Happy Independence Day by Hardware

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Happy Independence Day

POSTED BY: HARDWARE
UPDATED: Thursday, July 7, 2011 15:37
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Sunday, July 3, 2011 4:24 PM

To all the Americans on this board, I hope you all have a happy and safe celebration of the 4th of July with your friends and family. To our foreign members, I hope the day finds you safe and happy as well, even if you aren't celebrating our holiday.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics - RAH

...and he that has no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. Luke 22:36

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Monday, July 4, 2011 2:10 AM

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)

May the Fourth be with you.

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Monday, July 4, 2011 9:41 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Best wishes to all, and for those of you driving somewhere to see fireworks, I hope you find a decent parking spot and get OUT quickly! Around here, there are "no parking" signs put up all around the Golden Gate, Sausalito and the Vista Point, because people will just stop ANYWHERE when the fireworks are going off in SF. Tried once to park our car in a good (legal) spot then go enjoy Sausalito until dark. Worked great, only it took us TWO HOURS to get out!

Us, we stay home and this year, inside! Too hot, and too many idjits and drunk idjits out there to mess with.

ETA: Maybe for just a moment, contemplate how lucky we are to live in a place where we CAN bitch and moan about the government and try to find ways to make it a "more perfect union", even tho' it never will be. Just sayin'.

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Monday, July 4, 2011 9:48 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"May the Fourth be with you."

Damn that was good.

HAPPY AND SAFE FOURTH TO ALL - and hey, even if you're not American have a great day.

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Monday, July 4, 2011 2:04 PM

THEHAPPYTRADER

Happy Independence Day!

Hope everyone has a safe celebration and some good food!

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Monday, July 4, 2011 5:15 PM

DREAMTROVE

Happy 4th

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
"May the Fourth be with you."

Damn that was good.

HAPPY AND SAFE FOURTH TO ALL - and hey, even if you're not American have a great day.

It's an indirect reference in support of soft ice cream ;)

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Monday, July 4, 2011 5:44 PM

HARDWARE

Just got home from a really good fireworks show. Well worth it, even if I was ready to leave because of the clan that parked next to me and let their little animals run around shrieking. Caffeine and sugar should not be pumped into small children before a public outing. When 4-8 year old children get cranky, please be adults.

It was all worth it once the fireworks started going off. Only stuck in traffic for a half hour and the A/C was taking my edge off.

Happy 4th of July to everyone.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics - RAH

...and he that has no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. Luke 22:36

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Wednesday, July 6, 2011 6:25 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Well, I hope y'all had a good time - I don't "celebrate" the fourth anymore cause I feel it's hypocritical - especially when in most places the primary method of celebrating it can get you fined, if not actually tossed in jail...

But hey, to each their own, and seeing people enjoy themselves is kinda nice - it was a very rough weekend from a security aspect, with lots of traffic and visitors, safety concerns, and workin double-triple so my people could go off and enjoy themselves, but it went down okay, didn't have to lecture anyone and nobody set us on fire by accident, which is a big concern for me - we're within code and all, but these older buildings concern me in that respect and if that ever does happen and someone doesn't jump on it IMMEDIATELY, we'll lose the whole building for sure.

S'funny - I get a deep and profound satisfaction not out of holiday celebrations, since I really don't like other peoples company all that much, but out of ensuring that those folk CAN go about their celebration without concern cause someone is watching over them, it's an almost paternal emotion I can't really describe.
Although I live here, I am by choice not part of their social structure, but I *AM* their shield, and my purpose is to ensure they can go about their business with less concern for their safety or their stuff - which is in it's own way a kind of freedom, and I *DO* celebrate that, by taking MY enjoyment in watching them do so.

So yeah, it was a good weekend.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Wednesday, July 6, 2011 7:12 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

My dad and I went downtown to watch the big fireworks show, lots of fun.

Frem, its good that those people have you around to make sure everything is going smooth for them to celebrate. Wendy does security there too, right? I think I remember you saying she has a little appt in the complex too.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Wednesday, July 6, 2011 9:06 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Ayep, although she was off somewhere else with Alice watching one of the big fireworks shows, whereupon someone introduced her to the wonder of Corn Dogs, cause she *HAD* to stop by the store on the way back and get three boxes - moderation is soooo not in that kids vocabulary...
I dread the day she discovers strawberry daquiris, imma be scrapin her up off the floor!

She's pretty good at the job, and we also have a subcontractor from another company who comes in and does the early-to-late weekend shifts, they brought him in when I was near-death sick, and since he actually showed up and did the job, however badly, we decided to keep him around, and I stuck him with the low risk shifts since he does that whole absolute-minimum-effort thing and he's procedurally sloppy as well, but even so, he's a large visible dude in a uniform, and he DOES actually walk the rounds, so he's the "visible deterrent", and I (who is so discrete as to be near-invisible) am the creepy-scary "He's in there... somewhere..." kind of deterrent.
Wendy is more along the lines of brute force deterrent, not cause of anything she does, but in that if you deal with me directly I am quite reasonable and even forgiving - hell a lot of my job is knowing when to look the other way since if one enforces every freakin nitpick of every damn thing, it's not only being a complete dick, but makes the actual function of your job impossible - but in that if you brush her off, give her a bunch of crap, she'll call me - and then I will NOT be very reasonable.

Funny side to that, the local yahoos will not whatsoever give her any crap at all, between the guy she kicked into the street, and the potential for me going ballistic over anyone messing with her, they actually go out of their way to be *NICE* to her, although part of that is just that she's REALLY good at playing oh-how-adorable to anyone who'll fall for it.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LittleMissConArtist

Holidays are generally mine exclusively though, cause of that satisfaction factor, and all the little details decent folk don't think about and shouldn't have to - like how on Xmas I go round to all the dumpsters, pull out the obvious big-ticket-item boxes (LCD TVs, Stereos, etc) and break them down, crunch em up real good, stuff em way down in there and then close up the dumpster completely...
Some crooks you see, will cruise around checking out the trash and then see if they can figure out where those goodies went by peeking in a window or two, and you know what happens after that.
Oh yes, and I show Santa where everyone lives, and let him in cause we don't have chimneys...

