30 November 2013

Merlin 3:33 "Sojourner"

Merlin 3:33 "Sojourner"
~ @mjbanks


A vast circle of dryness surrounding the site seen by Troy, master of a phoenix, Lugh of the white fire, flying on his firebird overhead eventually lands on nearby rocks, waiting and in watch before going to the abandoned and dry, vacant and desiccated city. Soon, eagerly, he climbs onto Alerion and flies to the town and lands on a flat patio roof, quick to dismount and both to crouch, looking down to the street he sees vendor carts with dried viands withered in the heat too quickly to rot, phoenix peeking with him closely sentient. He wanders the rooftops looking for trouble with his bow and arrow drawn. His boots brush rubble of a ledge as he climbs into a balcony above a lower jetty room, finding footprints in the dust he climbs the adjacent ledge and continues on further rooftop stealthily to seek Nickolas. He arrives outside where the vampires hold Nickolas at the time of his almost escape, peeking aside the small hole in the wall. The phoenix Alerion leaves its roost and lands in the street, scampering around the desolated thrufare and eating from the dried vegetables for seeds and the mounds of dried breads in piecemeal and crumbs. Troy turns to see the bird make a noise that echoes in the streets and ponders ploy, looking back to the hole and hearing the villains indoors. As they begin rebinding Nickolas, Troy notices his friend it is, and fires an arrow to phoenix.

The bright sunlight of rustic red atmosphere gloaming, a clouded day a third of fog overcasts, Troy hesitates before launching the arrow at his phoenix, his pale white fingers and leather bowman glove release an arrow, curving to aside it strikes a vendor cart to not hit Alerion. In much woe, he aligns and draws another arrow, the string stretches and arrow flies, this time hitting the phoenix in its hip. Silver arrowhead collides without damage, cut, or blood. However, the surprise startles the phoenix very much, making it angered and offended, it sees the first arrow lodged in wooden handcart, overturns it with a thrust of its beak then spreading its wings in umbrage butts, and dishevels things in great commotions. The noise a loud chaos enough to garner attention from the paranoid and intoxicated vampires, in an act of espionage they hurry down stairs into hallways to doorways near it, watching concernedly, plotting against it.

Back to the wall with the small opening Troy goes and puts his boot thru it, breaking it enough to enter, only one thereby vampire attacks and defenses delivered of combat, pulling Troy by his foot thru the wall, he begins kicking the undead fiend and releasing one of Nick's hands. He releases himself to rise again and fights with Troy against Custodius, kicking him into the sunset light. The vampire laughs in the light, not bursting to flames Nick takes a spear and pierces the vampire, holding the spike and running him to the wall, lodging him and the spearhead to the font of divine day, where the sunlight eventually begins to set the creature afire.

Nick: “We should go, now.”
Troy: “Together we can slay them all.”
Nick: “Ungraceful fie, siege I excel, and decidedly could not, we go, now.”

Two allies reunited, spiritually and tangibly, continently invigorate and brute vampires astray watch the phoenix take flight once sensing their presence, of evil it opens wings and rises from flowing orange flames that flush the doorway and dissipate quickly killing one, leaving the dryness drier and the warmth warmer. The shadows begin to grow in afternoon light, and one of them sees the hole in the upper building's wall, and the intruded face of Troy thru the dying flames and soulless embers of a phoenix counterpart. Watching vampires with hopes to fight them, Nick pulls Troy from the open wall. They rush returning, in duplicitous nature, which they are allied with roving chaste assigned duly, impure sensualists, harkening apace, wiry witnesses to fomenting familiar and inquisitive antagonists. The time is as they say in Midgard, an hour, until sunset. Troy hands Nickolas a small magic potion of power and one for himself they drink and embolden, readying themselves for combat.

Matteus and his inner circle of ally cadre run diligently, the shadows of the city cover more recesses as the other lesser caste of new vampires begins to wake, chosen by station to feed only when ordered they thirst for the immortal blood. As Matteus and the others reach the feeding chamber Troy is outside-on his phoenix, wings spread lifting into the air, seen thru the broken wall over the charred body, his arms spread reach for saddle horn as he leans forward, eyes certain and closing and looking to the sky.





  What's This     ? 

