BLACK ATTACK

peeing on dead guys

2012-01-12T16:02:00.000-08:00

I avoid commenting on political things, but I think the following statement is noncontroversial enough. A person can hate the Taliban, and have the utmost respect for our men and women in Afghanistan, and also disapprove of peeing on dead guys. That kind of person can exist. I just thought I should point that out. Not everyone realizes it.

I'm not even saying I'm that person. My stance on all three of those questions remains a mystery. I've just seen some people take for granted that those three opinions can't coexist in one person, and they need to know they've made a terrible mistake.

fuck the self

2011-12-19T12:59:00.000-08:00

Finally, a guy has added some detail to a vague argument I've felt vaguely strongly* about for the past few years: Sentience, the sense of self, is not a uniquely human trait, nor is it a necessarily important part of intelligence. The self is just a good, practical reference point in the design of thinking machine. And thinking machines are billions of years older than super-intelligent ones we are now. But you didn't come here for my perspective. Here's the video:

Hell yeah, down with the sentience cult. One thing that bothered me was the idea that the self is located down in the midbrain. I'd been rooting for the prefrontal cortex. But that's not a big deal. Only idiots worry about the location of the self.

An importanter lesson to learn from this is that intelligence is one little voice in the primitive democracy of our minds, which explains why it's so easily and often ignored. The only solution is to metaphorically locate its opponents and metaphorically beat them savagely. And that's why I didn't like the Damasio's (the guy in the video) defense of curiosity. It seemed so feeble. It also feels tragic that it's even necessary.

*Yes, you can use an adverb to modify an adverb, if you're an asshole like me.

swim test

2011-12-12T10:54:00.000-08:00

We had our biannual swim test yesterday. Most of the company did the bare minimum basic-level test, and then sat up in the bleachers with their MRE's, watching the handful who volunteered for the intermediate test. I was in the handful of course. We couldn't do the advanced test, because that takes five days and we only had the facility for one. But we got to try the MCIWS indoc, which is supposedly just as good and only takes an hour or so. So now I'm qualified to go to swim instructor school. But obviously the motive was to show off, and here's me cashing that check.

Some highlights:

Floating in the diving pool, I had to take off my pants, tie the legs together, and blow them up, to make a flotation device. It wasn't hard, but it was funny.
The second hardest thing was the 25 yard underwater swim. It had to be deep, too. Making a ripple on the surface would disqualify us. I tried going calmly and efficiently, as instructed. I made it about 75% of the way before I started to panic, but then I thought of a trick: Instead of giving up and freaking out upward, I could freak out forward. So I quit the calm efficiency thing and went nuts for the rest of the way. It might have been unsafe, but how often do you get a chance to pass a test you haven't prepared for, at the mere cost of a minor risk to your life?
The hardest thing was retrieving some rifles and helmets from the bottom of a 16-foot diving pool, while wearing a uniform and boots. It wasn't even part of a test. The test only required us to drop them. But we couldn't leave them there, and the instructor sure as hell wasn't going to get them. My ears are still feeling that one.

origin of the cft part 2

2011-09-25T12:11:00.000-07:00

Previously, on Black Attack...

Delta Squad was pinned down in... I'm not sure, actually. I was never really clear on that. But Sergeant Testley was getting ready to save the day by running 880 yards in boots and utes. Let's see what happens next.

They watched Testley disappear into the dark and stormy darkness. Two minutes and forty-five seconds later, the muzzle flashes began to disappear. Captain Owens clutched Testley's rifle in one hand and his own in the other. His cigar had burned down to a little clump of ash, still precariously held in his lips. He waited an eternity for Testley's voice on the radio, thinking of the sweet mods he would get for his new rifle if that voice never came.

But it did. "Oscar three oscar, echo five tango, all tangoes have been beaten to death."

"Coo," said Owens. Then, to Reynolds, "Hey, get a picture of me dual-wielding these M4's."

"I doubt the tactical wisdom of that, Sir."

"Tell that to the Covenant."

Testley said, "Sir, there's something here they were guarding. It's a flatbed truck full of ammo cans. About ninety-one of them. Thirty pounds each."

The ash dropped from Owens' mouth. "Hold your position. We're bringing in the seven-ton."

"Whoa, you never said anything about a seven-ton! We'll stick out like a sore thumb!"

