Exciting news, Kainites! (All two of you, that is.) KAINE LABS is undergoing a massive overhaul, broadening its prospects beyond even the lofty goal of world domination. Soon, we will win the hearts and minds of all the people, and unite the human race in a glorious golden age! Or, at least bring them cool things. Expect this site to become far more active in the coming days.
Two specters stand behind him, bound to his wrist and neck.
Ever is he subject to their call and to their beck.
To his left, machinations, to his right are sweet, sweet lies.
They push him, and they pull him, they drive him mad with their cries.
The ticking of clocks fills his mind to the left, and to the right the very wind gives its heft.
It is as though a great axe has been driven, and given his brain a great cleft.
Though his right weeps so openly, it holds a comedy mask,
and his left, though joyous, offers tragedy to bear.
And the hardest of questions for our poor man to ask,
is which of the two he should wear.
He took another swig of the bitter liquid. The taste didn’t bother him, he had been numbed a long time ago. In the distance, he heard the train’s whistle, and there was some relief in his dead eyes. It had been a year since she died, and he could no longer pretend to live without her.
Her heart had stopped beating, and with it, so had his.
He tossed the bottle aside, his coat flapping in the wind as he stood there, dead center between the tracks. The bright light of the train’s lantern hurt his eyes, and the whistle warned him again of its impending presence. Were he sane, had he cared to be sane, he would move. His feet were still.
Black and white memories rushed through his brain. Holding her, kisisng her, making love to her. She felt so right in his arms, and her laugh was all it took to bring a smile to his face. He didn’t smile anymore.
The train’s whistle was louder now, and he could feel the planks shake with each pump of the mighty piston. He focused on that feeling, the thumping of the engine. And that struck him. Not the train, but the rhythmic pulsing under his feet that shook his entire body as the massive steel frame grew ever closer, and as the wind rushed around him, he felt her in his arms again, her heart racing against his chest again, even as she was gone, and she pushed.
The air was sucked from his lungs as the roaring whirlwind rushed above him, deafening as the train passed over his flat body, all he could see was blackness.
When the train was passed, he laid there, crying. Smiling. Laughing, for the first time in a year.
His heart was still beating, and with it, so was hers.
Is society really so ignorant that we still fear curses? Is swearing to God still a mortal sin? It certainly seems like it. Even though language is becoming more and more free, we continue to hold ourselves back. I’ve already illustrated the utility of the word ‘Fuck’, and everything I said there applies to most profanity.
What I fail to understand is why people continue to insist on censorship. Censorship of any kind is wrong, if the language doesn’t risk directly causing physical harm or property damage (Exempli Gratia: yelling fire in a crowded theatre!)
The use of a “swear” word doesn’t change the meaning of what you say. HOW you speak defines what you mean. Is it more offenisve to say that you fucking love someone, than to say that you hate them and want them to die? Some people would have you believe so. Are friends calling each other niggas just as racist as the man telling them to go back to Africa?
Fuck no, they’re not! Even a kindergartener can understand that language is not defined by words! It’s defined by tone, and context! Words mean nothing but that which we ascribe to them, and no series of syllables is inherently offensive. It’s offensive IDEAS that are offensive, and you can express offensive ideas quite well without the aid of “bad” language.
So please. If you don’t understand the difference between “You did great!” and “You did ‘great’;” if you don’t understand context or tone, if you don’t understand LANGUAGE. Please, stop judging it, and stop trying trying to censor it. Because only someone who didn’t understand would try to censor anything so beautiful as language.
It occurs to me that I haven’t used the word “fuck” in a non-clinincal context for quite a while in any of these posts. I’m here to rectify that.
I saw Star Trek yesterday. It was a fucking awesome movie. If you don’t see it and enjoy it, I hate you.
My cell phone makes fucking weird noises sometimes.
I’m going to go take a piss while wearing a top hat and blaspheming every god I can think of, because I fucking love America.