29 November 2013

Merlin 3:32 “The Agony Scene”

Merlin 3:32 “The Agony Scene”
~ @mjbanks 

Afore a facetious fascinating society, shallows and quicksand alas withal the wells, as many strategically placed within the wall of the city already disastrously dry, a genuine drought in every shadowy quarter with dust between and covering every stone. At night, the vampires rattle carriages to bloodlust attack, so that both vampire and mercenary may drink, thrive, and share with their gypsy wives. Retribution, equivalent exchange effortlessly transpires of each rebirth of an immortal, by evil graces consumption drains life from the city’s people that their undying captive would defend. Having much strength from fresh blood they release Nick to toy with him, cats and mouse, when he kills one they laugh and chattel him to his new prison, to feed their heightened addiction he is drained again to death. The reincarnation consumes the land, poaching the water and life from the manna, heretofore causing the same malady that shuns tradesmen and tourists from a dying city haunted by leeches and rubes. If Nickolas is to escape, the clouds will need to once anew breathe air and pour tears of joy, but until such he proves and provides exquisite suffering, fear and frustration, ancient Nick would make by on dreams and damnation by those who prefer to wake in casket.

Dire desperate plants in the dust despite the first day of autumn, only the summer succulents growing, arid is the wasteland and tired are the clouds, a xeric fortified town now of clay and infernality. A town amid a terrible drought, where the surrounding forest begins to turn to first faintly of yellows, this town is earthen and dying as if noon has overstayed its import. Of it a large double doorway, a blood-drunk harvester of innocence named Matteus with infinite degrees of destruction, looking at Nickolas with the malaise of drug-addled miscomprehension, staring but not seeing, glaring but not being, rife with sate condemnation and wroth. Aside, the den of dealers of death, sentries reminiscing of remnant centuries, infamous savages less than noble aspiring to dash the hopes of daybreak and pollute the starry breeze with rare potent poisons and powers, of the rose vines crawling thru their hallucinations cavalierly assuaging thru the ether, discussing what the crafted markings mean on the dagger belonging to Nickolas.

Their leader, Matteus, disconnected from reality most of all, to slight every tempted ethos epic in shelter of vision and preciosity. Coarse and indifferent to temperance and purity, success and nature, simply staring at the immortal prisoner, a sacrificial room in a prison in a fort, its times of distresses a mental perception to the common precept.

Nickolas stares at a ray of sunlight shining thru dusty air into his dark confinement, a sign of light, a ray of hope, the vampire thereof does not squint from its presence, the guard walks skin temporarily thru the light, the flesh does not burn brightly with flames of all vampires’ curse. Though unbeknownst to Nick and his close pacing captor, the flesh without fire spotted unsurely by Matteus, desperate to escape, prisoner begins screaming wretchedly angrily horrible.

Nick: “Fine, take my soul, thee fiends of Hel! Break the covenant of decency, strafe me from the unbalanced war, these lives, harlots, and roamers, wanderers, and nomads, vagabonds and devils-you drink my blood from my wrists and put your throats in my grasp forevermore!”

The guard looks to Matteus, who in leaving the second room of ruffians affirms permission to drink in default from an immortal Nick once more. They drink from him his pain imbued by rank and file the likes arisen to his screams in discourse to leave them ever continually their fountain of life, and by time do they depart.

Custodius: “You may have part of your request.”

The vampire turns his fettered hand and drinks from wrist, a pain splashes Nick’s face, struggling as the teeth pierce, and pain turns to sorrow as he imagines imprisonment. The vampire leaves blood spilt on Nick’s arm and stands, only to nearly fall backwards into the wall, colliding with some force just enough to roll his eyes unfixed, inebriation from the blood desire given. Nickolas begins to tear into his own arm in pulling shackles and gyves, slow to hide his efforts from the noisy room at open doorway, tearing at his hidden hand giving new blood mixing with what that had spilled in camouflage of intoxicate haze and blood-scent hidden from whetted thirsts.

In the ignominious and pale light of shadows and secrecy Matteus moves to an area alone, among the unnatural and disturbed abandonment of a town, emptied by a warring plague of rogue vampires paired with drought that leaves an unattended commune and the lifeless bodies of the brave in every street. He approaches a doorway flooded with light, pausing to look out at one of those bodies, then again to the light itself, aversively approaching, terrified encroaching, on some effortless reproaching of the brightly day of light. He outstretches his hand to touch the warmth as he had seen his comrade brush, and the joy of the sun is his, to hold in his palm, a thousand joyful memories of fascinations from a millennium ago fill his heart and mind, the warmth embraces sensation to help ignore the disgrace of humanity lost. Convivial expression and jovially taken for granted, the prints of his fingers and hand begin to redden and melt with pain of insidious curse, however learning that Nick’s blood drives his thirst immeasurable. Pulling his hand into the shadow a fist, opening his grasp to watch wounds heal, to his comrades he returns to guard possession retreating in contempt from the fantasy of his ideology.

