Mephisto shrugged. His robes heaved like the techtonic plates above him, rising into mountains before smoothing out to a semblance of calm. Unlike most of his kin, peace bore no malice toward his theologies. Serenity, peace, quiet, all of these human words he understood, though his word for the situation was older, and more complete for expressing the ideas contained in the human word.

He remembered being new. Even in his ancient mind, the first memories were easy to access and contemplate. The world dominated by humans, the world above him, was something he had helped to shape, but the best times had been much before humans were concieved.

At the beginning, the earth had been hot. Like his current home, it boiled and seethed with liquid metal and rock. Sure, the masterful propaganda machine of the host had made the legion's departure from the surface sound like a banishment, and in a way it was, but Mephisto would rather be near the center. Near the liquid rock that still flowed and boiled like fresh water, as it had on the surface. Before the host named him Legion, before anyone was named Legion.

In the beginning, before the first ones invented names, nothing was static. Everything was changing, everything was evolving. Volcanoes sprouted like weeds would in several billions of years. They sprayed liquid rock, which would cool, and form a mountain range where a sea had been.

The first ones were happy. Their origins had always been vague, but each of them knew they came from beneath the liquid rock. They watched the young planet boil and churn, wondering idly what would become of it.

A knock woke Mephisto from his reverie. The ivory throne beneath his demonic form groaned with shifting weight as he rose to answer. His thought-chamber had no windows or doors, but a select few knew how to rouse him from his ponderous slumbers. The chamber itself was a cube, with hewn basalt forming the walls, ceiling, and floor. Light came from mephisto's heavy-lidded eyes, and nowhere else.

He strode quickly to the wall, and reached through it. The wall parted like a liquid, and he grasped the hand of his visitor. The visitor would be Lilith or Lucifer, the prince himself, but they could be anywhere. Real distance between those who wished access and the location of the room was unimportant, as long as they wished to visit they would be dragged through the wall.

It was Lilith, which was unsurprising, since Lucifer conferenced so rarely of late. She had pressing news.

----

End of this short fiction.

John was used to cognitive dissonance. He believed that communsim was altogether correct, believed that it was the optimal way to organize human affairs and the inevitable politicing that results from them, yet worked in a retail outlet that fueled the machine he despised.

He still preached revolution rhetoric like he survived without the capitalist system. Health problems plagued him, though he was only in his early twenties. They were all stress related, and he did such heavy research on health that any twinge in his body was a hint of a much deeper malady. Stomach ulcers, heart palpitations, rapid weight loss and gain, problems with the most elusive addiction he had: sleep. He was addicted to many, many other things, but most of them were socially acceptable.

Mental instability had been with him, like an abusive love affair with a high-school teacher, since puberty. He knew he was unstable, even cultivated the image among his friends, yet still could not resist chemicals that drove him closer and closer to the brink of outright mental collapse. Methamphetamine, Cocaine, TetraHydroCannabinol, Ethanol, and anything else offered. It was all beyond him to refuse.

Panic attacks were a symptom of his extreme, unmitigated, auto-biographical stress levels coupled with his brain's inability to let some things slide. He had panic attacks more frequently if he used recreational chemicals and didn't sleep for a few days. He knew all of this, yet kept pushing himself towards the edge. Creating a comfort zone was beyond him.

Stress was a keyword in his culture. Everyone had it, and somehow, everyone else had learned to live with it. John knew he couldn't handle stress, knew that extreme stress made his heart develop atypical rhythms that would last for days, knew that his panic attacks were only getting worse, and also knew that his first heart attack was not in the distant future. It wasn't standing next to him, persay, but was much closer than the distant horizon, like the serial killer that would, in time, devour his entire family. Just waiting.

Yet again, here he was. The Canterbury Card Club, pretending to be a professional poker player. John knew that dreams of playing poker for a living didn't belong inside his head. Since he was so used to things not matching up in his life, he kept pushing, but he knew that panic attacks had no place at the poker table. He tried to fight them off, but sitting in his chair, drinking sugar, water, and caffiene blended together rarely did much to calm his nerves. This was mostly due to the stimulants he was addicted to, nicotine and caffeine. He looked at the cards he was dealt.