"You leave the orders to me, Sergeant!"

"Yes, Sir."

"It's, 'Aye aye, Sir.'"

"Aye, Sir."

"'Aye aye.'"

"Aye aye."

"'Aye aye, Sir.'"

"I'm not a Sir."

"Just guard the damn boxes. We'll be up there in a minute."

In a minute, Delta Squad and a seven-ton truck rolled up to the former enemy position.

Testley emerged from the thicket, holding a catured Uzi. Owens pointed to a ditch seventy-five yards from the enemy flatbed. He told the rest of the squad, "Take position there, and make sure nobody gets through, especially enemies." He looked over the flatbed. He opened an ammo can, looked into it very seriously, and quickly closed it. To Testley, he said, "We've got to get these into the seven-ton."

"Sir, I think it's time for some answers."

"The answers are over your pay grade."

"They're over your pay grade!"

"Alright, I'll tell you everything. After we're out of danger. Now, this truck bed is at chest-level, but we'll need to fully extend our arms to get the boxes into the seven-ton. Hey, what are you doing? No!"

Testley was opening an ammo can. If was full of 20-ounce bottles of Mountain Dew Code Red. "It was you!"

Holy shit, where am I even going with this? Find out next time!

origin of the cft

2011-09-20T20:28:00.000-07:00

It's CFT season for Marines. Opinions vary widely on this wacky new fitness test, but we can all agree that it's interesting.

All the elaborate little things you have to on the test may seem random and unnecessarily complicated, unless you know the history of the CFT. So, you know, here it is.

World War II. The night was as dark, literally, as the darkness that was to come, metaphorically. A full moon did not appear in the sky. The only sound was extremely loud rain and thunder. In a dark and desert digital camouflaged tent, Captain Owens chewed his cigar grimly as he stood between Delta Squad and a map of Stalingrad.

"Men," he said, "This is my last patrol before I ship back to the States to marry my pregnant fiancé. So if it comes down to a choice, one of you try to get shot instead of me. Now, our route takes us through this general area." He circled the entire map with his finger. "And we expect to encounter Charlie in this general area." He continued circling the map. "Any questions?"

Private Timmy raised his hand. "Can we expect reinforcements, Sir?"

"Geez, I hope so. Alright, check your ammo and stay frosty. The ROE is FFA and the thumbstick is inverted. And one more thing. Some of you are brand new to this combat thing. If you start to lose your head, just remember the mission of the Marine Corps rifle squad. Close with and destroy the enemy. Let's move out!"

The squad crept through the jungle in a wedge right formation. Lance Corporal Johnson whispered to PFC Reynolds. "You gonna do what the Captain said?"

"Hell no. I got two fiancés. That order implicitly excludes me. What about you?"

"I'm saving up for a house. I ain't got a fiancé, but I'm gonna load that bitch up with fiancés once I get it."

Timmy chimed in. "I'm gonna buy a castle, with a fiancé in every tower and a moat full of puppies."

"I ain't got much goin' on," said PFC Tyrone. "I'll take the bullet for the Cap. And the rest of you, I guess. Good thing I'm so wide."

Johnson said, "Shit Tyrone. You're one stone cold motherfucker."

"Damn straight bitch." They executed Delta Squad's highly elaborate secret high-five.

Timmy whispered to Testley, "Sergeant, is it true what the Captain said, about Charlie being in this general area?"

"Yeah, they're out here. Just shoot them with your bullets and you'll be fine."

"But Sergeant, I've never fired accurately before."

"What? Not even in boot camp?"

"I got pizza boxes. A whole lot of them. I ate pizza when I should have been target practicing."

Testley let out a heavy sigh. "Well, it's too late for practice now. Just keep your head down and I'll do the bullet shooting." He saw Johnson and Tyrone still working on their high-five. "High five walking, gents! You're falling behind!"

In slow motion, muzzle flashes appeared in the distance. Zipping sounds alerted the squad to the bullets flying by their heads at lightning speed. Lightning flashed at bullet speed. As if on instinct, every man ran in a random direction, screaming.

Owens found cover behind a tree, and once he was safe, thought of his men. "Get down, you stupids! Consolidate!"

Testley low-crawled to him. Owens was watching the muzzle flashes through his rifle scope. "Fuck," he said.

"What is it, Sir?"

"Fuck, fuck, fuck. They're eight hundred eighty yards away."

