Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

This is probably *not* going to be the best day of my life. I love my parents and we get along well, but that's what I moved out of Ohio for, for fuck's sake.

Still, I survived a dreadful year and start the new one with a hope that the tides are turning. I've had my faith in my friends, and nearly in myself, restored. And I'm actually a bit excited to see what gets happened next.

Or maybe I'll get hit by a bus. #obligatorycynicism :) Still. This is admitted a quite beautiful morning.

Woke up at 3 am to Fred Armisen's Talking Heads parody band from Documentary Now!, singing the lyrics "I'm having the best day of my life, this is my street, this is my street." I am looking out over my childhood neighborhood, which is blanketed in snow & colored, motorized lights.

Christmas starts in 3 hours, with an implicit and long-traditional threat that if I am not up by then, my parents will awaken me with a deliberately off-key rendition of "You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille."

Hulu has posted a holiday video that is nothing but a bunch of puppies totally destroying a Christmas-themed set over the course of a half-hour, and it's the best low-effort television I've ever seen, not to mention the only Xmas special that's ever had a theme I've liked. :D

My 15-year-old nephew was goofing around with his siblings and I could have sworn he blurted out "SMOKE TREES!" out of nowhere.

I... may have to have a chat with the little tyke. About parental opsec, if nothing else. :)

I always wanted to cast Enmerkar in some kind of low-fantasy Coen-brothers fiasco, where his lair is suddenly invaded by greedy adventurers while he's innocently reading and stoned out of his mind, and he has to improvise a defense out of half-remembered bits of arcana and an acid-breath weapon that has deteriorated to the "mild vinaigrette spray" level due to disuse and disinterest.

Not enough stories with innocent, put-upon dragon protagonists just trying to live their lives!

I miss Enmerkar!

For those who missed out, he was one of my Birbsite identities, a dragon hatched by monks from an egg found in the Rare Items Collection of Jorge Luis Borges's Library of Babel.

He's a chimeric "halfsider," two different shades of brown split down the middle, a magical slacker whose personality is half Ludwig Von Drake and half Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski.

Amazing, free e-book of medical curiosities from the NIH!

https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/ext/pub/HIDDENTREASURE_NLM_BlastBooks.pdf

Which is why I repeat the question: why punch the rank and file and risk playing into their narrative, when they're so gloriously, temptingly emotionally fragile? No, you use your WORDS on the little ones. Save your fists for the ones actively threatening people, and your bullets for their ringleaders (and don't get caught).

Oh, and if you ever capture Andrew "weev" Aurenheimer somehow, it's categorically okay to torture him a little bit first. -_-

I caught a Nazi named "Wotansvolk" or something posting about his dogs -- Thor and Adolph, ffs -- to Reddit's /r/aww community, pointed out his screamingly anti-Semitic posting history, and got him run out of the community as a laughing stock. From 15 upvotes to -5 in all of two minutes.

Won't change a thing, but it made him really mad, and there is a huge indelible smile on my face.

Note also that the "alloys" story is probably not the proof people were hoping for: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-truth-about-those-alien-alloys-in-the-new-york-times-ufo-story/

In particular, note that it would be pretty obvious if a metallic sample came from deep space due to the inevitable ionization.

Note also that the alleged money quote refers to odd reactions in people who encountered the alloys, not the alloys themselves. The same can be said of cell phone signals, MSG, and cursed objects. :p

Apologies to anyone who was weighing any hopes of getting off this planet upon this story. But fringe culture, including UFOlogy, has been a major hobby of mine since I was a teenager, and after a while you get REAL hard to impress with these stories.

See also his vague and inconclusive descriptions of UFO encounters in https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/896247/UFO-sighting-aliens-Pentagon-Luis-Elizondo-Earth-space-US-Navy-pilot These are the same sort of encounters that have been reported since the very start of UFO sightings -- which, mysteriously, only happened after Richard Sharpe Shaver's legendary hoax in Amazing Stories ( http://sacred-texts.com/ufo/irl/ ), and tend to drastically resemble his original fiction.

That's right. I said it was a weather balloon.</soul_coughing>

Here are the two relevant articles. Draw your own conclusions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Aviation_Threat_Identification_Program

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_UFO_incident

Note particularly what's become of Luis Elizondo, the AATIP head who was featured in the Huffington Post: he founded an _entertainment company_ that same week.

If you knew something transcendent and wonderful and secret were true, would that the first thing YOU did with that news, rather than, I don't know, try to send greetings or thumb a ride?!?

I present... the One True Pairing.

Sorry, Bob. (Or maybe he got TFed!)

https://awoo.space/media/ng1sCV7FrnpJEeyo_CY

Live action Dangeresque.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWpW623yrAU

Go. Go now.

#homestarrunner

Yes, brain. I know, your serotonin level is way off. Yes, brain, I know you crave stimulus.

Yes, brain. I know, you don't like doing long drawn-out precision tasks.

No, brain, I'm pretty sure the quality of our giftwrap cuts will not in any way affect the physical health of our loved ones.

Yes, brain, that's very nice. How about I give you some nice caffeine and put you in this media playpen while the grown-ups in the frontal cortex get some wrapping done.

If my attitudes about violence vs. far-righties ever seem incongruously soft or equivocal, please take a moment to consider them as I do: as fragile glass houses covered in tar, with signs in Richard Spencer's handwriting neatly labeled "KICK ME."

This is why I just can not advocate kicking them, kids. How much more obvious of a trap do they have to set?

A nice anonymous rock through their walls in the dead of night is far more effective. Don't hit when they're watching, schmuck.

oh and my ocd is absolutely raging out here, intrusive thoughts like freakin' crazy, but they are mostly comfortably distant or morally unimpeachable things like "fuck bankers" or "human beings suck" or imagining trump suddenly contracting a lethal biblical plague while on camera.

but i'll take this over the depression any day -- i'm just so fucking bored

also, for the last few months i seem to perpetually be just about to move out of college, or _somewhere_. there's always a room, and a lot of stuff that has to go somewhere, and a lot of weird uncertainty about the future, and i go looking for my friends and don't find them. go figure.

(my brain usually takes 3-4 months to process that a crisis is over n.n; )

i only just stopped dreaming of video arcades this year