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Life Cannot Be Delegated

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 Life, baby, ain’t some goddamn timeshare you can pawn off on your accountant. It’s a blood-curdling, batshit rendezvous with the abyss, and you’re the only one strapped into the goddamn rocket. You can hire a lawyer to fight your battles, a therapist to untangle your neuroses, and a chef to nuke your microwave burritos – but that won’t buy you a single goddamn second of authentic experience. Face it, champ, this ride is all yours, and the only way out is through the meat grinder. Buckle up, buttercup, ’cause life doesn’t take reservations.

You ever seen those sorry sacks huddled around the frozen burrito aisle, delegating their dinners to some minimum wage drone? That’s the face of a life lived by proxy. They’re sleepwalking through the goddamn buffet, letting some corporate suit pick their flavor. Life ain’t a pre-packaged McRib, sunshine. It’s a smorgasbord of chaos, a psychedelic freak-out where the only menu is scribbled on the bathroom stall in disappearing ink. You gotta dive in headfirst, gorge yourself on the weird stuff, and hope your stomach can handle the ride.

The suits in the ivory towers, those button-down bastards who think life can be managed with spreadsheets and quarterly reports – they’re the ones peddling this delegation bullshit. They want you numb, plugged into the system, a cog in their goddamn machine. But life ain’t some corporate assembly line,champ. It’s a goddamn Kentucky Derby on acid, a free-for-all where the only rule is there are no rules. You gotta take the reins, steer this goddamn chariot into the heart of the hurricane, and laugh like a loon as the world explodes in a kaleidoscope of chaos. That, my friend, is living.

    Life, son, ain’t some goddamn timeshare you can pawn off on the bellhop. It’s a blood-soaked rollercoaster through a funhouse on fire. You can’t just strap yourself in and order a Mai Tai while the freaks parade by. This ain’t Vegas, baby. This is the whole damn buffet, and it’s all a la carte.

    Sure, you can hire some yuppie life coach to scribble your dreams on a whiteboard and drone on about “synergy” and “positive vibes.” But that’s just buying snake oil from a carnival huckster. The real juice, the good stuff that’ll leave you with a hangover that makes Tijuana look quaint – that comes from diving headfirst into the goddamn abyss and clawing your way back up, spitting teeth and screaming your own name.

    UAPs Jobs Program

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    The spooks at Langley, adrift in a sea of conspiracies of their own making, flail about like demented cuttlefish, spewing ink – nay, official statements! – to obscure the truth they themselves birthed. A truth as slick and squirming as a fresh-peeled Scientology engram.

    These suits, shuffling through the halls of the Pentagon, their polyester blending with the omnipresent beige, are caught in a paradox more twisted than a Möbius strip fashioned from microfilm. Debunk they must, for the public eye is a fickle beast, easily spooked by the whiff of the unknown. Yet, debunking only serves to fan the flames of paranoia, a wildfire that races through the tinderbox of internet forums, leaving a trail of scorched logic and melted skepticism in its wake.

    So why this tangled mess of control freaks with short haircuts and minds like filing cabinets gone feral, pump out this UAP hooey like a malfunctioning disinformation dispenser? It’s a word salad of sightings and sensor glitches, a bureaucratic buffet designed to keep the sheep mesmerized.

    Why this charade, this cosmic kabuki? Because the truth, man, the truth is a roach motel – check in is easy, but checking out? Fugeddaboutit. They dangle these UAPs like a juicy steak in front of a starving hound, all the while knowing the meat’s rotten. It’s a control mechanism, see? A way to keep the rubes gawking at the fabricated skies while the real deal slithers in the shadows.

    It’s a self-licking lollipop, this psyop game. A ouroboros of misinformation, where the tail of denial devours the head of disclosure. But fear not, for this absurdity is the engine that keeps the bureaucratic machine humming. Reports must be filed, investigations staged, press conferences delivered in monotone voices that could lull a choir of cicadas to sleep.

    But hey, who are we to complain? This whole charade, this cosmic confusion – it’s a jobs program, baby. A full employment racket for the agents, the analysts, the debunkers of their own damn deceptions. Paper mills running hot, churning out reports thicker than a bowl of alphabet soup on a bad acid trip. The military-industrial complex on a sugar rush, high on obfuscation and misinformation. So light up a cigarette, man, take another drag, and watch the bureaucratic ballet unfold. It’s a goddamn circus out there, and the clowns are running the show.

    Yes, it’s a jobs program, alright. A monstrous, lumbering beast that feeds on obfuscation and thrives on the very mystery it seeks to extinguish. Each press release a cog, each investigation a gear, grinding out the gears of governmental inertia.Full employment, you say? More like full psychosis, a collective descent into the rabbit hole of national security whispers, where the only escape is a deeper dive into the looking glass of classified documents.

    So, the next time you see a grainy video of a blurry something dancing in the sky, remember – it’s not just a UFO, it’s a monument to the bureaucratic labyrinth, a testament to the futility of trying to control the uncontrollable. 

    From the River to the Sea

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    A low murmur, a tremor of unease, rippled through the labyrinthine corridors of the Ministry of Justice. A new proclamation, its ink barely dry, hung heavy in the air. The pronouncement, issued with the utmost bureaucratic gravity, declared the phrase “generic sentence” a criminal offense.