They weren't bad. Some people would call them good, but John had learned that he was unable to lie without instigating the first stages of a panic attack. Professional poker players are required to lie without thought, and he knew that his inability was a disadvantage. His only defense was to let his oppresive demeanor show through, and undervalue any hand he would happen to have in the game. If he had the absolute best hand possible, he still believed that he could easily lose a great deal of money. Better players would attempt to capitalize on this weakness, only to find themselves beaten. The problem was that it only worked once. Depression was a very real and tangible thing in his universe, like a closet holding the secrets of a lifetime, when the door won't quite close.

----

The action in this story isn't quite finished, in case you didn't notice, dear reader.

I wonder what the capitalists would do if they realized that the revolution never happened.

If they knew that the revolutions in the Soviet Union (Russia) and China were just murmurs of the prolitariat's distaste for the working conditions they are subjected to.

Even communists believe that the revolution failed in China and Russia, and they are just as incorrect as the capitalists.

Marx wasn't theorizing about the next few years, you silly fucks.

HE WAS TALKING ABOUT UNABATED CONTINUATION of capitalism.

This is what's been happening ever since the manifesto.

What's important is that we all remember what it said.

If Marx knew that capitalism would subjugate people worse than it was then, and worse than it is now, if he knew a thing like that. If he knew the framework the world would operate under well after his death, who are we to say that his predictions are wrong because they looked like they were coming true, but didn't.

Workers heard the message and knew it to be the message they had been waiting for.

The only workers that didn't just *negotiate* instead of going to war were peasants (in Russia and China). The workers that had the tool necessary to inflict damage to the capitalists were factory workers, and the peasants were the ones who revolted.

Two questions now nag our brains:
1. What was the specific tool that factory workers in a capitalist society had?
2. Why did the peasants revolt instead of the factory workers?

The tool factory workers possess is a basic flaw in capitalism. As an economic policy, capitalism won out over feudalism by being more a more efficient way to distribute wealth.

The flaw in capitalism's economic efficiency is simple: The production facilities are social. They are OWNED privately, by people who have nothing to do with the actual production of goods.

All that needs to take place for a more efficient society is coordinated political maneuvering of all workers.

If a coordinated political movement occurred within a peasant community, which is by default a private production system with private ownership, they would lack a voice once the revolution was concluded. Why? Because SOMEONE had to organize the peasants, and since peasants are only valuable to a political regime when growing foodstuffs, the person who organized the peasants sends them home after the revolution and says, "Things will be better soon."

The peasants revolted because peasants never get concessions from their exploiters, because peasants are so replaceable. If you kill a third of your peasant population to stop a revolution, the peasants are the class that feels the brunt of the starvation.

Since concessions were never made to the peasants, they were angry. Anger is a critical element for any revolution.

The factory workers? Well, they had taken steps when they organized themselves into labor unions. Then, the greed and intelligence of the exploiters won out, and the capitalists gave a little bit back to the workers in terms of higher wages and less time at work.

This concession is no longer acceptable, because as long as capitalists retain control of the social production means we're enslaved by, the select few capitalists will fight for the majority of wealth, and we (the proliteriat majority) must share the minority(ie: whatever is left and uneaten by the capitalists).

I just want to say: Communism is not dead. It is incorrect to postulate that communism doesn't work. The communist revolution hasn't happened yet.

I apologize if it seems that I'm insulting the people of China and Russia. That is not my intention at all, and for what it's worth: Good show. Kudos for trying, because without you we might not have seen the pitfalls to avoid when the revolution comes.

Dear NSA: I'm a comedian. This is a site for me to dump my thoughts onto. I'm not a subversive element. I like hot dogs, and being alive, and not dead. I like both of those two things more than Communism, and I say this to you: How could anyone who loves hot dogs more than economic equality really be a danger to anyone?

Manifesto for the Guardians of Time.



