entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones

So, until recently, one of your online social circles was plagued by a complete fucktard, one that made you miss the last fucktard who wasn't that bad but who nonetheless left several years ago after receiving a lot of abuse due to being a fucktard, and then in another online social circle, you find the first guy, so you give him another chance, and, well, he's still a fucktard, and even his friends tell him, "Dude, you act like a fucktard."

And by "you", i mean "me".  Anyway, i'm tired of fucktards.  The content that i'm seeing on Google Plus reminds me a lot of good Usenet discussions, and by "a lot" i mean "sometimes it's fucking exhausting to keep up with the crap."  It doesn't have the softness of Facebook that's primarily fueled by your high school classmates and your family.  And it's even higher in nerdrage quotient than LiveJournal's peak, and it's perhaps similar in quality to Twitter but has much larger caliber because there's actually room to expand commentary.  So of course we are waiting for Google to fuck it all up because they're very eager to get on with winning the "next Microsoft" title belt.

Fucktards... why did it have to be fucktards?

2wanda and i went to Las Vegas last weekend for our 12th anniversary.  We visited her dad, who cooked us some marvelous meals, as he always does when we visit.  Their tortoise likes to come into the house once in a while.

We saw Zumanity and, boy howdy, that was a titillatingly good time.  My only complaint was that it was shorter than your typical Cirque du Soleil show, at 90 minutes.  We also went to Death Valley to try out Kim's new camera (i'm sure she'll write about it soon), and while driving over the mountain pass between Las Vegas and Pahrump, it snowed.  It frickin' snowed a week from June.  Crazy-ass shit.

But enough about the good stuff... god, i hate Las Vegas so much.  It seems to me sometimes as if it's a practical experiment in how unfettered capitalism fails society.  It's an affront to civilization, the greatest karma sink in the nation.  We stayed at the Mandalay Bay and it was the first and, in all likelihood, last time we'll ever stay at a Strip casino hotel.  Mediocre service, a dirty tub, damaged furniture, and one insanely crowded pool that was really making me stabby.  And on the way back, our plane was delayed an hour, so we missed our connecting flight at Mormon Central (don't ask why we got a flight from SJC to Vegas with a stop at SLC; i know that it's stupid, but that's all that we could find), and ended up snagging a flight to SFO so i wouldn't have to try to catch some sleep at the SLC airport and end up going straight from home to work.

• Don't vote for anyone who lists Hogwarts as one of their schools.
• Don't vote for anyone whose claim to fame is based on cosplay.
• Don't vote for anyone who has a hit counter on their profile.
• Don't vote for anyone who's 4 or more LJ friend hops away from you.
• Don't vote for anyone whose journal is friends-only.
• Don't vote for anyone who is obsessed with nude women.
• Don't vote for anyone with more than 500 friends.
• Most importantly, don't vote for anyone who is infamous for making LJ a less friendly place.

lj_election_en

2003: flash mobs.

2007: "I bet i can find N people who X" groups on Facebook.

"Corruption charges!  Corruption?  Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations.  That's Milton Friedman.  He got a goddamn Nobel Prize.  We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it.  Corruption is our protection.  Corruption keeps us safe and warm.  Corruption is why you and i are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the streets.  Corruption is why we win."

Kim and i also rented The Illusionist, which was quite enjoyable.  Even when you know what's coming, it's very well delivered, and the acting was excellent all around.

All i can say on the subject is, "Avast."  Which, if you look it up, means "stop".

I wonder why popular culture embraces thieves, assassins, and slavers (pirates, ninjas, and pimps) and raises them to a level of cool.

I was cleaning out my home directory yesterday and i found this fossilized rant in a file dated 2000/01/17.  I get the feeling that i left it lying around because it was unfinished.  It's a bit emo.  Anyway, here you go.

I write this sober of any foreign drug, drunk only on my anger, my bitterness, my despair.  The steaming heap of shit that our world has become reduces us to bacteria and parasites that feed on it.

Here in this country of freedom, this land of opportunity, we choose to elect our leaders from among a pool of select candidates, not unlike choosing a chicken at the market for our dinner: Does it look fresh?  Is it on special?  Has there been any recent report of a poisonous outbreak of disease that was blamed on this brand of fowl?  We don't KNOW these people, yet we want them to affect our way of life in ways we cannot control beyond the vote.

Hell, we don't even know our neighbors!  Those goddamned antisocial backstabbing little slugs that live next to you, yes, them.  They are the humans with the closest vicinity, yet with whom you have no affinity.  What, make friends with THEM?  Their rotten brats drive you insane, their snooty attitude spawns violent thoughts in you, and their dog ripped up your amaryllises again.

The tribe is dead.  Once people lived together, breathed the same air, took a dump in the same pit, and, horror of horrors, cared about one another and worked together for the good of the tribe.  Or did they?  Is my romantic mind filling itself with happy delusions, to either torment me with hope or pickle me with cynicism?  Can either survive alone, or is their symbiosis unbreakable?

Is democracy truly the biggest joke foisted on us by the ancient Greeks?  In this country, where only white landowners could once vote, candidacy has always been slanted towards the rich or powerful.  Yet you can't escape a basic tenet of democracy: Give a luser a vote and he'll elect a luser.  Clinton was elected after he actually managed to nurse some fledgling hope in the hearts of many to overturn the Bush-Quayle mandate.  What has he given us since?  Monica Lewinsky, "don't ask, don't tell", and Hillary for Senate in NY.  Bush offered us a lip-reading exercise and a continuation of the Reagan mindfuck.  He gave us the Compleat Works of Quayle Malaprops, "this will not be another Vietnam", more Iran-Contra ghosts (hey, he followed through on the Reagan mindfuck continuation!), and his sperm in the form of Gee-Dubya.

Am i glad that Reagan's mind is deteriorating into mush? (Is anyone certain that he wasn't already sick when he was elected president?) I've never been big on Schadenfreude, but i have to admit that there is a certain perverse joy.  It is rather empty, of course; at best, it could be considered karmic retribution or poetic justice.  But that isn't going to fix what he broke.  He fed the notion that America is invulnerable, accountable to no one else in this world.  He fed the War on Drugs with high-and-mighty Nancy.  He presided over the biggest expense on Defense this country has never needed.  He tried to sell us the belief that giving the privileged more leeway would somehow benefit the downtrodden.

A continuation of the discussion i was having with endymion23:

( oh no...the soporific power of ellipses...must resist )