Discordian Sky

Huh

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 02:20:22 GMT

It's a little unnerving to realize that I've been attending the same damn convention for just under half my damn life.

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34

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 16:10:23 GMT

*notation of continued engeezering*

*obscenity*

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Welp

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 13:22:01 GMT

Been a while since I updated this thing, hasn't it? I keep forgetting that I even *own* this damned thing.

Figured I ought to let y'all know: as part of Operation Get Mal's Legs Back In Proper Working Order, I'm doing the hospital thing again today. The plan is, they'll do some minor carving on the backs of my knees to give the nerves extra growing room or somesuch, kinda like carpal tunnel surgery.

I should be home sometime this evening though if the docs judge me too loopy to be let out into the world they may keep me overnight. Either way this whole thing should be over quickly.

Right now it's down to the waiting, and I *hate* waiting. Makes me more nervous than the actual thing.

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And now, a message to the Tea Party, from the Loyal Opposition.

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 03:35:09 GMT

So, you've managed to put your collection of birthers, truthers, Objectivists, assorted scumsuckers and village idiots into Congress. So many in fact that you've managed to take the House of Representatives.

Congratulations, you've earned it. Between the whining of impatient liberals upset that the world wasn't fixed immediately on January 21, 2009 and a news media that loves nothing more than white people making spectacles of themselves, you managed to pull off a decent victory. Not the world-upending win you promised yourselves, but hey. For that, we the Loyal Opposition offer our (grudging) respect.

Now comes the tough part; you've got to do something with that win. We've got a nasty ground fight going on in Afghanistan, people we still need to pull out of Iraq, an economy which might not be in freefall but it's edging way too close for anybody's comfort, unemployment still at 10%, millions of people without access to affordable health care...

...and it now all falls upon you, the Tea Party, to make shit right. You've proved you've got mouth, now you've got to put your money where your mouth is.

Scary, isn't it? You can't just throw tantrums anymore - I know it's your core competency, but you're not at the rallies anymore. You're going to have to do things like write bills and pass votes. What's worse is your constituents will require ideological purity that Stalin might find excessive; if you happen to work with the Loyal Opposition, your chances of getting primaried in the next two years will skyrocket.

If you do nothing, well. Sure, you can shut down the government, you can form all sorts of House investigations into irrelevant nonsense, and that will keep the 10% or so of voters that gave you an edge happy. But if things get worse, even a little worse and you're busy interrogating people as to the authenticty of the President's birth certificate... The American people don't like it when their leaders give the impression of dicking around when their people are suffering. You should know this; it's how you won after all, by yelling that as loud as you could.

Way back in the early days of the Roman Republic, a Greek king by the name of Phyrrus invaded Italy. He was actually one of the few people to ever beat the Romans at their own game and on their own soil, but the cost of winning was too high for him to sustain. After one battle where he wiped out the Roman army in exchange for over half his troops, he supposedly said, "Another such victory and we are undone."

So congratulations, you won. You won the right to look like the pack of intransigent morons you are. You won the privilege of being blamed for every problem in the known universe. You won the honor of failing on a national level. And you earned every second of scorn and contempt you'll pick up in the next few years.

We'll see you in '12.

Hugs and kisses,

The Loyal Opposition

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Fri, 29 Oct 2010 03:51:26 GMT

For the first time in almost 12 months exactly, my right foot decided to twitch by half a centimeter when I told it to.

Today is a good day.

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What I'm working on this season...

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 00:38:56 GMT

DISCLAIMER: All persons, places and events in this book are real. Certain speeches and thoughts are necessarily constructions of the author. No names have been changed to protect the innocent, since God Almighty protects the innocent as a matter of Heavenly routine.
--Kurt Vonnegut

part the zeroth: where we learn a little about how the world works

“Everything happens for a reason.”

That’s what most of us are taught, and for a broad enough definition of ‘reason,’ it happens to be true. Cause and effect is one of the basic mechanisms of the Cosmos.