What the fuck happened to not only being courteous, but recognizing the courtesy of others? If I do something nice for you fuckers, don’t just walk past me like it was my obligation. I’ll rape your eye sockets with a habanero chili, you witless stacks of walking shit.
That’s fucking all.
I won’t pretend to know what potent narcotics my mind has been slipping me when I’m not aware, and I don’t want to know the name of whatever vivid hallucinogen it’s on. But this morning, I had a singular experience.
It was 3 am. I was lying in my bed. Serenely asleep. But that would not last long, because, much like a stoner room mate, my subconscious had an idea that I simply HAD TO HEAR, MAN. Because at 3:31, I shot up from my bed, widely awake, as if startled into seeking refuge from a nightmare. There was a single thought that immediately resonated through my mind.
“Holy shit. Dr. Kaine’s Guide to Meditative Eating! Ohm. Nohm. Nohm.” I sat there, mouth slightly agape, eyes wide in awe. I was terrified, yet slightly proud of myself. A wave of grim realization washed over me. “What the fuck? Was that really my first thought today?” I nodded to myself in confirmation. “Yeah.. Friday’s gonna be interesting.” Was the only thing I could observe as I allowed myself to fall back into the comforting cradle of the bed and immediately returned to sleep, the morning’s events still burned into my memory when I awoke.
Tony Miretti adjusted the sleeves of his dark blue hoodie. He tried to subtly scratch at his wrist, so that the gas-masked officers would not notice as he slipped through the crowd being herded through Italy. It had been three days since the first infection reached fruition. Three days of fearing the air they breathed, of fearing everyone around them.
“Signore, fermo!” He heard through the crowd. His head whipped towards the source of the order, stiff and forcefully, as if he were not used to his own muscles. The cop stared, terrified, into the thin white film over Tony’s once-vibrant hazel eyes. He no longer had control of his breathing. Over any of his movements, he simply had to climb.
He had been there, three days ago, when the first spores exploded into the air. He had fled, his shirt over his mouth, ignorant that nothing could save him. He had showered, he had prayed, and he had repented. And now he was dead. And now, he had to climb.
Shoving women and children out of his path with reckless abandon, Miretti bolted for the first wall he could find, a sheer, red brick wall leading up to a church steeple. He slammed himself into the brick, and began climbing. There was little for him to climb, really, but he ascended through pure adrenaline. His fingernails tore bloodily from him, the officers below fired into his body, but nothing short of complete destruction could keep this puppet from its final purpose.
Three days ago, he had borne witness to a terrible, similar sight. An old woman had climbed to the highest point she could find, and died. Since then, they had been burrowing into his pores, forming a thick white fur across the back of his limbs, and along his spine.
His labored, artificial breathing slowed to a crawl as he reached the top, clinging to the cross as if he would die if he let go. In his throat, he felt the last vestiges of his humanity dying in a scream, as the fungus’ mycelia bored into his brain.
The crowd below began to run, screaming for their lives, and at the terror of the sight above them. They should have been running the moment he began climbing, as his scream became muffled, as billions of tiny white spores spewed from his mouth, and his nose. Gravity, and a black wind, carrying them down to their new hosts.
I came across an answer to a question today, one which I’ve for almost all my life struggled to answer.
I was raised atheist. My parents did their best to simply give me the facts and allow me to draw my own conclusions. And while I’m sure the bias from their own atheism affected me, the conclusion that I drew was that God’s existence, however you want to define that, is less likely than not.
This caused some problems for me growing up. My peers would always ask what religion “I was”, and I would reply “I’m an atheist.” To which I’d invariably be asked, “What does that mean?” And I’d respond, “It means I don’t believe in god.” Bewildered, my inquisitor would ask, “What do you believe in then?”
What do I believe in? This is a loaded question, it demands a belief at all. And they’re not asking for my moral core. They’re asking for a God-substitute. Something that gives my life ultimate meaning. I knew that, and so I’d answer, “Nothing. No Heaven, no Hell, no Buddha.” Or some variation of that. At this point I’d be told that I was going to Hell or some such nonesense, but after hearing a different answer to that same question, I just wish I could have heard it before, because it’s poetic in its simple truth.