I would like to propose a theory that the profession of 'writer,' in terms of one who makes his survival with transcriptions of real or imaginary events, is an undertaught and underappreciated profession.

It is difficult to learn the craft, difficult to understand the craft, and many times more difficult to apply the craft. By craft, I mean the learned skill of articulating oneself through written words, rather than our instinctual method: speech.

Before I continue, I would like to discuss the word, "Talent," because I feel that the word is misused by many people, and furthermore that the misuse of this word displays something telling about present-day culture and preceptions of "writers."

Talent is a slippery word. The word's origins tie to units of currency and weight, but the most commonly used modern-day usage of the word is: "The natural endowments of a person," or, "a special, often creative or artistic aptitude."

It is interesting that this word's origins are in Ancient Greece, but that is the subject of another discussion entirely, so let's go back to my point about modern talent.

Talent is imaginary. There are instincts, learned behaviors, skills, physical prowess, and mental capability. There are no talents in this world of humans. None of us are born better able to paint with a brush and dyes better than the others. A person that argues for talents in this framework is undoubtedly wrong.

The ability to articulate something using a brush and carefully applied colors is not inborn. If it is not inborn, then it must be learned. Homo Sapiens, for all of the altogether surprising things they have done, do not have abstract things like science and art and oration hard-wired to their genes. This DOES NOT HAPPEN.

What does happen is this:

The range of genetic mutation in a species with over six billion living members is rather large. Every organism, including this prolific creature we are discussing, has instincts hard-wired to its brain chemistry influencing genes. These instincts are behaviors that increase its chances at survival.

Natural Selection has not had enough TIME since our speciation to create "Talents," in the way we describe them.

We do have instincts, which could be likened to talents, but they are NOT aesthetically pleasing in the way that we infer meaning from a "talent."

Your instincts, if you can't think of any, are probably much like mine.

I eat when I am hungry, and generally don't give it more thought than this: I'm hungry. Where is some food?

I hope you can follow me on this, because this first point is necessary for my argument. The word talent, as it is used in everyday speech, is a misnomer, and altogether illusory.

Everything humans learn to do that involves articulating their opinions is a learned skill, excepting body language and speech (though language is a learned skill, our brains are engineered to learn a language for vocal communication, which dictates that a genetic disposition for vocal communication exists).

A painter described as "talented" is actually just "practiced" or "skilled."

Good, I hope you're coming with me on that.

Now, since we have realized that there is no innate disposition for writing (Though I will concede that a human with an exeptional memory would make a good writer once (s)he learns the craft, this is different from an inborn ability that directly correlates to writing itself.), we immediately wonder why there are great writers.

They are very skilled. The human brain has an immense amount of space for learned skills. With time, patience, and desire to articulate something, the ability to articulate it will emerge. A human may not understand exactly how he or she has learned how to write well, but he or she will do it.

Of course, if you've never had a doubt as to whether or not you possess the raw brainpower necessary for writing, then you probably don't have it. The ability to doubt oneself on a level uncompromised by ego is a difficult proposition for Homo Sapiens, because our brains are not meant to do it on a regular basis. For all the sophistication of a Homo Sapien brain, it is not wired to consider things objectively. Everything we process through our over-evolved thinking organ is filtered in terms of our sense of "self."

Is it possible to think objectively? Yes, I think it is possible to judge oneself on a scale that is not relative. It is just difficult, and requires active concentration.

Enough of this though, my concerns involving Homo Sapien thought are for another post also.

The point is this: The modern conception of talent impedes the teaching of a craft like writing. If students are seen as either "talented" or "not talented", meaning that most students just don't have the predispositions for writing, then students are being judged incorrectly.

To better understand the way writing is taught in our culture, which will allow us to better understand what is cataclysmically wrong with writing in our culture, we must first know what a "writer" is.

A writer is not a storyteller. A storyteller can be a writer, but a writer is not limited to telling stories. Much like a square must always be a rectangle, but a rectangle need not be a square, writers can write anything they wish.

