The Inauguration by Wulfenstar

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

The Inauguration

POSTED BY: WULFENSTAR
UPDATED: Sunday, January 18, 2009 08:36
SHORT URL:
VIEWED: 847
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Friday, January 16, 2009 6:34 AM

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

In just a few short days, Obama will be sworn in as the new President...

The amount of "security" here in D.C. is intense.

They are closing all bridges coming in from Virginia (i.e. the South), and implementing illegal search-and-seizure policies on the metro.

Bama is going to be enclosed in a bullet-proof "bubble", which most of you watching at home won't see.

All of the buildings at or near the parade route have been, or will be, closed. To even get somewhat close to the action, you'll be searched before you enter a "secure" zone...

They have bomb-sniffing dogs, and cops all over the place...

The only way into the city will be to walk, or to take the Metro. 495 will be open, but there might be screenings along the highway.

I'm 20 minutes from the White House, but I'm staying my butt home for this.

I'm really wondering....is it going to be like this any time he comes out in public?

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Friday, January 16, 2009 6:43 AM

PIRATECAT

"Battle of Serenity, Mal. Besides Zoe here, how many-" "I'm talkin at you! How many men in your platoon came out of their alive".

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Friday, January 16, 2009 6:57 AM

DREAMTROVE

Wulf, all the security in the city will be dealing with the chaos. think of all the things you could loot, like for instance, that bailout

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Friday, January 16, 2009 8:44 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Dammit DT, you beat me to that very comment!

You'd make a pretty good crook.

-F

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Friday, January 16, 2009 9:30 AM

DREAMTROVE

Thanks Frem, I'll take that as a compliment :)
BTW, I did secure myself a copy of Elvenlied from a friend, I'll post later, I'm thinking of watching some.

Only hitch with linux is sometimes you need special video and sound drivers, a level of geekiness is required.

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Friday, January 16, 2009 9:45 AM

FREMDFIRMA

*twitch*

I'd recommend some kind calmative (catnip tea, valium, etc) if yer gonna actually watch Elfen Lied, seriously.

It's very, seriously and totally disturbing, or at least it was to me, since I had my own set of "puppy incidents" and empathise a little too closely with Lucy for even my own liking right down to the side order of sadism against humankind.

Course, we just had this kinda discussion in another thread, about the nature of what we call "evil" didn't we ?

By all rights most Anarchists are (as hinted at in yet another thread) technically Chaotic Evil, since destruction of the status quo and it's society would be considered an evil act, and yet... despite that perception most folk who follow the non-aggression principle are really decent folk, makes ya wonder, or would, if you were not from a belief that absolutely acknowledges the need for light and darknesses balances - not every darkness is rooted in evil.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Friday, January 16, 2009 4:29 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:
makes ya wonder, or would, if you were not from a belief that absolutely acknowledges the need for light and darknesses balances - not every darkness is rooted in evil.

Not every darkness is rooted in evil, indeed. Look into the origins of "Satan" (suh-TAN), the one referred to as "The Adversary". NOT the adversary of good, not the evil one - the one you turned to and prayed to when all your efforts to follow "the good" were worth nothing, and your prayers went unanswered. At such time, you turned to The Adversary, in prayers for justice and vengeance (often considered one and the same in the ancient world).

I never really got the whole Satan-is-the-ultimate-evil bit of Christianity. Satan is who you turned to when you prayers and pleas for right went unheeded. He wasn't what was WRONG - he was what was left for you to believe in.

Or so said the ancients...

Mike

"It is complete now; the hands of time are neatly tied."

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Friday, January 16, 2009 6:25 PM

DREAMTROVE

Mike,

You've opened a theological can of worms that has been the subject of many long archived threads. In the ancient middle eastern cultures, there were many deities.

I would of course argue from my position that the identification of cultists like the original YHWH cult, which descended from the now extinct we assume cult of Sin, (shin?), Cult of Sinai, the identification of one god as the ultimate Good necessitated that those who oppose become evil, and that satan becomes through the course of the bible, a composite. Actually, there are many adversaries, who represent competing views.