    Yet, a disquieting dissonance echoed within the very pronouncement itself. For nestled amongst the legalese, the phrase, the very one it condemned, lay hidden in plain sight, like a subversive weed pushing through the cracks of officialdom. It was as if the Ministry, in its zealous pursuit of linguistic purity, had inadvertently snared itself in its own net.

    The other clerks, faces ashen, exchanged furtive glances. The Ministry, the very fount of legalese, had outlawed the very phrase that greased the gears of their bureaucratic existence. A Kafkaesque labyrinth unfolded. Was the Ministry, by its own edict, now an outlaw? Did the pronouncement itself carry the taint of criminality?

    Days blurred into weeks. Fear, a silent virus, permeated the air. Clerks drafted revisions, erasing and rewriting, their pens scraping a frantic counterpoint to the rhythmic clicks of the grandfather clock. “Standard sentence,” one ventured, only to be met with icy silence. “Predetermined verdict”? A flicker of hope, quickly extinguished by the realization that “predetermined” itself reeked of forbidden knowledge.

    The Ministry remained impassive, a monolithic entity unmoved by the tremors it had unleashed. Herr Schmidt, in a fit of existential dread, dared to type a query: “Clarification regarding implementation of aforementioned decree…” before crumpling the paper, terrified of his own temerity.

    The question hung heavy, an unanswered koan in the stagnant air. Was the Ministry a criminal for its own pronouncement? Or was the very act of questioning the decree the true transgression? The answer, like the Ministry itself,remained shrouded in an impenetrable fog, a testament to the chilling absurdity that had taken root in the once-mundane halls of justice.

    Citizens, ever wary of pronouncements, found themselves caught in a web. Was casual conversation now suspect? Could a muttered complaint about a “generic rejection letter” from a faceless corporation land you in an interrogation room? The ambiguity hung heavy, a fog obscuring the line between legality and transgression.

    <>

    The absurdity, once planted, bloomed with grotesque rapidity. Overnight, dictionaries across the nation were confiscated.Public libraries became ghost towns, their shelves bare except for a few dog-eared volumes deemed “ideologically sound.” A black market for synonyms sprung up in dimly lit taverns, whispers exchanged for crumpled Reichsmarks.

    The Ministry, however, remained above the fray. Their pronouncements, now devoid of any “generic” language, became exercises in obfuscation. Sentences meandered like drunken centipedes, clauses nested within clauses until meaning dissolved into a bureaucratic soup. “The aforementioned regulation, pertaining to the aforementioned criminal offense,necessitates the aforementioned individual to undergo a aforementioned evaluation…”

    The legal system, already a labyrinth, transformed into a M C Escher nightmare. Judges, burdened with the task of interpreting pronouncements riddled with forbidden phrases, resorted to interpretive dance. Lawyers, their once eloquent arguments reduced to pantomime, found themselves miming legal concepts to a jury of bewildered citizens.

    The absurdity reached its zenith with the case of Herr Schmidt, a mild-mannered baker. Accused of uttering the forbidden phrase while complaining about his “run-of-the-mill” flour delivery, Herr Schmidt found himself in a courtroom transformed into a theatre of the absurd. The prosecutor, a man perpetually on the verge of a nervous breakdown,attempted to build a case through interpretive charades, waving his arms and shouting nonsensical syllables. Herr Schmidt, bewildered yet strangely serene, simply shrugged his shoulders and continued baking his bread, a silent rebellion in the face of the Ministry’s linguistic tyranny.

    The world watched, aghast and yet strangely fascinated, as the Fatherland descended into a vortex of nonsensical legalese.Was it a grand social experiment, a twisted performance art, or simply the inevitable result of unchecked bureaucracy?The answer, as always, remained shrouded in the Ministry’s perpetual twilight. The only certainty was the ever-expanding list of forbidden phrases, each new pronouncement a brick further sealing the citizens of the Fatherland within a prison of their own language.

    The Ministry, however, remained unfazed. They issued a series of supplementary pronouncements, each one more convoluted than the last. The use of “pre-determined legal judgments” was deemed acceptable only in the context of denouncing the outlawed “generic sentence.” The act of questioning the Ministry’s initial statement was classified as “meta-criminal,” a thoughtcrime punishable by the confiscation of one’s personal thesaurus.

    The absurdity reached its zenith with the introduction of “Ministry-approved Sentence Simulators.” These hulking machines, resembling oversized typewriters, offered citizens a “safe” way to express themselves. By feeding in keywords (approved by the Ministry, of course), the machine would churn out a pre-fabricated, legally-compliant sentence. “Feeling disgruntled about a recent administrative decision?” the brochure proclaimed. “Simply input ‘unforeseen bureaucratic inconvenience’ and receive a Ministry-approved expression of mild disappointment!”

    The public, however, saw through the masquerade. These weren’t “simulators,” they were shackles, further constricting freedom of expression. The once-vibrant language of the Fatherland became a pale imitation of itself, a symphony reduced to a monotonous drone. Laughter, a casualty of the new order, became a distant memory.