"But we're only trained to hit a human-sized target at five hundred yards."

"Hence, fuck."

"What do we do?"

"Well, you can forget about getting shot for my sake. It looks like we'll all be getting shot by bullets tonight."

"We can't give up just like that."

"Son, part of being a leader is knowing when to give up. Or deciding when to give up."

Testley was removing his helmet and flak jacket, stripping down to his skivvy shirt and trousers.

"What the hell are you doing?" said Owen.

Testley stood up. "Closing with and destroying the enemy, Sir."

Will Testley run 880 yards and, I guess, beat up the enemy? It won't be much of a spoiler if I say, "Yes." But if you want the details, stay tuned for the next post!

shotgun

2011-07-15T18:36:00.000-07:00

Cassie writes:

you should write about the KSG shotgun from Kel-Tec && let me know if youre excited about it.

I hadn't heard of it, so I had to do some research. So far, this is my favorite part:

Actually, my favorite part is the dual magazine, with a little switch that determines which magazine you feed from. My first thought was, "Why the hell would you want that?" But seconds later, I remembered something that everyone who has ever thought about shotguns has wished for: A way to choose between slugs and shot.

We've all worried about that at least once, haven't we? Imagine, on your right, you have a gang of hooligans who intend to rape you. But on your left, you have one thick-skulled brute holding your girlfriend hostage. You need buckshot for the guys on the right. You could try pumping slugs into them, but there's no way you could kill them all before they reach you. You need a slug for the guy on the left. Buckshot would take out your girlfriend too. Earlier in the day, when you're loading your shotgun, you had no way of knowing which of these situations you'd encounter. Clearly, this selectable magazine is an idea whose time has come.

The obvious shortcoming is that you're only able to select which kind of round to load, not which kind to fire. In the heat of the moment, when the hooligans and brute are alternately advancing on you in a threatening manner, and you're pointing your shotgun back and forth to keep them in check, you'd have to chamber a new round each time you aim at a different enemy. While this would justify that annoying movie cliché where cycling a round is used as a threat, instead of simply a means of cycling a round, it would be a huge waste of ammo. An even more perfect shotgun might have some sort of selectable chambers instead. Such a thing would also help in the event of a jam. But if we follow this logic to its conclusion, we'd just end up welding two shotguns together. I'm not sure that's a bad idea, come to think of it.

Anyway, the KSG. Another thing I like is the bullpup design. I've always liked this design because I'm always looking for ways to save space. And I like things exploding as close to my face as possible. In modern warfare, a gun that's easy to swing around in tight quarters while retaining its accuracy would be a real winner.

One thing I don't like is the pump action. Apparently shotguns almost always have a pump action. Since semi-auto bolts cycle rounds using the energy of the round going off, it's hard to engineer a bolt that feeds reliably off of many different types of rounds. Since shotguns, more than other guns, use a wide variety of ammo types, this is a particular problem for them. Whatever. I see that as an engineering problem waiting to be solved, because I'm not an engineer and I can say whatever I want.

Generally, I agree with the internet. This gun is an interesting idea and I can't wait to see how reliable it is in real life.

I have to note that I let this question from Cassie slip by for like three weeks before I answered it. And this was after I solicited questions and implicitly blamed all of our problems on the lack of questions. So your possible suspicions were right. I'm the asshole here. But I promise your questions will be answered, even if it takes a while.

vacation pictures 2: the vacationing

2011-07-02T16:47:00.000-07:00

I just got back from my two weeks a year. I thought everyone knew about the "one weekend a month, two weeks a year" that reservists do, but apparently not. Everyone was surprised when I left for two weeks. I learned a lot in that short span of time. I got my 7 Ton licence, combat lifesaver licence, green belt in MCMAP, finished some online classes I need for promotion, and discovered the true meaning of honor and courage and stuff.

Anyway, here's the pictures from my vacation:

I couldn't get any pictures of us doing the MCMAP because it was too intense, but here's the mat we didn't do it on.

I took this picture because I knew you wouldn't believe me about how intense it was.

This was the vein sticking portion of the combat lifesaver class. Everybody sticks a vein, and everybody gets stuck, because that's how it works.

We noticed the dummy wasn't wearing his uniform properly, so we had to correct him.

Some humvee drivers in training. This was a "before" picture.