Contrary to the picture told in the bible, YHWH worship was a minority position, EL worship was the majority position, though there are a number of side ones. The characters of YHWH and EL are so disparate, they show the inherent schitzoid qualities of western faiths:

YHWH is i am, for i am the one who shall not be named, the nameless one, for those who name me may gain power over me, and thus not submit to my will, which after much digging I came pretty conclusively to the idea that the origin of this deity was Sinai, so sin/shin, as the major character, originally defined as 'dwelling in the fire under the earth to which all shall return' and to serve eternally in his halls of flame was a reward akin to the warriors of valhalla

EL is the high one, which came to be understood as the top of the pantheon, but originally meant physically high, as in lord of the heavens. Sometimes EL is Elohim, a combination of El and him, the marriage between the god of the sky, and the ironically named goddess of the sea, and their union, the item of greatest worship to any arid culture: Rain.

EL had his origins in Ellil, who was adapted from the Assyrian Enlil, as the last breath of Anu, the creator. The Pantheon was an artificial creation of Sargon I, who wanted all of the cults of his lands to be within one religion, to stop religious conflicts between them.

The Old testament of the vengeful volcano god of war, YHWH, was inherited by all three western religions, as was EL, as in the Jewish El, as in Is-Ra-El. In Christianity, Jesus and his disciples refer to god exclusively as El, but modern christianity is the judeo-roman creation of Paul, and so the two are brought together, a union which is carried forth again into Islam, where the composite YHWH of the old testament remains, but is merged with Allah, direct from Ellil.

To make matters worse, YHWH himself was merged in the extinct ancient kingdom of Judah, to remove all competition, and so the names of other gods were simply cross out. Enki of the underworld, who caused the flood, from which the world was saved by Noah, who built the Ark, was simply deleted with old Find and Replace, and became YHWH, making YHWH already some sort of mulitple personality disorder.

Then, through time, there was a consistant absorption of other deities and beliefs, resulting in absurdities like the vestal virgins, keepers of the sacred flame, who represent BAAL, a deified real person, who had become God of Fire, and by the end, part of the christian god, which simultaneously being Beelzeebub, for Baal-Zeebub, for Zeebub, the king of lebanon, and devotee of Baal, whose faith was carried forth by soldier and wife Anat.

But, if this wasn't bad enough, because much of the bible comes from Judah, the historical enemy of Israel, the demonization of Israel, her people, and faith is carried by the zealots of the now extinct Judah to genocidal proportions, creating a suicidal entity of self immolation, a tremendous inconsistency.

This madness hits several extremes throughout chronicles and kings, to the point of the total demonization of Jezebel, her faith, her nation and her people. As an assyrian, this meant caucasians, but as queen of Israel, it also meant the people of Israel, and the most defamed characteristic of Jezebel was her spellcasting, or prayers, and her vanity, particularly of her hair, which itself is the origin supposedly of head scarves. So, the various religions who carried through the religious headwear principle were doing so to spite their own queen, because a long dead enemy who intended to exterminate all of Israel and lands northwards, hated her so.

By the time you've unravelled the whole mess, making sense out of it becomes impossible. Islam is a natural extension of Judeo-Christianity, which like its predecessors thrives on self hatred following the will of its own schitzoid deity-merger, to genocide itself.

When you get passed the canon into the apocrypha, it gets even worse. So many kings and religious theocrats attempted to unify and synthesize the mergers of so many ideas to expand their influence the result is just utter madness. The source material is largely drawn from lower Sumeria, now Kuwait and lower Iraq, Assyria, now Syria and N. Iraq, lebanon, Israel and Judah, now mostly palestine, and egypt, and through egypt, other african faiths. Chances are that the Assyrian Archon of the Pantheon Anu is Anubis, first king of Egypt, another real person to later become a God.

To say that it's a mess is an understatement. What creates the majority of the problems that we have right now with these faiths is not so much the total inconsistency as the fact that the large hordes of zealous followers are borderline literate, and very few have ever read even their own official canon, let alone their apocrypha, which by definition was always intended to be more core to the religion than the canon. Now we have masses of disorganized religion, with little or no knowledgeable guidance.

The Apocrypha, as recently argued by yours truly, from the greek for "hidden" was reserved in all religions for the priests, so that the priesthood would maintain a better understanding of the core of the religion than the followers. The Jewish texts are the Apocrypha, Torah, Talmud and Kabballah, The Christian Apocrypha is mostly the Gnostic Gospels, but there are also the various cardinal works of the various orthodoxies, and the small segments of non-orthodox, and the Islamic Apocrypha is the Hadith. If I recall correctly, open reading of the Hadith is accepted by Shiia but not by Sunni Islam. Sufi is not a separate religion, except among new agers. The Sufi originally were just keeper of the Islamic Apocrypha and leaders of the faith.