    Yet, from the depths of this absurdity, a spark of defiance flickered. Street artists, emboldened by the sheer ridiculousness of it all, began leaving cryptic messages. Simple geometric shapes, vaguely resembling letters, appeared overnight on buildings. The authorities, unsure how to interpret these symbols, declared them “potentially subversive sentence fragments” and launched a city-wide manhunt for the “Sentence Fragment Syndicate.”

    In a world where language itself had become criminalized, a silent language of rebellion was born. The absurdity, it seemed, had not extinguished the human spirit, but twisted it into a form more cunning, more resilient. And so, the Kafkaesque dance continued, a macabre ballet of power and defiance, all conducted in the chilling silence of a language no longer free.

    The Savage Professors: A User’s Manual

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    Professors, tenured and trembling, clutched their tenure packets like rosaries. “Diversity,” “Equity,” “Inclusion” – these were the holy trinity, whispered in hushed tones during faculty meetings. But down the labyrinthine corridors of the university, a darker current ran. DEI, anti-racism – these were Molotov cocktails slung at the ivy-covered walls.

    The seminar room reeked of stale coffee and desperation. Tenured egos, once puffed with self-importance, now squirmed under the weight of a new acronym: DEI. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion. Platitudes for tenure packets, Professor Ramirez thought, swirling the lukewarm brew in his chipped mug.

    Down the rabbit hole, man, down the rabbit hole… whispers Ramirez, a sardonic glint in his eye. DEI, anti-racism – these weren’t buzzwords, these were switchblades glinting in the ideological twilight. Words that made even the most progressive colleagues see red, their liberalism a flimsy veneer over a bedrock of unspoken anxieties.

    Hypocrisy,” Ramirez scribbled furiously in his notebook, a graveyard of unfinished novels and half-baked theories. “The professors who championed diversity on campus turned into apologists when it came to Israel. Bantustans disguised as settlements, rigged roulette wheels of equity, inclusion for the chosen few.”

    A faint smell of week-old falafel lingered in the air, a reminder of the complexities Ramirez refused to ignore. “The stench of hypocrisy, worse than any cafeteria food,” he muttered, his voice barely a rasp. “It exposed the rot at the core, the way power makes even the self-proclaimed revolutionaries fold like a discount suit.”

    One old Marxist professor, a relic of a bygone revolution, cackled into his chipped mug of coffee. “Hypocrisy, my friends!A banquet for the powerful!” He spoke of “apartheid states,” a smirk twisting his lips. Names hung heavy in the air,unspoken but understood: Israel, a land of contradictions, where checkpoints sliced through olive groves and “security concerns” masked a brutal reality.

    The “champions of liberalism,” these self-proclaimed knights of justice, turned invertebrate when faced with realpolitik.”Equity” became a rigged roulette wheel, with Palestinians forever destined for the empty chamber. “Inclusion”? More like a gated community, patrolled by the ghosts of American indifference and Israeli stone.

    Yes, professors swam in a semantic soup – diversity, a lukewarm broth, inclusion, a vague sprinkle. But DEI, that was a roach in the gumbo, a wriggling mess of ideology. Anti-racism? A flaming absinthe poured on the whole damn banquet.

    This wasn’t polite discourse, mind you. This was claws bared, tenure at stake. Tenured radicals with tenure-hungry dissertations, all brandishing their pet theories of race like switchblades. Black Power fists clenched against assimilationist suits. The air thick with the musk of past grievances and the desperate scramble for the moral high ground.

    Here, even the voices of color, the supposed beneficiaries, were a cacophony. Some, scarred by the iron fist of oppression, craved revolution. Others, cautious climbers on the greasy pole of academia, mumbled about “merit” and “standards” with a nervous twitch.

    The lines blurred, professors. Friend became foe, mentor turned inquisitor. Was this the pursuit of truth, or a bloodsport disguised as scholarship? In the flickering fluorescent lights of the department lounge, the only certainty was the bitter tang of fear and ambition.

    Yes, professor. You dig the surface, diversity, equity, inclusion – platitudes swirling in the academic ether. Fine words for tenure packets, for grant proposals. But down the rabbit hole, man, down the rabbit hole… DEI, anti-racism – these are switchblades, these are crimson manifestos scrawled on the blackboard of power.

    These are words that make otherwise respectable colleagues see red, feel the primal itch beneath their tweed jackets. Even the brothers and sisters, the melanin brigade – they ain’t a monolith, dig? They got their own agendas, their own grudges. This ain’t some feel-good group grope, professor. This is a blood sport, a battle for the very soul of the academy. You think you’re safe in your ivory tower? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

    The hypocrisy cuts deep, man. These same folks banging the drum for DEI turn a blind eye to realpolitik when it comes to nations that, well, let’s just say they ain’t exactly bastions of racial justice. Suddenly, “equity” and “inclusion” go out the window when there’s oil or strategic interests in play. It’s a word game, a shell game. They shuffle the buzzwords – “security concerns,” “national interests” – but the end result is the same: the oppressed get screwed, all while the powerful sip champagne and pretend they don’t see the blood on the carpet. 