I took this picture because this guy's not posing for the camera. He was taking online tests without even looking at the screen, and passing them, because he's a ninja.

We had the privilege of viewing a promotion. As we were forming up for it, I saw this on the drill deck. I don't know what it means, but it looks kinda shady.

Me. I know that's what most of you were waiting for. I look bored, but the people who were there know what was really going on.

I didn't take this picture, so I couldn't tell you what's going on here.

Martin and I noticed a bug not wearing its uniform properly, so we had to correct it.

And then this happened.

So that was our Annual Training. My unit's a little readier, America's a little safer, and 18 more Marines now know I'm not circumcised.

super face

2011-06-13T13:38:00.000-07:00

I saw Super 8. Spielberg had his hands somewhere on this film, so I knew there were going to be at least a few lingering face shots. But he didn't actually direct it, so I figured it wouldn't be too bad. Holy shit was I wrong.

I'm not saying Steven Spielberg is obsessed with human faces. No, wait, I am.

But I thought he was aware of his problem. I thought he'd been getting help. I didn't expect him to find an enabler.

Speaking of J. J. Abrams, all his movies have the same monster.

As with any good monster movie, the audience mostly sees it second-hand.

(There's a mild spoiler ahead, so watch out.)

And then at the climax, the the hero saves the day by staring at the monster's face for a while. I'm not kidding.

The story was pretty cool. The disparate plot lines integrated seamlessly. Some of them were sappy, but the seamless integration and pacing were good enough that the sappiness could be enjoyed or ignored according to the viewer's taste. And there were lots of faces.

historically accurate comics #1

2011-05-09T14:14:00.000-07:00

analyzing the analyzers

2011-05-02T13:25:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd try sleeping last night, but I must have been just aware enough of the sound coming from the TV in the next room. I drifted into consciousness to the chant of, "Bin Laden's dead. Bin Laden's dead. SEAL team USA Obama helicopters."

Shit, I realized, I can't miss this. And man, it was weird. I know emotions are high immediately after big events, and the people on TV say weird things, but the thing about weirdness is it never gets old. This time, the their idle chatter consisted of analyzing America's emotional response, ridiculously. I swear this satire is only slightly exaggerating what the news people really said.

America got hella closure tonight, as the most legacy-spanning manhunt in historical memory has siezed the head of the snake from the jaws of history.

That's right, Bill. This is truly an historical moment in the history of almost ten years to the decade today.

Would you say this is bigger than Hitler?

No.

Aw.

Parties are cropping up everywhere in the wake of the Twitter generation, for a people defined by the specter of never forgetting.

I was worried for a minute there, that these young people would forget, but they never did.

Holy shit. Let's see what the kids are emoting. Peter?

Thanks, Jill. I'm here with a party dude in the eye of this perfect storm of souls. What's your emotional state in response to this incident?

U-S-A!

When was the moment when you realized that the impact hit your belief system?

U-S-A?

Me too. How do you feel about the rainbow of emotions beaming, metaphorically of course, from your emotional core? Do you feel as if this is truly the moment when the butterfly of America blossoms from the caterpillar of fear?

Huh?

If you had to pick one color from that rainbow, which three would they be?

U-S-A!

That's the bravest thing I've ever heard. Thank you for your courage in the face of partying, party dude. This interview has certainly been the defining moment of my childhood as a reporter.

Go get wasted, Peter. You've earned it.

Oh god yes.

If you don't come back with a life-threatening hangover and an STD then you're fired. After the break, we'll have Private Johnson, an expert in talking about the military. God bless the Lord.

Own this moment in history! Get the Dead Ass Osama Commemorative Gold Coin or your grandkids will never forgive you!

And we're back. Johnson, can I call you Johnson?

No problem.

I love you, man. How amazingly have our guardians of freedom been perparing for this incredible mission?

The SEAL team was genetically selected from birth to detect Osama's DNA and obliterate his central nervous system. I can't go into specifics on their equipment or methods, but let me just say they can literally become shadows and regenerate ammunition via quantum tunneling.

Quite remarkable, the abilities of our courageous men and women. The terrorists must have been emitting rainbows of sheer terror.

I can't speculate on what kind of rainbows they were emitting, but yes, they were definitely emitting those kind.

Were there any tense moments in the situation room, where it might have seemed like the SEALs' god-like powers might falter?