“What do you believe in, then?”
“I don’t believe, I think.”
I experienced an odd epiphany today. I’ve been playing through Fallout 3 again with a few mods, among them being FOOK and MMMF3, very recommended, as well as the All Phalanx mod. What AP does is it allows you to have as many followers as you want, and lifts a lot of the restrictions on getting them.
Now I wasn’t too keen on the restriction part, but having a bunch of followers sounds cool, right? Right. Let’s see those raider gangs mess with you now that you’ve got Fawkes, Butch, Charon AND Jericho. Only, I was charging into a group of robots when I saw the combined fire of my posse. I barely got to get a shot out before they’d wiped away my enemies. I stood there, dumbfounded, Dogmeat panting obediently at my side. My companions turned to me, scarcely disciplined, but loyal. And I realized this isn’t what I wanted out of this game.
I realized my original attraction to Fallout 3 was that it should be a struggle just to survive. Every battle that you’re not fully prepared for should be a skin-of-your-teeth affair. Battles should be won by tactics, skill, luck, and intelligent use of high explosives, not unadulterated ordinance. I do not want to be the wasteland pimp who walks around with more ammo than he should be able to carry and an arsenal that could end worlds. I want to be the ranger who outsmarts his opponents, and makes do with what he can make, find and steal. Unlike most games, where I’m only intersted in the story, Fallout 3 has intersting gameplay, and I want it to challenge me. Really challenge me. And if that’s not the mark of a good game, I don’t know what is.
Compare a modern career grocery bagger to a medieval peasant. They’re not too different on basic principle, they do work for those better off than them, they aren’t looked too highly upon, and their work is menial and dull. The only difference in a general scope, is that the peasant was born into this role, and the bagger fell into it.
The peasant was told from an early age, that due to his circumstances of birth, he would never be anything better. His misfortune was simply that, misfortune, and he accepted it. He wasn’t happy about it, but he accepted it, and lived his life knowing that his lot was only his by chance. The bagger, however, came to where he is today through a long and ardous process called life. He went to educational facilities, maybe dropped out of high school, maybe even college. He was given at every point in his life, the opportunity to become something more, and for some reason or another, he didn’t. The bagger bags groceries for a living. His lot was not his by chance, by failure.
In the modern world of the middle class, life is far more difficult than the bourgeoisie are given credit for. Children, from an early age, are told that they can be anything they want, if they just work hard and follow the rules. Yet they are expected to make this decision and stick to this concept of hard work during the most turbulent time in their lives: teenagerdom. Their hormones rampage, they question their existence, their life, their friends, their parents. And any number of things can affect the teen’s lives in ways they cannot control, yet the modern mindset will always pull it back to them.
The modern mindset is one of blame, and of negativity. Bullies taunting in the schoolyard, parents reprimanding for unsatisfactory grades, the media enforcing an unrealistc standard of beauty. At every turn we are assaulted by a world that wages a siege against our self-image. We grow up only to own our failures. We lament what we did wrong without ever really trying to discern why. And then we surpress our problems. “Who am I to feel sad about this?” we scold ourselves, “There are people far worse off than I!” Because we are trained to think that we do not have problems, and because we do not recognize how important we are, we never even deal with what is wrong in our lives.
We trudge on through the sadness and doubt and grief and never question why. And slowly, but surely, we begin to hate ourselves.
And why shouldn’t we? Look at the state of the world. Look at the state of our lives. The thousands of success stories are heralded by the billions of failures. Everything arounds us tells us that we should hate ourselves. Maybe we’re fat, maybe we’re doing badly in school. Maybe we’re ugly, and maybe we’re not cool. In this world, is it any wonder depression is so high in teens? Is it any wonder people act out? In a world where everything that’s wrong with our lives becomes our fault, we are as much a victim as we are a culprit, on two fronts.
Perhaps ignorance is bliss. For while the Narcissus of the past looked in the mirror too much, the man of today hates his reflection