    Ah, you hit the nail right on the head, professor. This whole DEI racket, it starts to reek when you consider Israel, right? Here’s this apartheid state, thumbing its nose at international law, segregating Palestinians like yesterday’s news, and where’s the outrage from the diversity crowd? Crickets.

    Maybe their “inclusion” only applies to certain shades of the melanin spectrum. Maybe their “equity” means a bigger slice of the pie for some, and scraps for others. It’s a whole damn kabuki play, professor, a grotesque pantomime where everyone pretends these empty suits of power actually give a damn about justice. The only equity on the table is the equity of hypocrisy.

    Ah, you hit the nail right on the head, professor. These same righteous cats who froth at the mouth about microaggressions turn into chum buckets when it comes to Israel. Palestine? They become about as geographically aware as a stoned koala bear. Suddenly, it’s all about “ancient blood ties” and “security threats.” The plight of the Palestinians? Evaporates faster than a raindrop in the Dead Sea.

    Israel, the land of milk and honey, also the land of checkpoints and segregated settlements. It’s a goddamn joke, man. A grotesque parody of justice. They preach equity from their tenured thrones, then turn a blind eye to a system that segregates, dispossesses, and brutalizes. They traffic in empty signifiers, hollow signifiers, while a real, live apartheid unfolds right beneath their noses. It’s enough to make you want to hurl a copy of Foucault at the nearest window.

    They preach diversity but turn a blind eye to the bantustans crammed with Palestinians. Equity? More like rigged roulette, where Palestinians always seem to land on empty chambers. Inclusion? Only if you’re the right kind of “in.” This ain’t some cocktail party, this is a gated community, and the walls are high, built with Israeli concrete and American indifference.

    This was a blood sport, a battle fought not with swords, but with buzzwords and grant proposals. Tenure factories churning out platitudes for grant applications. But scratch the surface, man, and the worms writhe. DEI, anti-racism – these are grenades, not confetti. Manifestoes scrawled in blood on the dusty blackboard of power.

    These are words that turn colleagues apoplectic, even the ones with tweed jackets and pipe dreams. Even the melanin brigade, the so-called brothers and sisters – they ain’t a choir singing hymns of harmony. This is a blood sport, professor. A bare-knuckle brawl for the soul of the university. You think tenure shields you from the fray? Think again.

    Freudalism and Imperial Marx

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    Flickering neon signs cast the cobbled streets in a strobing red. A knight in rusted armor, his visor cracked, chases a scuttling peasant through the alleyways. The peasant clutches a tattered copy of Das Kapital.

    This is Freudalism, baby. A tangled web of power woven from Oedipal complexes and repression. The Lord, a bloated id perched on a throne of guilt, demands tribute from his serfs, their labor fueled by primal urges and societal castration anxieties. The Church, a superego in stained-glass robes, enforces the rules with threats of eternal damnation and a sprinkling of holy water.

    The steel superego of the feudal lord grinds down on the psychic id of the serf. A barbed-wire moat of repression surrounds the castle, patrolled by armored defense mechanisms. The serf’s libido, a scrawny peasant with a sack of barley, tries to sneak a glance at the Lady Id perched on the battlements, her crimson gown a promise of forbidden pleasure. But the superego-lord cracks his psychic whip, and the id scurries back to the fields of duty, planting seeds of resentment that will sprout into revolution.

    But wait! Meanwhile, in the opium dens of the Orient, A ragged figure emerges from the swirling fog. Inperial Marx, trenchcoat billowing with a beard of dialectical materialism, puffs on a hookah filled with the ashes of class struggle. He brandishes a copy of the Communist Manifesto like a Molotov cocktail.

    A corpulent ghost. He exhales visions of a global proletariat, a writhing mass of coolies and factory workers shackled by the chains of capitalism. The tentacles of imperialism, like a psychic tapeworm, burrow into the bellies of colonies, sucking out their surplus labor and dreams.

    “The peasants of the unconscious must rise up!” he bellows, his voice echoing through the labyrinthine alleys. “Throw off the shackles of the feudal superego! Seize the means of psychic production!”

    The knight hesitates, his visor reflecting a distorted image of Marx. The peasant, emboldened, throws a rock. It strikes the Lord on his fleshy id, sending him sprawling.

    The fabric of Freudalism tears. Id, ego, and superego unravel. The knight sheds his armor, revealing a trembling psyche yearning for liberation. The peasant, empowered by the words of Inperial Marx, rallies the downtrodden serfs.

    The proletariat, a seething mass, a million hungry mouths. The bourgeoisie, fattened leeches, sucking the lifeblood of labor. But wait, a wrinkle in the fabric! Imperialism, a ravenous beast, gobbling up colonies, spewing out manufactured desires. The worker, a cog in both machines, exploited by class and empire.

    Suddenly, the psychic landscape warps. Feudal knights, mounted on armored id-horses, charge across the opium fields, jousting with the proletariat in a nonsensical ballet of class warfare. The Lady Id, bored with her gilded cage, throws down a rose – a symbol of forbidden knowledge, of the primal urge for liberation. It lands in the lap of Inperial Marx, who, in a fit of dialectical glee, seizes it and shoves it down the hookah pipe.