A "writer" in the purest since, is a champion of time. More specifically, a champion of his path through time. A writer makes it his duty to transcribe at least one set of thoughts among the chaotic babble of all thoughts. As infinite as time is, it is a thankless and difficult occupation.

It must be done. For our species. Writers are protectors of a specific portion on the infinite timeline. They are keepers of history, but they are not historians. Our historians memorize baroque events and dead names among the seething chaos of life in the universe. A writer believes that there are important ideas that must be remembered, because (s)he knows that events, locations, and names fade quickly from existence.

Some ideas must not be forgotten. To take that idea, and really run with it, a writer has to forget that everything is forgotten on a long enough timeline. A writer must know that what he does is almost certainly futile, and he must know that he will never know if he was successful. Not financially sucessful, though he most likely will be a financial failure, but successful in his duty to protect the timeline he was assigned.

Just because it already happened, does not mean that it isn't still there. It's just behind us, and we lack the ability to move freely in the dimension where our memories, and futures reside.

As a writer, you try to preserve a consciousness for as long as possible. Why you want to, is anyone's guess. All I know is that there are some reasons that you will want to stay away from. The first is money. Second: Fame.

These are things you may acquire as a skilled writer, but if they are the goal, then the entire enterprise is empty and meaningless. And the trouble is that you will never know, straight up, whether you can do it or not.

You have to commit yourself beforehand, and that is the scariest thing in the world.

Herein lies one of the first difficulties with teaching "writing" to "writers." This art of writing is elusive and difficult to grasp ahold of. Most people who learn to write well are unaware of how they learned it. As a result, our only teachers of writing offer bland insights on how they learned to write, but they did this entirely on their own. Already, upon your first instruction, a deviation takes place in regards to the specific teacher, and it should be clear that Homo Sapiens (ie, the teacher) can only teach what he learned as a student. The trouble with teaching students in the way that you learned (if you learned on your own) is that it's possible the way you discovered only works for you.

The difference in learning from a teacher and learning on one's own is merely the difference between knowing and doing. When you learn a skill by stumbling around in the dark until you know your way around, then you are learning to do it. Anytime something is passed on from a teacher to a student, it is known. Teacher says to student,"When x happens, do y," and the student knows what to do for one contingency. The teacher must separately instruct the student how to do the thing they understand so well.

Let me explain. If a teacher learned something from another teacher, he learned through instruction. He consciously controlled his mind to accomplish a certain end. With skills like writing (in terms of a craft), a human is entirely capable of doing it right without knowing consciously the right way to do it. If someone who doesn't *know* how they became a skilled writer, because they taught themselves, teaches an auditorium full of students, there is one single worthwhile thing he can tell the students:

You need to write and read a lot to learn how to write.

The people that write this way have no idea how to instruct anyone else on the craft(writing), because they accomplished it by making mistakes and seeing them.

One would think that, teaching a craft as vital as writing eloquently would be of paramount importance to Homo Sapiens (being that writing is our way of keeping the history of our species since we began writing).

Also: In a teacher/student relationship, two things must take place for anything beneficial to happen. The teacher must agree to teach the student, and the student must agree to learn. As it is a craft, the student should submit his request for teaching, and the master artisan should accept or deny the apprenticeship. This is not a folley of the teachers themselves, but the system which governs teaching. When the power to teach or not teach an individual student does not lie with the teacher, a problem arises. Simplified, it is not a complex problem, though it has far-reaching implications. If a teacher must accept students that cannot learn the craft, much like a blacksmith forced to accept a student with fingers that cannot swing a hammer effectively, the teacher will become frustrated with students that clearly cannot gain expertise in the craft. This frustration, if not viewed objectively, will transfer to the other students until the teacher applies it to all of them.

But to continue: In order to teach a skill, you must know how it is learned. If your teacher does not know a universal way to communicate the learning process, there is very little a student can glean.

Now, the format for writing instruction is also a detriment to the actual duty of the occupation. In order to gain the right students, the instructor must know that writing is a thankless duty that some of us must take it upon ourselves to do.