(At least according to one little boy, lol!)

-Frem
PS. I'm also the Easter Bunny - every easter I hide little plastic eggs with candy or toys in em near the units of folks who have small kids, cause it amuses me to do so, and we have lots of real rabbits bouncing around to blame it on, hehehehe.

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Thursday, July 7, 2011 5:53 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

I hope everyone enjoyed themselves. We have some people down the block who invariably drive somewhere to buy fireworks and bring them back, then set them off in the street. It always pisses me off; fireworks have been illegal here for decades, and with good reason. Would only take a spark to be incredibly destructive here, we've got so many big trees...not the redwoods, they'd thumb their noses at fire, but every OTHER kind of tree surrounds almost all houses. Bastards. I'm glad most people go to fireworks shows now; I remember when we could buy them when I was a kid and set them off in the street; was fun, but now it just worries me.

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Thursday, July 7, 2011 10:57 AM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

Niki, when I was a girl, our neighborhood would throw our own huge fireworks shows, the men would go up to WA and buy ooldes of illegal fireworks and we'd party hard, we thought we were the coolest kids in the world and that we had the coolest parents. Now adays though I agree with you, its so much safer to go to an organized show and the fireworks are even better and we don't have to clean up the mess afterwords. Its miracle none of us was hurt back in those days.

Frem. I see Wendy as your daughter and you as her dad. Its good that she has you. Who's Alice? From how you describe Wendy she doesn't sound like what I'd consider touched. But sometimes I have to see someone or chat with them before I can decide whether they fit in that category or not. Again it doesn't sound like she currently is.

Do you have contact with your other folk that you've looked after and helped over the years?

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Thursday, July 7, 2011 1:43 PM

BYTEMITE

Quote:
I don't "celebrate" the fourth anymore cause I feel it's hypocritical - especially when in most places the primary method of celebrating it can get you fined, if not actually tossed in jail...

Yeah, we normally get that too... But they actually legalized aerials this year, despite July having seriously dried out what was a surprisingly wet June.

To which I have to say: you guys get to do these things EVERY YEAR? Ho-shi~!

EDIT: Easter Bunny. Man Frem, you're just kinda a softy. With guns, and scars, and a good portion of the Detroit area terrified of you.

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Thursday, July 7, 2011 3:37 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Well, Wendy was a closet-kid, so mostly it was neglect - but most of the ways it still manifests are quirky more than problematic, like how she has to check the fridge ever hour or so to make sure she has food, stuff like that, plus the physical underdevelopment and eyesight problems related to closet-kid syndrome.

So far it seems she's all but given up on her little Hikaru Genji plan *crosses fingers* and taken to viewing me in something of a slightly overprotective, oafish older brother - she's all too aware of my personal flaws and failings to view me as a father-surrogate, although in her heart she kinda wishes me and Alice really were her parents, I think.

Alice was someone I helped way back in the beginning of things, she made the mistake of pulling the plug and trying to report it when her PC was bombarded by that whole endless pop-up cascade trick which was common at the time, and the content OF those pop-ups was quite horrifying - only at the time the "authorities" were both trying to deny the scale of the problem, and discourage reporting by going after the folks who reported it instead of the predatory bastards behind it all, and she wound up on the bad end of that.
So they busted HER and ran her in for the content in her web-cache from when she pulled the plug, and despite our best efforts she was tried, convicted and left to swing by the system, resulting in being divorced, pitched out of her own home, cut off from her children forever - her whole life down the drain for trying to do right, trying to play by the rules... she was actually looking for an overpass to jump from when I rolled up and offered her an alternative (which she says in retrospect if she had known then, she would have rather chosen the overpass) and then pulled her into a world where such horrors were common, everyday business, and while she did adapt and overcome, that left scars in her soul which'll never go away, and she blames me for that.

For a long time she was my assistant, secretary, gopher, girl-friday, whatever - and mind you, she BELIEVES in what I do, what CoTL still does, with every ounce of her heart and soul, if I but asked her to she'd walk right into the flames of hell without so much as a blink - but for a fact in a personal sense she all but despises me.
She knows what originally happened to her wasn't my fault, but what came after that was - we didn't have the luxury of vetting our personnel, had to take what we could get, and I did after a fashion kind of exploit the situation and pull her into a nightmare world she wasn't prepared to cope with.
Besides which I played a *LOT* rougher in those days and she got to see up close just how deep and wide that streak of monster in me really is, when I am backed up into a corner without polite options, which happened far too often for my liking or sanity, which itself was kinda hanging by a thread and she set herself towards bolstering in any way she could.

So, while personally "close" in a way more involved than a lot of marriages, there's no affection there at all, my feelings for her are professional-neutral, and hers for me are loyalty-hostility, although she has indeed all but adopted Wendy, who fills the tremendous void caused by the loss of her sons, and gives Wendy something of a mommy figure, something she's never really had - and I stay the hell away and let them have the peace they've so surely earned, cause even my presence would be a bucket of ice water on it, merely being there would remind them of the very things they're trying so hard to forget.

Undernearth all the jaded cynicism and propensity towards violence, I'm still HUMAN, yanno.
I just really don't feel any need to be, towards folks who have voluntarily surrended that claim by virtue of their own conduct - why would I ?
Besides, didn't it clue you in already that in MMO games I almost exclusively play a healer class ?

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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