Some of us are taught that there are Prime Movers out there that are responsible for things happening. And that’s true, to an extent: none of the Prime Movers out there exist outside the Cosmos, they all spring from the same explosion (or implosion, or jes’ happened) of matter that makes up stars, planets and little mortal things like us. But there are Prime Movers out there, working their will on the fabric of the Cosmos.

The dirty little secret is that every last one of those Prime Movers are also titanic assholes. The theologian on the street might prefer the term “ineffable,” and claim that it’s not our place to know what their motives are, but let’s face it: they’re assholes.

Today, we’re going to look at the works of one group of the Prime Movers, best known throughout the Cosmos as the Alien Space Bats. The Space Bats are beings of vast and incomprehensible intellect who like to play with branches of the infinite multiverse. Nobody knows how they do it, and nobody knows why they do it; those inclined to theorize think that it’s the cosmic-being equivalent of a schoolyard argument. Whatever the reasoning, the Space Bats have focused their attention on two universes.

The first universe is one not to dissimilar from our own, but in some ways it’s very different. Here, a small thing overlooked - somebody remembered to pick up a packet of cigars left behind - led to incredible changes. The world of Timeline-191 is one of nearly-perpetual war, with the next big one only a few months away. The quasi-fascist alliance of the British Empire, the Kingdom of France and the Confederate States of America are powering up the machinery of war, while the militaristic, jingoistic and only slightly better nations of the Second Reich and the United States of America wait for the hammer to fall.

The second universe is a world in flux. The miracle substance called handwavium has enabled the conquest of the solar system. The new power on the block is the Fenspace Convention, a rough alliance of science-fiction fans, otaku and other assorted nerds who’ve taken the promise inherent in handwavium and run with it. The rest of the world is cautious, waiting to see how the Convention survives. While things aren’t as good as they could be, this world is enjoying a period of relative peace and prosperity. The Fen are in the heavens, and all’s right with the world.

Neither world is aware of the other. The Fen recently learned that the Cosmos is much greater and stranger than they knew, but the demands of colonization and civilization have kept them from exploring across the timelines. The people of Timeline-191 have no knowledge, ability or interest in such things; the physics necessary to describe the situation hasn’t been invented there yet.

In the ordinary state of affairs, the paths of the Fen and Timeline-191 would never cross. But these are not the ordinary state of affairs.

The Alien Space Bats have taken an interest in these two timelines, and the changes they’ll make will shatter conceptions, change minds and reduce paradigms to splinters. It’s the last few minutes of November 18th, 2016 in Fenspace and 1940 in TL-191. When the clock strikes midnight, the Space Bats will make their move and things will get very strange.

The hall is rented, the orchestra engaged. Everybody take their places, please. It’s time to engage in a little comic-opera we like to call...

(music_LOAD: “End of the World” Great Big Sea, Rant And Roar)

The South Is Rising
(Someone Get A Hammer)
a Fenspace Infinities story
directed by S. M. Breen & acted by the Fenspace Collective

...and if any of the folks at home want to get in on this story - now 40,000+ words and counting - ping me and I'll see about arranging VIP passes. ;)

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huh

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 19:20:29 GMT

So, my little sister just got engaged - go pester her on Facebook about it.

Thing is, she wants me to officiate. This is such a magnificently bad idea that I'm actually thinking about going through with it.

I wonder if I can get a priest's collar that works with a Hawaiian shirt...

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Service will be restored when you understand what it is for.

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 21:44:48 GMT

Well, so far so good. Everything's been ported over to DW nicely. The only thing vexing me at the moment is trying to figure out how to customize a simple fixed gradient strip background (why don't you have background-attachment: fixed as an option, Dreamwidth style wizard, you useless piece of shit?!) but other than aesthetics, things are now up and running.

Expect some Fenspace content to filter down in the next couple of days.

That is all, England prevails (everywhere but the World Cup).

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