The fact is that we know it is a useless attempt. Shakespeare will be forgotten one day. Everything fades until it doesn't exist in a given timeline. Let me say it a different way: As our universe experiences the dimension of time as a single-direction journey, and as we experience ourselves moving only one direction within time, there are beginnings and ends of everything. Everything save the dimension itself.

As a writer, you must know that your efforts are futile, but you must also know that you still have to do it. You still have to record it. You still have to get it down in a format that will outlast you.

Why?

I don't know, but I do know that many Sapiens before me have done it when they must have known it was futility defined. I hope that many Sapiens after me will do it, even though they know it is pointless. This is not to say that they will find inspiration through my words, because that would imply success as a "writer," and success is never confirmed for us.

We build upon the shoulders of the timelines ending before our own begin, and through that, through each individual writer that does his duty to time, we can hope to start forming something that doesn't end.

This isn't about money or perfection, because both are tantalizing mirages. This is about each person doing their part for the better.

And this I say to you:

Tell me your stories.
I will be the lore-keeper.
I will be the defender of our mutal timelines.
I realize that I cannot defeat time, but I know that if those like me continue to do what they have done, we will create something real and lasting. Something without end, as long as we can wake up our brothers before they kill us all.

That, I think, might be worth it.

----
This post isn't finished. - Nate

Joshua glanced at his customer, drinking the woman's appearance in a single, swift glance.

He began to process it as he automatically tallied her purchases.

Fingers attached to his hand hit the two key, then the nine key three times. Conscious thought was unnecessary. A 29.99 item meant nothing to him save the correlation between the muscle memory that corresponded to his ring and middle fingers, which hit the numbers.

She might be too young to make these purchases, but he didn't want to offend her if she was. An offended woman meant that copulation with her was impossible, and since Josh considered his copulation options limited, he aimed to offend as few females of his species as possible. He wasn't optimistic, but stranger things had happened.

He wondered if this specific woman worked for the money she was spending. Did she, like so many he had encountered, work very hard for another person's profit, only to spend her compensation on chemicals to help her relax?

If she didn't work for her money, he wondered where she got it.

His fingered reached a distinct point in their automated sequence, the end. The last key was struck, the one that said "Sub-Total" in blocky, printed characters.

His brain initiated his vocal chords, because he had found the best way to alert people that he was finished was telling them.

"Fifty-three, sixty-two, ma'am." Josh said.

The woman began digging in her satchel. He extracted a sheaf of pulverized trees and handed him several. The papers were vaguely green, and had strange symbols and markings on them. She smiled. A stimulus ran down Josh's spine, and she had no idea. The smile of a female sent his brain into overdrive, he began thinking so fast he was unable to articulate any of it in the way he was familiar with communicating.

Diaphragms contracted, pulling open the lungs and allowing oxygen into the carrier vessel, blood.

He stood with the paper in his hand, looking like an automated machine that has been switched off. Only the air-conditioner was audible.

She coughed. He snapped out of it.


"Out of fifty-five." He said, and took the papers from her outstretched hand. Fighting the desire to touch her was expected of him, so he did it.

His fingers began moving again, like the mechanic limbs of a robotic assembly line. This time, his middle finger and thumb did all the work, but it was simple work. They did it entirely by themselves. Five, five, zero, zero. Two strokes per digit. None of it required his attention.

He looked at her, and began counting out her change. It was one hundred and thirty-eight cents. Thousands of thoughts, conversation beginnings flogged through his head like a whip.

She took the money and left.

--

Poop.

Don't stop me now.

Here's a poker quiz:

1. At a six player limit table, four players are active. First to act raises the pre-flop betting to two bets, second player folds, and both blinds call the flop.

The flop is A-spades, K-spades 4-clubs.

Small blind checks the flop, big blind places a bet, and the pre-flop raiser acts. He raises to two bets. Small blind agonizes and then calls, clearly expecting a call from the player to his left. His hopes are confirmed when that player calls.

