup (don't
forget the TruckNutz!) and fondle the grip and finger the trigger of some
of your good friends standing against the wall of the closet (or tucked between
the mattress and box springs of your bed). THAT will help relieve any
self-doubt/self-loathing you might have!
>>
>> Just pay it forward, you don't need to own it... belch that exhaust, rip
>> that sound out those 'murrican made cored out mufflers on your 'murrican
>> made iron horse, wave those ('murrican made) weapons of war, spray some
>> lead... see, don't you feel better now? Save that $100 and buy a round
>> of drinks at the roadhouse for you buddies in patinated leather or denim but
>> hold back enough to buy a dozen rounds for your best friend tucked down your
>> pants like a phallic symbol. He doesn't want to be left with an empty
>> chamber.
>>
>> Yup, I could probably go on forever... thank Goddess I sublimated my
>> red-blooded 'murrican love for hot lead into the hot lead of type, long
>> since gone virtual/digital <fingers clattering on my keyboard, ratta tat
>> tat!>. Spraying my words indiscriminately over the crowd... fortunately
>> they are easier to duck (or catch in your teeth and spit
back as some here do so adeptly)... hitting <delete> is like my choosing to
wake from lucid dreams when they got too boring or inane in spite of my best
efforts to steer them right! Beware the rain of lead and tracers from an
ineffectual keyboard jockey!
>>
>> ramble, mumble, grumble, bramble,
>>
>> - Steve
>>
>> <disclosure> I own my Grandfather's WWI-issue .45 (but no ammo, armor
>> piercing or otherwise), a Diesel pickup (sans NRA sticker and
Truck Nutz and programmed chip to belch smoke), and have owned a round dozen
motorcycles (all rice burners) in my life... oh yeah... a
couple-a 1940's typewriters and full set of brass linotype slugs for making
(literally) hot lead type on-demand ( forget which type-face, I've never put
them in a hot-lead lino to test them out). I don't own any tungsten rods in
orbit.
>
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