Nick frees his own hand, and in the guard’s neglect, his other hand and feet, with the iron shackle he cuts throat of guard to silence scream, then dashes thru the room passed vampires now in chase, but he is stopped by Matteus, grabbing Nick by the throat and lifting him, without smile. Nick stabs the palm of Matteus and takes the piercing blade, the blood spills and minions try to catch the blood to drink from their cupped hands, desperate for only a drop of their elder, to know his memories, his undead strength. Matteus tosses Nick to them to stop their stealing of his blood secrets.




...

28 November 2013

Budding

[link]Thanksgiving is for sociopaths - Salon.com[/link]

The first line, it should be comma but; apparently okay with egregious grammar at the ole blowhard saloon. But for the occasional amusing asshattery, I'd never intentionally visit salon. 'Can't write good article. Must wait in line for depraved sentimental object from sterile warehouse, ugh. Me trample others and take from grasping hands for material possession while forsaking sustainability,' spake the leftlike Neanderthal columnist while hastily finishing the article. 
“I have come to the conclusions that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.” Charles de Gaulle
So, the 'pilgrims' were flippant, eating a lot of meat in the summer, and the indigenous people offered to help the pilgrims farm, but they rejected the offer. -- Stop me if you've heard this one. -- The indigenous had harvest and hunted the game, which they had rightful claim, and the pilgrims were left dumbfounded, the indigenous were generous and helped them not starve. It's more of an entitled socialist holiday, a bunch of wealthy and disconnected self-righteous puritans needed a bailout because they refused to prepare and screamed about being persecuted when in actuality they were merely blatantly pissed because no one would let them be fascists.
  “Under every stone lurks a politician.” Aristophanes
I'm thankful for capitalism. I think it strange, salon likes to say it's been in operation since the dawn of the digital era, and yet that's when things began getting steadily distant from reality, this reality that is. Every cool holiday the puritanical establishment likes to fashion into a something that is our tradition to one of a secular doctrine, so I'm also thankful the supreme chancellor is forever closer to being out of office. If my picture of the dinner plate doesn't load, try refreshing the page, it wouldn't load to the avian-named site, perhaps a bird on bird conflict of pinterests. LOLOCAUSTIC
"The politicians don't just want your money. They want your soul. They want you to be worn down by taxes until you are dependent and helpless. When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both.” ~ James Dale Davidson
The U.S. can uselessly archive every goddam tweet in the Library of Congress, but they can't stop levying taxes, with monetized debt and devalued currency, on the unborn generations?
“The tree of liberty must be watered periodically with the blood of tyrants and patriots alike. It is its natural manure." Thomas Jefferson
Rock hen, 'ranch dressing' packet seasons (don't shake and bake, instead sprinkle), hoisted onto an open (tasted) beer can. Sweet potato, carrot, honey ginger maple curry sauce. Scrawny asparagus. Homemade rye beer-bread. H2O
Time: 45 minutes.
A conservative and a libertarian walk into a bar and have drinks. The conservative asks the libertarian, "What do you call a right wing conservative?" and the libertarian replies, "I don't know. What?" and the conservative answers, "a republican," and they both laugh. The libertarian decides to add a rejoinder by rhetoric, asking, "What do you call a left wing libertarian?" and the conservative replies, "I don't know. What?" and the libertarian answers, "a democrat," and they both laugh. 
"A statesman is a politician who places himself at the service of the nation. A politician is a statesman who places the nation at his service" ~ Georges Pompidou
I thought sociopath was a word reserved for pathological liars aka politicians, and/or people who generalize about anything up to and including that everyone who loves thanksgiving is a sociopath. I also take deep offense, some of the best voices in my head are sociopaths and we are the borg. It amazes me how much SOME of you all claim to be normal, yet leave the future in such a terrible mess. Also, I would like to think that I wouldn't pardon a turkey named Popcorn. The unemployment rate didn't shrink, the benefits expired, only 100 million people are working. Worst president ever. The next one better not suck so much ass. Pagan holidays, coincidentally were celebrating the same traditions, before taxes, yet none dare call it conspiracy.
“It does no harm just once in a while to acknowledge that the whole country isn't in flames, that there are people in the country besides politicians, entertainers, and criminals.” ~ Charles Kuralt


23 November 2013

"Architectural Genetics"


Excerpted from, "Destruction Through Technological Progress" 
"...we must look at our origins, and find new ways to establish extropy, the genesis of our apotheosis will be our apotheogenesis, now is time for neolution, we must both join and become the singularity..."  ~ Drs. Walter Bishop and William Bell.

So you're on a deep-space transport from the Privada system to the Valor Prisma system and you need something new to read, maybe you should datagram something from the Technocracy Genre, because your fellow pilots have told you so much about it and now that you've been released from Picor (Pilot Corp) and have the free time, but you don't know what it is, well let me try to summarize it and let you on your way.   