    A green smoke erupts, swirling with images of free love, worker’s councils, and the overthrow of the superego-lords. The feudal knights dismount, their armor dissolving into peasant garb. The proletariat, inspired by the id’s rose, throws off its chains and joins hands in a cosmic, classless conga line.

    But the battle is far from over. The Church bells toll, a haunting death knell of the old order. Will the revolution succeed, or will Freudalism reassert its dominion? The answer lies buried deep within the collective unconscious, a battleground of primal desires and societal constructs.

    But wait! A monstrous figure emerges from the smoke, a tangle of police batons and surveillance cameras. It lunges for the conga line, threatening to plunge it back into the nightmare of social hierarchy.

    Just then, the-esque narrator, his voice dripping with sinister cool, injects a final line: “Who controls the dream? Who holds the key to the psychic dungeon?

    Cut to

    Scene: A dank Parisian cafe, smoke curling like phantasmagoric serpents. The Narrator, bleary-eyed, hunched over a typewriter. A tape recorder whirs, capturing his fractured monologue.

    Narrator: Freudalism, man. Superego, a psychic fiefdom, lording over the Id’s peasant desires. Libido, a serf toiling in the fields of repression. Oedipal complex, a twisted joust, the knight forever chasing the ghost of his father’s disapproval.

    Tape recorder clicks off. Tye narrator slams a glass of red wine, eyes flickering.

    Narrator reaches for a scalpel, slices a fly in half with a grimace.

    Narrator (cont.): Capitalism, a virus, replicating, metastasizing. Fetishism of the commodity, a glittering mirage in the desert of alienation. The worker, hypnotized, reaching for the shiny bauble, even as it drains him. Is there escape? Can the superego overthrow the king? Can the proletariat seize the factories of the mind?

    A cut-up montage begins. Scraps of paper with phrases like “phallic cannons,” “surrealist surplus value,” and “Oedipus Rex on a factory floor” are spliced together with nonsensical pronouncements.

    Narrator (voice distorted, layered): The id breaks free, a chaotic current. The dream machine malfunctions, spewing forth revolutionary nightmares. The workers awaken, not to Marx, but to the primal scream, the howl of the repressed. The future, a tangled mess of wires, a psychotic episode writ large. Freudalism and Inperial Marx, a grotesque tango, a death struggle in the id’s dark theater.

    The tape recorder clicks on. The narrator slumps back, eyes closed. The cafe fades, replaced by the hum of the machine.

    Cut-up ends. Fade to black. A single red eye blinks open in the darkness.

    Before the Music

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    The concert hall shimmered, a metallic womb pulsing with fluorescent hum. Musicians, faces pale smudges in the harsh light, drifted in, shedding winter coats like molting insects. A cacophony of coughs, greetings sliced by the metallic screech of oboe tuning. It was the pre-symphony symphony, a chaotic ballet of individual voices yearning for cohesion.

    The house lights buzzed, a metallic wasp trapped beneath its plastic dome. The air, thick with dust motes dancing in the fractured sunlight filtering through grimy windows, hung heavy with anticipation.

    Then, a cough. A rustle of sheet music. A lone clarinet, its single black eye staring, unleashed a hesitant, reedy squeal – a test pattern scratching at the silence. A tremor ran through the orchestra, a collective indrawn breath. More coughs, more rustles, punctuated by the metallic rasp of a tuning fork. The air crackled with raw potential.

    Then, a whisper. A single violin, a hesitant question mark in the stagnant air. Another joined, then another, a chorus of uncertainty, their notes scraping and raw. A lone flute, a reedy, mocking laugh. The cellos grumbled, a low, subterranean growl. It was chaos, a beautiful, monstrous disarray.

    The last violin, a banshee in heat, wailed a sinuous melody. A cellist, a stooped gargoyle, growled a guttural counterpoint. Timpani, chrome cauldrons, rumbled with a promise of coming thunder. Each note, a shard of fractured dream, pulsed in the stagnant air, a million synapses firing in the collective unconscious.

    Suddenly, a trumpet let out a warrior’s cry, a shard of sound slicing through the discord. The violins shrieked in response, a frenzy of scraping fury. The music writhed, a tangle of serpents, each instrument a separate venom, each note a pulsating threat.

    But then, a shift. A single note, held pure and true by a clarinet, cut through the chaos. The other instruments, as if startled, fell silent, then one by one, began to find their place around it. The violins sang, their voices intertwining in a mournful melody. The cellos boomed. The flute yweaved a thread of mischief.

    The cacophony coalesced. Violins shrieked in unison, a flock of metallic birds taking flight. Cellos boomed, a subterranean heartbeat. The oboe, mollified, sang a sweet aria. It hung there, a challenge, a dare. One by one, the others responded. Flutes trilled, oboes wailed, the low growl of the cellos vibrated through the floorboards, a primeval thrumming. Scales arpeggiated,

    The music wasn’t melody, not yet. It was raw energy, a tangled jungle of sound. But beneath the chaos, a sense of order thrummed, a nascent beast struggling to be born. It was the thrill of creation laid bare, the sculptor chipping away at the formless block, the nascent masterpiece shimmering in the dust.

