A Little Bit Angry

This country has gone fucking insane and I’m not going to put up with it anymore. The absolute baseness of most Americans has reached epic proportions, and the absurd fear-propaganda being spewed from every media outlet isn’t helping. It seems that basic civil liberties are no longer the concern of the average idiot citizen, and we’re all just giddy at the prospect of invasive government censorship.

Take, for example, the high school student who wrote a fictional story about zombies. In his story, an un-named high school is overrun by – you guessed it – zombies! His grandparents, being the fine upstanding patriots that they are, immediately turned the story over to police upon discovering it in their grandson’s notebook. After all, it contained descriptions of a school somewhere, and schools are government property and therefore any depiction of violence against them is a crime.

I’ll spare you the buildup and just cut to the chase: he’s in jail, arrested on felony terrorism charges. In fact, a judge raised his bond from one to five thousand dollars in a courageous attempt to keep a dangerous criminal off our streets. Rejoice!

Next up we have, naturally, the new and improved revenue machine that is the FCC. Not content with the eight million dollars in fines they levied this year (which is, by the way, up from forty-eight thousand a year ago) it would love nothing better than to conquer the pay services; that is, cable and satellite television and radio. After all, it’s not enough to protect our citizens from the smut broadcast over public airwaves – if people are paying for Cinemax it’s only because the powerful media has compelled them to, not because they want to watch soft-core porn at two in the morning.

Finally (not really finally, because I could list stuff all day, but it’s the last in this lineup), the American Citizensâ„¢ in Florida made the brave decision to omit a picture of a female student from the yearbook because she was – gasp! – wearing a tuxedo. I’m not going to go any further into this one because, really, what else is there to say? Instead I’ll just hit you with what is probably the best quote I’ve read in a while: “When uniformity is compromised, then authority no longer holds.”

Inspiring, isn’t it? I’m sure the founding fathers would be proud.

Home Is Where You Know The Street Names

Well, here I am, day one of what we might officially call Spring Break, and yet I remain in Houghton working on projects. And playing videogames, but I figure you assume that anyway.

Interestingly enough I came to a realization over the weekend: I’ve lived in Houghton for nearly 3 (non-consecutive) years now and I really don’t know much about it. It’s an easily explained phenomenon, once I sat and thought on it for a few minutes. My first two years were spent in the dorms, and on a small campus like MTU’s that means you’re virtually half a block from every building you might need to visit (especially freshman year, when most of your classes meet in the same lecture hall). I had no real reason to wander around the city itself since the dorms take care of most of your immediate needs, and I was poor enough that the two-dollar movies at the student union were generally more attractive than a regular theater. Additionally, Houghton’s terrible winters discourage much outdoor venturing unless you’ve got a good reason, and exploring a Podunk town (editor’s note: apparently Podunk is a proper noun, because MS Word really wants me to capitalize it) was not nearly good enough for me.

I’ve also just realized that this is the first time I’ve been in Houghton with no class responsibilities, barring the standard weekends. For every other break I’ve either gone somewhere else or headed down to my parents’ place for the duration…a fact that strikes me as rather odd. Odd that one could live somewhere this long and not only know virtually nothing about it, but also never spend even a few days off there.

Now, don’t get confused and think that I actually like this city all of the sudden – it’s still a dust speck on the ass of the Earth, but I think I’ll at least wander around this week (assuming it warms a bit) and see what I can find. I owe that much to Houghton, I guess.

Lacking Lucidity

I yet live, though this is by no means a situation guaranteed to continue much beyond this post. For the past two weeks or so school has played the shady back-alley thug to my stupid tourist wandering places he shouldn’t. I awoke sometime last weekend naked, cold and befuddled, although I wasn’t in a bathtub full of ice and I don’t have any surgery scars across my back, so I think I’ve still got all my organs accounted for.

By the time I stumbled blearily back to my apartment for clothing and rest my memory began to return and I realized that this was only the beginning. Indeed, the brute had indicated that he would be back, and that he would bring friends, and they would have a party. Not a party in the proper sense, of course; more a deranged sort of ceremony that they would culminate by reaching into the very heart of my existence and crushing my soul like an empty soda can.

Why he allowed me to live the first time I will probably never know for sure, although it certainly isn’t hard to guess. If he’d just flat out killed me there wouldn’t have been the exquisite pleasure that comes from drawing out the suffering of a helpless target, confident in your position of control as you listen to the pitiful cries.