Technocracy, is not cyberpunk, but a subset of the genre, told from the perspective of the cyborgs ("Intelligence" CBS), androids ("Almost Human" FOX), singularity-and-humans ("Person of Interest" CBS), [and in part, characters designated 'Observers' in one of my favorites "Fringe" FOX], etc. The prior defining adaption, thereof nature, and the latter defining adoption, thereof nurture.

Whereas cyberpunk often depicts humans coping within evolving technology as detectives and journalists in noire settings, complete with fascist governments or decaying corporate-commercial societies being destroyed/saved by entrepreneurs, instead the technocracy genre focuses on the survival of the technocrats in regard to society en masse, as opposed to its levy.

In other words, an antihero (tritagonist) aberration, not a rebellion, as necessity invokes invention, invention in this case necessitates a fear within the antagonist(s). Readers of this genre (and any other liberally applied fiction) should examine the consequences and apprehend how humanity is defined when it is abandoned in and of itself.






-

21 November 2013

Lyric Subtlety


"Le Madeyoulook"
Raining Blood Lyrics - Slayer:

Every time I hear "Raining Blood" by Slayer, "Trapped in purgatory, a lifeless object, alive, awaiting reprisal, death will be their acquisition."


Yes, this is another obsessive blogger entry. No, I cannot read your mind on demand when you are unfocused, and that would be cheating regardless.

What I hear the singer say, is, "death will be their quittance." If you're a grammar fiend, like me, you know the two words are different and still very similar, a remuneration is transferred in both, so kudos to the internet, or cloud, or technological singularity - resistance is futile. I recently heard English has the most words, passive or active, twice as many as the next language, maybe even after ignoring loan-words. So, worried, I would be, heretofore, in the damnedest with only a dearth of locutions, I will have had anon begun learning a second language, to learn the wroth and loth and ire and besot of poesy in another prose...
...si querer, tiene que recordar,
si di que si, queres tiene que entienda....
I thought y'all would find this interesting, I was looking for a Medieval English version of "quittance" when I found this. Very telling, ....the truth about the quitter.

Circa "1150AD to 1580AD," said the web addy for: 
Quitter, sb. filth that runs from a wound, HD: quytur, rottenness, HD; quytere, W2; quitture, DG. (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10625/10625-h/dict2.html)
Oh look, here we go.... 1,000 A.D.
Quyten, v. to requite, repay, settle, satisfy, S2, C2, C3, PP, W, H; quiten, S2, PP; quitte, pt. s. G; qwit, H; quyt, pp., PP; y-quit, C2.—OF. quiter; Late Lat. quietare.
Perhaps you're a 1,200 A.D. kind of crowd...
quittance (n.)
c.1200, "payment, compensation;" c.1300, "discharge from an obligation," from Old French quitance (Modern French quittance), from quiter (see quit (v.)).

That of "take revenge; to answer, retort" and "to acquit oneself" are late 14c.
Quitter, above states is a filth that pays itself, successful people have been saying it, and I'm inclined to agree. Let's not forget this now gives new meaning to the computer term "Force Quit," considering this column began with a Slayer's Raining Blood, rederpless, I am quit of this.

For my longtime readers, the new modes of my madness:
M, magic, -twenty+ to Four
NT, main cast, alien invaders, maybe some accidental time travel
BH, iambic interstellar detective cop, rare (bored I changed the character to chick)
G, intentional time travel, first person
O/H+, new, not just for me, but new altogether, post-humanism intergalactic technocracy fiction, first chapter in coming weeks/months, I've seen it already, but I think you'll like it, spoilers, and an eventual crossover with others in reverse order. 


Requiem en pace. Godspeed. 

"All goes wrong when, starved for lack of anything good in their own lives, men turn to public affairs"  Plato


09 November 2013

If Tech Were Tabloid

And Eng, by Nari
Anding is a simple elimination process in binary supernetting. (0/1=0, 1/1=1, 1/0=0, 0/0=0) Here is a shorthand And, and an accented Eng. It is also known by &&, used to delineate demarcation between Network and Host portions of address schema when filtering logical portions remanded by default gateway via L3 Network Layer, or that is making routing decisions based on subnet masks to separate sections of a network in similar fashion to a virtual lan port assignment/designation would, but without the physical limitations of switch/router/hybrid device physical topology or mandatory port logical configurations; which in VLANs occurs in the L2 Data Link layer that I wish they would just call it the Link Layer, because all of the other OSI layers only have one word names. 