    Little by little the disarray coalesced, became a living, breathing entity. The music pulsed with a life of its own, a raw, electric current that surged through the hall, vibrating in my bones. It was the sound of creation, messy and magnificent, and it sent a jolt of pure adrenaline straight to my head. I wasn’t just hearing music; I was feeling it, a primal force that threatened to tear me apart and rebuild me anew.

    This wasn’t music; it was the city waking up, gears grinding, pistons pumping. It was the scream of existence, the raw, symphony of life itself. A symphony that, with each note, each tentative harmony, threatened to achieve a terrifying, beautiful coherence.

    I sat transfixed, a fly caught in the web of sound. My body resonated, every nerve ending on fire. This wasn’t music; it was a primal force, a glimpse into the chaotic heart of creation. It was beautiful, terrifying, exhilarating – a junkie’s fix of pure sonic adrenaline. The rehearsal hadn’t even begun, yet I felt spent, drained, exhilarated. This was the true magic, the raw, unpolished power before the performance, the thrill of the awakening. This was the orchestra tuning in, and it was a symphony of its own.

    Then, as abruptly as it began, it ended. The last note hung in the air, a shimmering echo, before dissolving into the silence. The musicians, faces flushed, exchanged tired smiles. But the air still crackled with the aftershock, a tangible energy that lingered long after the last note faded. The music was gone, but the thrill remained, a potent intoxicant coursing through my veins. I left the hall, blinking in the harsh sunlight, the world a little sharper, a little more vivid, forever altered.<>

    Manifest Destiny

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    https://twitter.com/bravojohnson5/status/1788380630964928608?s=46&t=uxFF0u_0ecJVW04Kh-xZdg

    The US of A, baby, a chrome-plated behemoth sputtering on fumes of Manifest Destiny, and nostalgia, clinging to the delusion of its military-industrial phallus. A great power, it wheezes, chest puffed with ticker-tape parades and fighter jet ballets. But the circuits are fried, man. The real juice, the green, that’s the current coursing through its veins.. A great power, they screech, the military-industrial complex a screeching buzzsaw in their bellies. But dig this, man, this ain’t no Roman legion conquering the known world, this is a supermarket with tanks.

    We built our empire on brand recognition, see? Coca-Cola, Hollywood, blue jeans – these are the weapons that conquered the minds of men. A technicolor hallucination projected through a cracked TV screen.  – these are the weapons that pacified the masses. Packaged dreams sold on credit cards, a sugar high that’s starting to curdle in the national gut. They pacified the globe with pop culture, a narcotic dream of endless consumption, the Whoppers and Subprimes, our flag a garish brand logo plastered on every mall and strip joint. But empires built on sugar highs crash hard, man, and the cracks are starting to show.

    The real enemy, man, it ain’t some bearded dude in a cave. It’s the creeping entropy, the slow rot at the core. The supermarket shelves, once overflowing with shiny cans and brightly colored boxes, are starting to look a little bare. Some of that product, see, wasn’t rotated fast enough. Past its prime, reeking of decay beneath the shiny packaging. Ideologies gone rancid, policies festering with corruption. The “Made in America” promise is tarnished, a label slapped on products built with cheap foreign labor and fueled by mountains of debt.

    The worst part? The people are still reaching for those expired goods, hypnotized by the flickering fluorescent lights and the relentless drone of advertising. The commercials still flicker, the promises of endless abundance, but the people are starting to see the static. Wired on cheap dopamine hits of instant gratification, are waking from the sugar crash. The “Innovation” aisle? Stocked with dusty prototypes and promises of a future that never arrived. The “Equality Yogurt”? Turns out it’s curdled, full of lumps and contradictions.

    The machine sputters, gears grinding. They grab at dented cans of “American Exceptionalism” and wilted packages of “Manifest Destiny.” But the checkout line is getting longer, the cashiers robotic and indifferent. The conveyor belt of history keeps churning, and those stale products are about to get tossed in the bargain bin of forgotten empires. The military parades are a hollow echo, the fighter jets overpriced paper planes. The real power, the power to shape the world, lies elsewhere. This ain’t the fall of Rome, this is the flickering neon sign of a dying mall. A slow, televised implosion, the Muzak playing on as the lights go out. The US of A, a great commercial power, choking on its own product, a victim of its own hustle.

    It’s a stench of debt, man, a rancid aftertaste of corporate greed. The natives, they’re starting to get restless. They see the sell-by dates flashing red, the fluorescent buzz making their heads throb. The tanks rumble down the aisles, a hollow echo in the vast emptiness. This supermarket empire, it’s built on rotten foundations, and the stench is finally reaching the checkout line. The US, a slow-motion train wreck of entitlement and amnesia, hurtles towards a future paved with broken shopping carts and empty promises. The chrome flakes, revealing the rusted chassis beneath.

    The military phallus, once a symbol of dominance, now a limp reminder of a bygone era. The only wars left are fought with discount coupons and hostile takeovers, a desperate scramble for the last scraps at the bottom of the barrel. It’s a feeding frenzy, man, a scramble for the last fresh produce. The “Democracy” brand toilet paper’s already gone, replaced with a flimsy substitute labeled “National Security.” The “Healthcare for All” cereal? Discontinued.