I could write a book on this and some day I will. The above gives you a lot of stuff to dig if you care to. As far as the name Satan, I always took it to be derivative of Seten for Set, the egyptian deity, but I'm not sure of that. Satan is specifically a minor character in the text. Under Paul's transcription, he is used as the unified name for all that is evil, which is for any opposing deity, but in the old testament, there really isn't such a concept as a unified anti-God, just an erratically unified God.

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Friday, January 16, 2009 7:25 PM

DREAMTROVE

I love this sort of stuff. I tend to take substances that increase the psychadelic effect, activated the right brain. Caffeine is terrible for this, Valium is good. It goes better with ____ omitted but legal substance, and some other omitted but legal substances of my creation, and ginseng.

If the stories I write were D&D games then most of the interesting characters would be technically Chaotic Evil. Not all of them are anarchists.

Destruction of the status quo is in the eye of the beholder. What irritates me about most fiction is the degree to which the author takes it upon themselves to become the behold and define good and evil for you. For instance, in Star Wars, the heroes seek to destroy the status quo, dismantle society and cause anarchy essentially.

If this were a better written story, I might really like it, but Lucas has become so affirmed in his position that rebels are good, and the empire is evil, that there is really no room left for interpretation by the viewer. Bladerunner is more interestingly ambiguous. Everyone is potentially chaotic evil. Yet, I find every character in bladerunner more sympathetic than any character in star wars.

I get the character concept, in one of my stories I actually have a character whose name is Vengeance. I'm sure I'll warm to it, as long as it's well done.

Some of my favorite femme fatale characters: Nikita, Pris, River, Mathilda, Ripley, Sarah Connor, and this new Cameron is growing on me. Oh, in anime world I'm sure I can wrack some up, oddly I'm going to start with Lain, who is not really your typical femme fatale. A lot of anime seems to not take its dark female characters seriously enough, though a lot of them eg. Ryoko, are a lot of fun.

Oh, crossing thread for a second, a decent pure fantasy, from the master, Spirited Away. Anything really Miyazake, not usually all that dark, but really good fantasy.

As far as non-aggression goes, I agree with a basic respect for life, not just human, but all life, which is why there is a giant black widow spider over my head. He lives there, I looked it up, it's a male. I made the mistake of trying to remove one once, and got bitten (A bad, but far from the worst experience ever, maybe on the bottom 10 list.) I would generally accept that anything which violates your right to life has sacrificed its own, but a giant poisonous spider hasn't. If I knew less about spiders I might be tempted to remove it.

But also, aggression is a move of direct opposition, which is never going to yield the desired result, which makes it easier to step aside. I haven't fully analyzed why I enjoy and write stories about characters like this. I suppose it's because I can embrace the dark as a necessary counterbalance of the light, and enjoy the attempt at understanding both parts.

I actually have been fiddling with some self defined good characters, and trying to understand the dichotomy based mindset, which, you can see where it is the self defined good that defines evil, since there is not generally anyone who is self defined evil. Usually, the self defined evil is some kind of wannabe. Wannabes are slightly dangerous in that in an attempt to be cool, they tend to glorify really poor life choices. They're not nearly as dangerous as the self defined "good."

But in order to be interesting, characters have to be complex. The self defined evil, death eaters and what have you, the ones I call "Muahahahahah," are generally one dimensional and uninteresting, as are the kittened characters. This is a phrase my sister came up with to define a common hollywood, but also general fiction, creation: The character who seems potentially sympathetic or acceptable, but that the author intended for you to dislike or view as evil, and so will intentionally insert a scene where that character tortures a kitten to death, just so you know that he or she is evil. My brother calls this "Slapping a swastika on them." The destruction of Alderon is a very clear kitten scene.

If you saw single white female,

Select to view spoiler:

I defined it as Jennifer Jason Leign (Heddy Carlson) and her psychotic roommate. Which meet with a "no, that's backwards, and I say, oh yeah? Which character kills her roommate? And then, for the most part, feels no remorse over doing so?

I'm writing these very long posts because I'm not in the right mental state to watch this. I really need to take a lot of drugs

Of course, I'm opposed to drugs, but not the concept. Street drugs are manipulative parts of the arsenal of some intricately created street culture to subjugate the people.

Naturally altering ones mental state through meditation and herbs is a natural, non damaging free choice, best taken by people who know a ton of neurochemistry, and also, those who have already been able to achieve balance, freedom from the the controlling chemical substances everywhere in our society.