Question 1,

Link Layer is ________,
A) Where the overlords attach our shackles to our bodies.
B) The docking port on a space station.
C) An OSI layer b/w L1 physical operations and L3 datagram length encapsulation/decapsulation. (*to L4 Transport Layer and before L4-L7 packet switching occurs, L4-L7 similar to the TCP/IP protocol layers/stack.)
D) An underground night club for tech gurus.
E) A bachelor hideaway for Princess Zelda's beau.
F) An internet forum and message board for international blackmarket trading.
G) An industrial machine used to create railroads. 

Question 2,

True or False.


Politicians shouldn't be allowed to make their own decisions. Now that everyone will have healthcare - except for the millions who just lost their plans, those who face the unfortunate experience of doctor shortages, and those who had their care rationed from them due to federal cost analysis that was originally the same exact fucking reason used to demonize health insurance companies - maybe the zealots on capitol hill could start trying to make it cheaper.









08 November 2013

Awesome Sponsor


Review of
Shunryu Suzuki, the teachings of, "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind." 
by @mjbanks 
for Diarrheal Anemic Liberal Economy 


I'd listened to the audiobook gazillions of times, and decided to give it a once-over, it's a book full of examinations of the pure practices involved in religion, the nameless religion, not the cults or the groups of angry mobs. It has a lot of truth that really helped me understand the world, not so much that the book matched something in me that I appreciated, but that it had a lot of truth to offer. The book is a collection of speeches that zen master Suzuki gave over the years that had been recorded in pieces, because going to hear a conservative lecture is by far not a new thing as much as it sadly has become a newly forgotten thing. Much are tales of events and traditions not unique to any one demographic, in that I mean, commonalities of goodly deeds that all can enjoy. For those of you wise to Buddhism know that zen, imho, is not the same as the 'Schools of Buddhism' cult, you probably know the book infamously. The teachings center on focus, practice, and ...well, centering oneself. Not an oppressive liturgy of guidelines it offers Suzuki's words complete without expectations. You can call it a self-help book, it is a book, it might help, I can only say that with it my understanding of my favorite tenets from the book, as I write this, are 'right practice' and 'dharma ridden' dharma being laxly translated as laws, and in turn has made be a better pseudo Catholic. If you're still lost, the bible teaches many of Buddha's teachings in a 'protestant' fashion (for lack of a better word) and Buddha is kinda like a Jesus, just without the same persecution. One of my favorite quotes from it is, "The teaching which is written on paper is not the true teaching," which sounds like the holy spirit now that I think  about it. Think "teach" the verb, not the noun, as in 'to teach" not 'a book'. Whatever it is, let it happen, selfless and ascetic (NOT AESTHETIC), I'm not making you read it, you're not making me not tell you about the book. It has some of the famous "Koans" or we might call them, 'deep questions', when I learned about free will, kinda, my review. There's one about a dog, apparently dogs didn't bark in the ancient world, and the question is, "do dogs have Buddha-nature?" or 'holy nature' and the answer is literally "Mu," or the teacher barks at the answer, and I thought to myself, 'does a dog have enlightenment?' and I answered myself, 'who cares, it's a fucking dog, that's what it really is,' be what you are, this is the right understanding.

It has a Twitter API "https://twitter.com/zenmind_"  @zenmind_

04 November 2013

Merlin 3:31 “Diminished to Be”

Merlin 3:31 “Diminished to Be”
@mjbanks

Outside as the rain becomes faint a rider charges to the checkpoint, trotting over the bridge wearing leather tarp over himself despite the subsiding weather, just in time to see the once dapper dude, drained of vital blood in torn clothes, tossed into the ravine that spans beneath it. In mode of joining the array of bones unseen in ages of rages, as creatures crawl beneath the bridge on ancient spun silk caves behind web-woven cages awaiting prey, watching the body fall, the approaching emissary comes to halt and speaks to a sentry.

Nuncios (rider): "What was the purpose of that?"
Floricus: (sentry): "Never have I seen our mad sisters shrike with such a lovely force, it is bothered by nothing and troubled by force, how nothing has its ways. An arbitrage of trader come traitor, unto a sin the king dare not forget."
Nuncios: "Ah, take me to our king, for I have cause that awaits not this storm to pass."

The sentry takes the horse’s reins and allows Nuncios to dismount and eventually handing the horse to another as they approach the door, near the tunnel entrance, a man soaked waits to dry with a sentry before escort to the doors and not a moment sooner. A common thing as vampires amicably part is now spoke.

Floricus: “Paint is black, my friend.”
Nuncios: “Paint it black, Floricus.”

Floricus opens the door saying nothing, which though allows Nuncios to enter the interior tunnel with permission. Passing the wagon the trader had brought, watching soldiers open and unload chests of precious metals, scoffing at their worth, to be taken and added to the dungeons filled with treasure unappreciated, Nuncios and armed escorts approach the king.