    This ain’t no glorious fall of Rome, this is a supermarket riot caught live on TV. The canned goods are flying off the shelves, the Muzak playing a frantic jig as the whole damn structure starts to shake. A fitting end, wouldn’t you say? It’s a horror movie, man, playing out in slow motion. The customers shuffle through the aisles, faces pale and drawn, their shopping carts overflowing with expired dreams. The tanks outside, relics of a bygone era, rusting in the parking lot, a silent threat that can’t mask the real danger – the slow, creeping collapse of a system built on rotten goods.

    Man with an Answer Will Sell You Out For A Price

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    In the flickering neon canyons of Tangier, sweat slick and fear-laced, you find Frankie “The Answer Man” huddled in a roach-infested doorway. His eyes, bloodshot marbles trapped in a creased leather face, flicker with a reptilian intelligence.He’s got the answer to any question, for a price. But the price ain’t always greenbacks, baby. It could be a vial of that sweet junky nectar, a whisper of a secret you can’t keep to yourself, or maybe a piece of your soul, sliced thin with a switchblade grin.

    His answers, though, are a tangled mess of word-virus and fractured logic. They slither out, coated in a film of broken dreams and B-movie paranoia. You ask about the missing shipment, the one that could bring down the whole operation,and Frankie rasps, “The roaches ate the manifest, man. Tiny little bastards with taste for ink and betrayal. They got their own network, see? Speak in clicks and skitters, whisper your secrets to the shadows.”

    He leans closer, the air thick with stale gin and desperation. “Want the real answer? Gotta cough up the Yen, man. Yen for the Yakuza, see? They got their claws in deep, deeper than you think. Deeper than the roach network, that’s for damn sure.”

    You cough, the stench of decay clawing at your throat. Is it the truth, or just another twisted story spun by a man drowning in his own lies? In this fetid city, the line between truth and fiction blurs like cheap ink on bad paper. You pay, a wad of bills damp with sweat, and Frankie shoves a crumpled note into your hand. It contains a nonsensical string of addresses,cryptic symbols scrawled in a hand that could belong to a madman.

    Is it the key to finding what you seek, or a dead end leading you deeper into the labyrinthine heart of the Tangier underworld? It doesn’t matter. You’ve bought an answer, and with it, a piece of the endless paranoia that fuels this city of shadows. The price may be more than you bargained for, but in Tangier, truth ain’t cheap, and betrayal’s the only currency that keeps the machine running.

    He’ll sell you the answer, alright. But the answer itself is a virus, a code worm burrowing into your reality, rewriting the script. It’ll leave you hollowed out, a marionette dangling from the strings of paranoia. You’ll see whispers in the static, faces in the crowd morphing into the Answer Man, his grin a mocking reminder of the price you paid.

    The alley stretches on, a fetid tunnel, the only exit. Behind you, the Answer Man chuckles, a dry rasping sound like bone scraping bone. The world seems a little more skewed, a little less trustworthy. Did you buy the answer, or did it buy you? In the flickering neon labyrinth, the line blurs, lost in the smoke and the shadows.

    Reprise:

    The man with the answer sits hunched in a booth reeking of stale beer and forgetting. Neon bleeds crimson onto his greasy brow, a mocking halo for his peddled wisdom. His eyes, bloodshot marbles trapped behind bottle-thick lenses, flicker with a reptilian intelligence. They hold the secrets you crave, the whispered truths dripping with betrayal.

    His voice, a gravelly rasp torn from a throat choked on dust and desperation, rasps, “Answers, friend? You got the bread? Answers ain’t free in this meat market of a world. Gotta grease the gears of information with somethin’ tangible.”

    A greasy deck of cards, dog-eared and worn thin with countless shuffles, lies splayed across the table. Its surface, a tapestry of grime and cryptic symbols, whispers of forgotten languages and forbidden knowledge. He deals three cards, each one a shard of your future glimpsed through a cracked mirror. The Queen of Spades, a widow in black, leers with a knowing smile. The Hanged Man dangles upside down, a grotesque reflection of your own precarious situation. The Tower, a jagged silhouette against a storm-wracked sky, promises imminent collapse.

    “See, the cards speak,” he croaks, a hint of a smirk twisting his lips. “But they ain’t parrots. Gotta pry the answers from them. Takes a toll. You got the Yen? The smack? Maybe a juicy piece of info you ain’t clingin’ too tight?”

    The air hangs thick with the stench of decay and desperation. Here, truth is a commodity, bartered for the dregs of humanity. You weigh the price, the cost of knowledge against the sting of betrayal. The man with the answer watches, a predator eyeing its prey, waiting for your decision. Do you pay for a truth that might be a lie, or walk away with your secrets and your doubts? The choice, like a roach skittering across the grimy floor, is yours.

    B Traven

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    They say the jungle holds its secrets close, whispers them only to the wind and the watchful eyes of the caiman. That’s the tale you spin, my friend, the yarn that sells. Here’s the real trick: forget the sweat and toil of hacking through the undergrowth, the fevers that sap a man dry quicker than the sun. 