The turn card falls. It is a 10 of diamonds.

Small blind checks, big blind bets, third player raises. Small blind calls quickly, and big blind raises. Third player re-raises, making it three bets for a river card. Small blind calls again. Betting progresses until the raise-limit is reached. Big blind and player #3 raise each other and small blind calls it down.

The river is: 7 of spades.

Small blind checks, big blind checks, third player bets. Small blind raises, big blind raises to three bets. Player 3 folds. Small blind raises one final time, to four bets, and big blind calls.

What were the cards in hand? More importantly, what rank was each player's hand at each stage of the betting?

Well? You've decided on your answer?

Small blind had 9 2 spades.
Big blind had K K, or pocket kings.
First to act had A 4 off-suit.

Weeee! that was fun.

I saw a movie called "High Tension," two days ago.

Whoa boy do I have some things to say about this movie, and the first should be that the name is not a misnomer. It was fucking tense.

It's also a French film, which I have no problem with because I knew going into it. When you go to see a French film, you just need to realize that the people who made it are fucking French. They just can't help it, and as a result, their movie is just... really... French.

The fact that it's French doesn't come into play very often except in two avenues of the experience: First, it's French, and really wierd. Second, parts of it are dubbed into English by shitty voice actors and parts of it are subtitled. That fact was jarring, and plus, I hate dubbed versions of almost anything. Excepting maybe Iron Chef, because that show is so fucking funny. All I'm saying, Lions Gate Films, is this: Leave the fucking audio track alone and give me some subtitles so I know what the fuck is going on. There's no need for these people to speak my language. The combination of subtitles and dubbing in the movie was jarring, and was unnecessary.

Now, the fun stuff about the movie deserves some introduction. As I said, it was a horror movie. I am not well versed in horror, BUT, I have NEVER seen a movie quite so disturbing. It's not a psychological thriller by any means, it's not an exceptionally plotted horror (though the French are notorious for complicated plots). When I say disturbing, what I mean is this: I had to look away from the screen. Many, many times. This hasn't happened to me since I was a young child and saw Braveheart in theatres. At that time, the scene where William Wallace is disemboweled made me look away. Now that I'm older, I can watch it without flinching.

This movie, on the other end, was fucking brutal. Don't take a girl to see it. I mean BRUTAL. You still don't believe me, you can't just take my word for it. Let me describe one of the deaths:

A man is cut several times with a straight razor. He collapsses to the floor from the pain, while blood streams out of his face and chest. The killer calmly follows him as he crawls ever so slowly up a flight of stairs. When the man with a straight razor catches up to the man who is belly-crawling up the stairs, he grabs the prone victim by the hair and wedges his head in between the handrail supports on the stairs. The head won't quite go through, but after a savage kick, squeezes in.

Then, with the bleeding jackass stuck with his head in the stairs, the killer gets a running start while pushing a clothing dresser. Pushing it parallel to the stairs, he catches the other guy in the face with it, and rips his head off. Our view for the killing blow is from the ceiling, so we can see it all in perfect detail.

Now, that wasn't very well narrated, and was also one of the easier deaths to watch in the movie. Hopefully, you get the point. Not a movie for the faint of heart. It scared the shit out of me, and I was shaking when I left the theater.

Also, a pair of titties can be seen at one point in the movie, as well as a female masturbation scene.

Kudos for that.

I know we can't agree on much as a culture, fragmented as we've become, but we need to get together and decide finally, and for the first time, who it was that let the dogs out in the first place.

Nobody likes that joke but me, and I wrote it like 3 years ago. It's teething.

I haven't been able to work on anything lately. More posts soon.

OH! This might interest you guys:

I found out exactly why republicans don't care about clean air to breathe or clean water to drink. For a long time, I thought it was that they were just ignorant, lazy and greedy, but it's not the WHOLE story. They're ignorant, lazy, greedy robots! Makes perfect sense doesn't it? They just need oil! You know, for lubrication or whatever robots need oil for, but it's been cleartly established that robots need oil. It all fits together so perfectly!