Lord Scarlet: "What news do you bring, old boy…?"
Nuncios: "It is a matter cursed, most delicate and secret. For your ear if I may, approach your lordship."
Lord Scarlet: "Approach me, Nuncios."

Nuncios: quietly, “There is confirmation at the loss and finding of Matteus, betrayal as warned, holed with the immortal and a gang now unlawfully doubling in the dozens, as you had supposed, master.”
Lord Scarlet: quietly, "Whence does my traitor turn new coven without license?”
Nuncios: "A drought and debauchery ensconcing hie twelve leagues from here. Then moved to a second of their locales, fiends of the lifeblood, easily forthwith confused not farther three leagues of thence that.”
Lord Scarlet: "Lie to me, and be purged.”
Nuncios: “Assuredly it is not.”
Lord Scarlet: “Then come with me directly…. The queen has the court!”

Directly the lord of Scarlet and Nuncios depart from the throne room, thru the ballroom to the foyer, thru a door in the antechamber, a narrowed stairwell to the lower catacombs and deeper recesses of the castle on hidden fortress. Deep into the dungeons, delving there as any commotion subsides with fear and respect, the guards stand at attention, the closest prisoners prostrate themselves with faces to the floor, farther it recedes where immortal deaths are kept until conceding defeat, the king overlords the dungeon scowling at the starving monsters of the deep, whose unlocked cages yet remain closed.

Lord Scarlet: “This moment, one of you, will be purposed at my will, your spirits in cages to be broken, which among, a blood warlock, will volunteer?”

A raggedy man, a tortured soul behind two closed metal doors hears the question, he strains and shouts to accept the deed, his cell sealed by cage and then again doors, eager to escape, most and more dangerous than most.

Malachi: “I accept this chore!”
Outside of the doors king and warden do stand.
Lord Scarlet: “What say you to his expertness in war?”
Warden: “Easily his kills are loyal to war, he revels in the waste of blood, indulgent in coven and covetousness, so in thus might ally betray.”
Lord Scarlet: “Taste your heated blood like water, and make him approach.”

The doors break thru creaking ages of dust and open to a golden cage, wherein the prisoner shackled to a leaden chair leaning forward and hung over a bed of knives, guards approach holding torches and whips, more with spears tautly grasped, the name Malachi etched to a small silver bar hangs around his neck.

Malachi: “Why do the lesser criminals not leave?”
Lord Scarlet: “Where would they wend? Where would they rather be? Being outcast, insanity allows our vestiges of humanity to rebirth them, tho it is different for you. You may have forgotten your felony, but your bonds in this world have not, and older than your guards your cage is older than this mountain itself. Release him.”

Once freed from shackles and chains he does not immediately kneel, so the guards buckle his knees with their boots. Scarlet cuts his own palm, it fills with blood, he makes Malachi drink, but soon pulls him by hair, to look Malachi in eyes and hold a knife to his white starved throat.

Lord Scarlet: “Where your scars become, I will know where. Now, as I shall breathe, the winds of the world gather for your arrest. If you are commanded on my mission, how will you behave?”
Malachi: “A great deal of attention, some salacious, much of it condemnatory, all of it destructive.”
Lord Scarlet: “And if you betray me I’ll find the birth of the next mountain and strangle you until buried under it, your personal enemy eternal, do you recognize this possibility?”
Malachi: “Yes, lord.”
Lord Scarlet: “...bring him.”

Lord Scarlet releases angrily and turns from him and walks, the guards grab Malachi's arms and then follow bringing him into the main hall as Scarlet waits for Malachi to choose. The condemned to madness cowering with the audible sounds of fears, each caged cell whose patron screams lone in protest chorus, they whom chosen are desperate to keep their cage securely closed and keep their precious little blood, the guards prying to open the gates of their hell for Malachi to regain strength insatiable by the taste of death.






03 November 2013

Merlin 3:30 “Honorificabilitudinitatibus”

Merlin 3:30 “Honorificabilitudinitatibus”
~ @mjbanks

Dampness holds the air and layers the pastures unto the mountain oblivion cleped House Scarlet, the bleak and dark sky looming and occasionally thunderous, a general haze of cloud and soft dreich outside the altitude. The obfuscating shadows the veins of silence coursing over the jagged edges of grey mountainside, arteries of darkness to play illusion of the mind an imperial monastery for creatures of nightfall, where cliff and bluffs make rife an unforgiving clime a relentless treachery. The sign of existence daunting as a branch of lightning in the overcast stretches ever brightly and disappears, a thunder again over the countryside surrounding the mountain fortress.