    A man with a smooth tongue and a heart as dry as a scorpion carcass can exploit those whispers better than any map. It’s all about planting the right seeds of greed. Here’s the game, amigo. The real treasure lies in convincing others it’s out there. First, you find a godforsaken corner of the wilderness, a place so choked with vines and swarming with insects it chills the blood.

    Second, a seed is sown. A rumor, a glint in your eye as you share a campfire story with wide-eyed fools. “El Dorado,” a rumor of gold doubloons or a conquistador’s lost cache you murmur, tracing a vague circle on the dirt with a stick, “lost somewhere in this very jungle.” enough doubloons to buy a hacienda the size of Texas. Let their imaginations run wild, watch them blossom into full-blown delusions in the minds of those with pockets lined with dreams and eyes clouded by avarice. The whispers take flight on the backs of weary travelers, let them flutter through dusty cantinas and gambling dens. Soon, every broke dreamer and desperado in the country will be itching for a piece of that pie.

    Third, your little oasis on the supposed fringe of this phantom fortune.  A ramshackle hostel, a watering hole reeking of sweat and desperation – your patrons will be the very men you set afire with tales of buried riches. They’ll need supplies, of course. Machetes sharp enough to cleave a vine as thick as a man’s thigh, repellent strong enough to ward off the invisible army of mosquitos that lurk in the shadows. Price them high, these necessities, for desperation has a hefty price tag.

    Here’s the beauty of the scheme: a little goes a long way. Bury a trinket, a tarnished silver peso perhaps, let one of your marks stumble upon it. See the glint in their eyes, the renewed conviction that validates your cunning lie. Now, the floodgates open. Sell them permits, licenses to delve into the merciless jungle, each one a ticket to their own personal folly. Proof! See, the treasure is real! Just a little deeper, a little further…

    Of course, there’s no real treasure, just a well-acted charade. But who cares? You’ve already fleeced them for shovels, tents, and enough insect repellent to fumigate a cathedral. Let them chase their fool’s gold through the jungle, wasting their sweat and sanity while you count your pesos.

    With pockets full of their foolish coin, you can take your leave. But the game doesn’t end there. No, sir, you’ve laid the groundwork for something far grander. Once you’ve squeezed them dry, disappear. Vanish like a desert mirage. Then, with a new name and a clean face, resurface as the mayor of the nearest town. Tax those same treasure hunters for every peso they have left. Brand all other treasure rumors as lies, spread by bandits and charlatans.

    Now you’ve got a new business: selling the myth itself. Eco-lodges, souvenir shops peddling maps and trinkets – the whole tourist trap shebang. And then, the final twist. Years later, when the fire has died in their eyes and the jungle has swallowed their dreams whole.  Announce, with a dramatic flourish. There never was any treasure, you proclaim, just a grand illusion, a testament to the power of human avarice. Turn the failed quest itself into a tourist attraction, a pilgrimage site for the gullible and the curious. Now you’ve got a new business: selling the myth itself. Eco-lodges, souvenir shops peddling maps and trinkets – the whole tourist trap shebang.

    The jungle, my friend, is a place of many treasures. But the richest vein lies not in the earth, but in the hearts of men. And with a cunning mind and a silver tongue, you can mine it for all it’s worth. It’s the sweetest con this side of the Rio Grande, and the only sweat involved is wiping the smile off your face from all the laughing. Just remember, amigo, the only secret the jungle whispers is this: There’s a fool born every minute, and it’s your job to separate them from their money.

    Who Is Sovereign?

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    In the cold meat grinder of any system, be it the chrome-plated monstrosity of a corporation or the byzantine labyrinth of bureaucracy (both tentacles of the same squirming control machine), glitches inevitably erupt. These are the burps and hiccups in the program, the malfunctions in the meat. They can erupt with all the messy glory of a runaway digestive system, spewing forth spectacular accidents that leave you reeling in the stench of chaos.

    Here’s the rub: how do we identify these glitches in the matrix? Are they mere blips on the screen, easily dismissed by the suits at the control panel? Or are they harbingers of a system meltdown, a full-on Burroughs-ian cut-up waiting to happen?

    Then comes the dance with the gremlins. How do we address these exceptions? Patch the program? Throw a bucket of bolts at the malfunctioning machine? Or is there some deeper, more primal ritual required, some offering to the machine gods to appease their circuits?

    But the real meat of the matter, the question that hangs thick in the air like the stink of fear, is this: who holds the power? Who gets to make the call when the system shits the bed? Who has the authority to yank the plug, rewrite the code, or sacrifice a goat to the malfunctioning server?

    This, my friend, is where the ghost of Carl Schmitt slithers in, that old authoritarian bastard. He whispers in your ear, his voice a chilling binary code: “Who is sovereign?” In the face of glitches and exceptions, who gets to decide the fate of the system? Is it the button-pushing drones, forever locked in their bureaucratic trance? Or is there a higher power, a hidden hand that pulls the strings and dictates the course of action?

    The answer, my friend, is as murky as the oil slick that coats the gears of any system. The search for the sovereign, the one with the final say, is a never-ending chase through the labyrinthine corridors of power. Just remember, in the game of automation, there’s always a ghost in the machine, waiting to remind you who’s really in control.