I had some caffeine earlier today, which I almost never do. It has little effect on my system except to increase the neural noise, which aslo doesn't help. It apparently also keeps me up ranting on the internet posting things that I don't know if anyone is ever going to read.

My negative feeling about street drugs and my positive feelings about herbals are something that evolved independently over time. Either could be dangerous, but one is an agent of manipulation, and the other of self control.

I'll watch some tomorrow, My brain will be calmed down, I can consume some substances too maximize the effect, hopefully. After what I've been through, overkill is not what I worry about, I worry about being too numb to experience the rush. I do the same thing when I write. Strangly, I find just regular soy powder to be really quite effective. But there are other things, and I'm not going to print them on a public forum. Then I turn on some decent heavy metal, Nightwish, Epica, that sort of thing, sometimes punk, it used to be punk, but lately I've gotten into this scandanavian symphonic stuff. Gets me in the right mindset.

Oh, btw, since you deal with kids, and might run into these problems, and I know a lot about the subject, if you have any problems that you can't solve, such as depression, anxiety, issues that kids often have, I can offer some safe natural and legal solutions. If you have a background in chem, I suggest you look them up and follow the logic. I've been working on curing various forms of substance abuse, and been quite successful on a chemical level. On a social level, it's trickier to get people to stick to them.

Getting to normal is something I'm still much better at than getting to a supernormal state, which is what I'm now working on, but for myself only, and of course, to do it in a controlled way, to be able to ultimately will myself into a state, safely and easily, and out again.

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Friday, January 16, 2009 10:49 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Anime eh ?

It might then interest you to know that despite my violent nature and hostile misanthropy - two of my idols who I hold up to my niece as exemplars of decent behavior for the most part.

Yuna. (FFX/FFX-2)
Princess Nausicaa.

Of course, the princess there has one of what I consider the most jaw-dropping acts of bravery in anime, when she decided to rescue the baby Ohmu - if you've seen it you know the scene*... but these two girls manage to be brave *and* humane at the same time, without resorting to needless violence or hatred, an ideal that I severely envy as I've never been able to hold to it myself.

-Frem
*Specifically, her engagement with the Pejite guntub, mind.

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Saturday, January 17, 2009 3:14 AM

KIRKULES

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
It goes better with ____ omitted but legal substance, and some other omitted but legal substances of my creation, and ginseng.

We used to eat

and

seeds when I was a youth. Nutmeg works pretty good too. If you live near a cow pasture you can find an illegal but more effective hallucinogenic every spring.

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
Hunter S. Thompson

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Saturday, January 17, 2009 3:33 AM

WHOZIT

Quote:
Originally posted by PirateCat:

Maybe Barry is Prez, BUT I'M GOING TO BE GOD!
"Battle of Serenity, Mal. Besides Zoe here, how many-" "I'm talkin at you! How many men in your platoon came out of their alive".

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Saturday, January 17, 2009 8:23 AM

DREAMTROVE

Frem,

Yes, I know the scene. I think I've seen all of them except for Kiki's delivery service and return of the cat, which I have sitting right here. The toxic jungle is one of my favorite creations of all time. I think that it's Ironic that Miyazaki's father was one of the engineers that built the Zero. If you've heard Rodenberry on the war, he talk about choosing a Japanese pilot, and he's just a little bit condescending to the Japanese, as he praises them for their piloting skills. It's very clear that what he doesn't see coming is, yeah, one of those guys is going displace me someday.

Caveman, I'm not sure if we're ever on the same page, but that's not what I meant. Not everything that came from a lab is an anathema to the body, and not everything that comes from nature is your friend. Still, it's a halfway decent general rule.

I think that Hunter S. Thompson as a role model is not a highway to serenity. I like Thompson in the way I like River6213. I must confess that there's an element of me which is self serving, in that I like to live in an interesting world, and these people, like River Tam, make the world more interesting. Doesn't mean I'm about to follow them off a cliff. River Tam, maybe

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Saturday, January 17, 2009 3:43 PM

WULFENSTAR

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

Jeeze,

You guys went off on a tangent, didn't ya?

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Saturday, January 17, 2009 6:45 PM

DREAMTROVE

What, it's like your first threadjack?
I think we went walkabout. As usual.

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Sunday, January 18, 2009 8:36 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Well, for anyone planning to attend...

Just a little advice for ya.

Go AROUND Maryland if you can, and stay the HELL out of Baltimore.