Indoors almost forlorn, a scornful gaze of Lord Scarlet staring at the flames of candles on the long wall-side table draped in cloth, motionless in white beneath empty salvers and utensils of sup that never occurs, his elbow resting on the throne to hold a chalice of blood beside his eye. A modicum of dust drifts from the ceiling to his cup as a slowly pace subsidiary to the court patience, as he lifts to his lips drinks before it taints the blood chilled by the dank air and candlelight. All patrons silent and still like poised dead and ethereal, silent and stationary, even those not counting the dust that choose to walk handholding are in tantric pace with the slow speed of ages to each event. The sound of shared thought stationary, a heartbeat of the living would be in haste of the dead society.

Mortal, human, rider approaches the castle transporting ruggedly a wagon full of stolen jewelry plentiful in amount and pristine by the terms of its unlawful acquisition, and four box coffins, shoddy by assembly although strongly built enough for the imprisonment of live prisoners, whose wrists are bound and mouths wrapped. At the checkpoint hamlet, the driver attains permission and crosses the bridge to castle basin, the lightning clamoring and rain beginning to increase. Thru the interior tunnel and then the doors to one of the foyers, the human waits as herald announces him in vagueness.

Herald: “A trader…enters.”

The paucity of consortium begins, the denizens begin to move and speak more frequently, some blinking their eyelids the first of days, looking to others the first of weeks, whetting their voices the first of months, some asking where conversations had halted. Other small talk of reemerging sorts, lighting the lamps and feeding fires all in show as the doors open for the human, whom soon has audience with the bloodlust king.

Red Art: “I have brought the apothecary as you have asked.”
Lord Scarlet: “And you will be paid, this exchange will happen now and you will leave.”
Red Art: “I seek an alternative form of payment.”
Lady Scarlet: “What prey to tell, ulterior remuneration?”
Red Art: “I know what this place…is, what you are, and I wish to be, one with the night …immortal.”
Lord Scarlet: “Did you bring the alchemist?”
Red Art: “In many moons I traveled east to return with him west again, I have, Lord Scarlet.”
Lady Scarlet: “The transfusion requires many lives, many deaths that you are not afforded and are not worth. My lord, this is distasteful.”
Red Art: “No, I have brought to you four bodies, not one, and much treasures of gold and silver, even if but to only let me depart.”
Lord Scarlet: “Kill him and inspect the piecemeal.”
Red Art: “Dearly not oh wisest lord do please reconsider! I am a simple man, a simple man!”
Lord Scarlet: “There are many reasons you are not meant for this world.”
Red Art: “So be it, I will leave unabashed!”
Lord Scarlet: “This bores me ever so, Jester, sentence this worm fashionably.”

As guards catch the struggling trader by both arms as he tries to escape, where the wall meets the ceiling a red curtain hangs over no window, it waves aside to reveal a court jester smiling, who turns his back to all people of the room.

A jester’s dance begins as his hands reach upward and over his head to stretch back to the floor with his body arching. His knees rise and ankles drape and he soon puts his heels to the floor again still facing-away, he turns his body sideways and spins head over shoulder a slow cartwheel maneuver, again a second time paused to stand on only one hand, and looks cross at the trader upside-down. The acrobat puts his other hand down and falls like a hacked tree, his feet toward the trader he reaches into the air, his shoulders lift from the stone floor supernaturally, he does not stop standing upright as he leans forward and grasps the trader’s throat.

Holding and choking him and carrying him from the guard’s hold to the wall, dragging victim’s heels and knocking his skull on the wall, as the oxygen depletes a blue face of prey, the courtesan jester’s fangs begins to show.

Jester: “You have a grave ignorance, bleeder, breather, our existence is not immortality, we are all dead here. For crime of treason, bondage of betrayal, and greed of instinct, you have seen the face of death your final time.”

The jester lunges his jaws at the trader’s throat, every vampire within the walls of the nearby rooms stop talking and turns to face the kill, listening to death and taking deep scents of bliss and blood, the king and his courtesans begin clapping.

Lord Crimson: “Benevolent, simply benevolent, a fine jester indeed – search his carriage and bring me the bodies alive!”
Lady Crimson: “It is to laugh, buying his freedom.”

Her closest friends of the court laugh with her as she takes a drink from a chalice of gold and glass diamonds glittering, as a guard points to two under-ranking soldiers and they depart, returning with the humans, arriving shocked and awed, one of which almost collapses before forced to stand, weak and fearing bloody thorn-like smiles. The king stands and approaches, gesturing the guards to lift the weak one into stance.

Lord Crimson: “Take this one to the atelier. Which of you three whom wishes to be vampire will kneel in this moment, stand and you may leave this room.”