Yanno, stuff like this makes me glad I moved away.

State trooper fired after drunken high-speed chase
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/baltimore_county/bal-trooper122
2,0,4513141.story

Only reason that creep is fired is cause there's too many witnesses to threaten into silence - and while they'll write it off as yet another of the hundreds of "isolated incidents", this kinda lunacy is far from uncommon there.

Remember, this is a city where you can be arbitrarily arrested for so much as asking directions...
Couple Arrested For Asking For Directions
http://www.wbaltv.com/news/9229472/detail.html?taf=bal

Or just randomly gunned down in the middle of the night like Cheryl Lynn Noel - who's only mistake was being a nice enough person to not shoot first.
http://www.theagitator.com/2005/12/06/more-on-cheryl-lynn-noel-and-no-
knock-raids/

Btw, the prick that shot her got a freakin heroism medal for it, something even I, cynical and jaded that I am, found over the top offensive.

And even being the local mayor is no defense against their insanity.
Maryland Mayor's Dogs Killed During No-Knock Raid
http://gothamist.com/2008/08/07/maryland_mayors_dogs_killed_during.php

About the only defense is to shoot first and fast, but even then you're up a creek anyways.
http://www.wbaltv.com/news/1872005/detail.html

Not to mention how much they enjoy setting stuff on fire...
http://www.officer.com/web/online/Internal-Affairs-News/Baltimore-Offi
cer-Arrested-on-Arson-Charges/5$32929

And while I don't have a link handy, shortly after and in part due to those corruption investigations, some person or persons unknown (wink wink, nudge nudge) torched the internal affairs office responsible.

And let's not forget thier bitter hatred of anyone under the age of eighteen, as good ole officer Rivieri demonstrates.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bal-te.md.officer12feb12,0,29
52754.story

And of course your chances of doing anything about it are slim to none as not only are the local courts in their pocket, but most BCPD officers cover their badge number with black electrical tape and claim it's honoring a fallen officer - and don't forget that asking for a badge number is (according to them) behaving in a dangerous and threatening manner, which calls for the taser... about eight or nine times, since by all that flailing you were "resisting" and "not following the officers instructions"....

So stay the hell outta Baltimore, no matter what, if you gotta pee, pee out the damn window, god knows folk'd hardly notice in that hellhole - but on your life do not stop there, especially if you have out of state plates.

As for Maryland, you might be somewhat screwed due to the highway system, but some advice just in case, particularly concerning western MD.

Firstoff, give em no excuse - there's a shitload of MD State Troopers that camp out at the state line and prettymuch get a freakin boner every time they see an out of state plate cause they *know* you ain't comin back to fight the ticket no matter how bullshit it is.

Second, use cover - if your vehicle is alone on the road it presents the juvenille minded punk in the state cruiser with a handy way to relieve his boredom, and no witnesses to mess up his fun, find a pack and STAY WITH IT, as much as you can.

Third, document anything you can, cellphone camera, MP3 recorder, hell, call 911 and make sure the stop is documented, not all those cars are marked, and you don't have to justify making sure that's really a cop behind you - which is smart, cause even if it is, if there's no witnesses or papertrail, well... anything can happen.

And Fourth, do not panic - a favorite game of MD State Police is something called "bumper camping", they will get up behind you as close as they can, like, within mere inches, and try to provoke you to accellerate past the speed limit or (since they're so close) make an "unsafe" lane change, and heaven help you if you apply the brakes, cause they'll bump you and then cite you for a laundry list of bullshit like causing an accident and endangering an officer, yadda yadda...

And even if you don't, it's happened at least twice to folk on the Convention attendees list, that they will start PUSHING you, if none of the other stuff works, and then cite you for speeding - my ex got nailed that way (after calling me a liar when I warned her about it) and so did Patrick, both in western MD, by State Troopers, so be advised.

Avoid the PA turnpike too, 70/76 eastbound is a nightmare of phony construction (like 15 miles of signs for a worksite 15 feet wide nowhere near the road) and artificially low speed limits that act as a profit machine since they can double the fines that way, and make them so long and so often that it's difficult to keep patience even for a zen master...

Put it this way, expect to travel 400miles at 35mph, if you take the Pike, ok ?

Take 80/90 east and you won't have that much of a problem, it's WORTH the extra mileage, trust me.

Or you could be smart like me and just not go.

But I am serious about the advice, be careful and heed it if you wanna get through MD unscathed.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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