He gives them ample pause, strutting-away then toward and across pacing side, first and third kneels to both knees with lachrymose heads hung, and the intermediary remains standing.

Lord Crimson: “Drink and throw him into the ravine.”
Dude: “Nooooooo!”
Lord Crimson: “You two will be dead inside your hearts before you know it.”

Lord Crimson pushes him to hungry princesses who feed at every available place amongst themselves above his belt, struggling without avail and soon gasping silence. Crimson grabs the collars of the other two and drags them to the doors, where at the larger hall holds them for the many thirsty vampires resuming stillness and patience, in respect to their king tossing as he names them.

Lord Crimson: “Turn these two, this will be Tiberius, and this will be Cornelius, make music and rejoice!”

The many vampires rush and mirth to the frightened men, only to hoist and carry them on their shoulders into another room, drinks and dancing and violins.






01 November 2013

Post-Structuralism, I

Tennessee State Senator Brian Kelsey's Gift to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius - "Websites for Dummies"


Classic. HHS Sec gets "Websites for Dummies," it's times like these that renew my hope. 
Get it?
The 630 million dollar website that is either broke or breaking people's wallets/purses, which the US government is paying the same company to fix, all to sell insurance at a federal level, which is against the law b/c the US constitutional system is not allowed to profit from its public. Well that site is broken, because it was a government closed-market interpretation that doesn't make healthcare any cheaper, not even cheaper by the rates of its own site. Kill the Commiesaurus. We should all agree that humans and dinosaurs need not coexist. She looks like she doesn't get it, why the book, why ppl are ungrateful for the income assault, for the minimum wage underemployed clusterfuck, for the people who want empirical evidence and not a bureaucratic sob story, for a govt that makes costs increase and problems persist only to sell the problem as the solution, for a disconnected elitist pseudo-intellectual arrogant view of solutions as attacks on their liberal sensibilities. She glares of flippancy and arrogance, as if to wonder her purpose, from what I know she doesn't get, nor do her comrades in perpetual egocentric soul-devouring envy.

The word that is to fittingly describe the dangers of split infinitives.

Tao? Yesterday.
Zen? Today.
Love? Tomorrow.
Sex? Health.
Music?

I found this blurb yesterday, as follows,

Wikipedia, "Antipositivism (also known as interpretivism or interpretive sociology) is the view in social science that the social realm may not be subject to the same methods of investigation as the natural world; that academics must reject empiricism and the scientific method in the conduct of social research. Antipositivists hold that researchers should focus on understanding the interpretations that social actions have for the people being studied. Antipositivism relates to various historical debates in the philosophy and sociology of science. In modern practice, however, interpretivism may be equated with qualitative research methods, while positivist research is more quantitative. Positivists typically use research methods such as experiments and statistical surveys, while antipositivists use research methods which rely more on ethnographic fieldwork, conversation/discourse analysis or open-ended interviews. Positivist and antipositivist methods are sometimes combined."



I would add, also known as revisionism, or, lacking object permanence. Interpretists, seem like they could be called just plain lazy, I wouldn't call them pessimists, but I might call them protectionists or alarmists. It could be called liberalism because its an opinion before facts, sometimes never reaching point of fact, which is okay in some cases, but smacks of pessimism. A pessimist might say, even in theory, if the sky were to fall, we're all together fucked now, if not, probably still are. The interpretist says the sky IS falling, flakes, hosers, politicians, poseurs, fakes, jerks, dbags, etc., and despite proof they become revisionists and again insist the sky is falling. Antipositivists become parasites and destroyers. The current US mandated/imposition healthcare model is based on Switzerland's, they survived the socialists collapse of the global economy because they refuse to let people devalue their standard of living, not because they made everyone wear brown shirts.

...the quote above says 'for the people being studied' and 'rely on fieldwork', yet you and I know the behavior of the someone being observed instantly and forever changes when the person being watched learns they are being watched; that subject itself is called "Reactivity", and is the center of my fictional forays and in both my understanding and plight of this reality.

Wikipedia, "It [Reactivity] is a significant threat to a research study's Internal Validity and is typically Controlled when using Blind Experiment designs."


It brings one question, so I'll ask it.
Rhetorical Section:
In the state of gratification being that of materialism and the renunciation of emotional pain being directly corollary to acceptance of impermanence, the adoption of ascetics, and the renewal of focus in one's own life, there is peace in understanding and value in all honesty. If then such is so, are medical services a need of mind or body, in such a way that free will would prevent premature illness in the way that autocracy cannot, or are needs of the mind and body by a governing forced will (on others) a medical service, or if else is atonement and/or vindication and/or retribution the proper penance for not doing so properly in either case?


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