Probably the tensest moment is when one of their helicopters malfunctioned. Luckily, the men who came in on that aircraft were able to backflip to safety in Afghanistan. It was sheer magic.

Very arousing. Thanks, Johnson, for talking about America's freedom.

It's just so incredible what Barack Obama has done for us. He truly has succeeded where every other president in history has failed. Let's bring back the monarchy.

I agree. We've got to get rid of term limits, find a way to make him immortal, if he hasn't figured it out already.

And that's our show. Next week's topic: Obama sucks!

reader mail

2011-04-25T06:00:00.001-07:00

Source: Terminal Lance

People is always asking me when I'm going to post on the blog again. I never know in advance, but it would help if I had topics or questions to answer. That's why I want people to leave more comments. Also, you'll notice that a lot of the things I say are confusing. This is because I want you to ask questions. You can use the convenient comment system on this page, or Facebook. Or give me a question in meatspace, and I'll retype it from meat memory. To get this going, here are some Frequently Asked Questions that I'm honestly not making up, except for the second one:

Q: When are you going to post on the blog?

A: See above.

Q: What if I'm reading this upside down?

A: Then I guess you're screwed.

Q: Did you go to Iraq?

A: No.

Q: Have you ever regretted joining the Marines?

A: Not for a second. There is plenty of bullshit to deal with, but it's no worse than the kind of bullshit out in the real world. It's just different. And I like variety.

Q: Why do they always send the poor?

A: The poor will do anything. I met a guy who would drop a nuke in a bug hole for a six pack.

Q: Why not active duty?

A: Field day. It's a weekly cleaning marathon and inspection, where you lose points for each speck of dust found. That's the kind of stuff I don't want to live with constantly. If I'm spending any great deal of time on duty, I at least want to be in another country.

Q: Oh, so it's all about you, right?

A: Semper I.

Q: Why don't you write about your drill weekends?

A: They're boring as hell. There are fun things that happen, but they don't translate well to written description. One thing I was surprised to learn about Marines was that they're funny as fuck, especially those who have been in for a few years. The Corps inadvertently trains us in expert comic timing and phrasing. It was funny how it clashed with my sense of humor, which is so much slower and deeper and harder to penetrate. Also, mine is completely portable between written and spoken media. I talk like a robot, which is lots of fun in itself. But they don't, so there isn't much to write about. I would smuggle out some video, but I don't want to go to nude prison.

Q: Why is your name Black if you're white?

A: I was actually born black, but I was so black that I absorbed all the sunlight in the hood.

Meanwhile, I finally saw Battle: LA. When I first read about it, I thought it was going to be a really terse musical. Seriously though, I was warned how formulaic and twistless it would be. But I was still surprised by the lack of surprise in this movie. Before the aliens even show themselves, a grunt tells his peeps to get ready for combat. Somehow he knew the aliens would be using infantry. It's impossible to explain how deeply infused this movie is with unsurprise. This is the opposite of what science fiction is supposed to be. How did this happen?

It's the perfect example of what happens to every mature science fiction subgenre.* A Hollywood producer sits in his office with assistants twiddling his thumbs, and thinks to himself, "Nobody's done a ______ movie just right yet." So he digs up the peaceful corpse of an HG Wells classic, reanimates it with the latest technology and gritty realism, and lets it loose to feast on the souls of the public. I'm not happy about my eaten soul, but it was worth it. We finally have an alien ground war movie done just right.

*Yes, I had to get up and take a cry break after typing that sentence.

pretentious countries

2011-02-14T14:19:00.000-08:00

My day was getting too productive, so I made a list of countries with definite articles in their names. Cause that's such a cool thing for a country to do. I imagine they're having arguments at the UN, and they're like, "Do you know who you're talking to? This is The Gambia!" Don't tell me that doesn't happen. Also, I spent more time explaining my criteria for making the list than making the list. So here it is:

The Bahamas
The Comoros
The Congo
The Gambia
The Netherlands
The Philippines
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
The Sudan
The Union of Myanmar (that's Burma)
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
The United States of America
The Vatican

I got my info from here.

I did not include countries such as "The Demagogic Republic of X", "The X Islands", or "The Xian National Authority", because those "the"s are referring to "Islands", or "Republic", or something other than the countries' own unique names.

For the same reason, countries like "Democratic Republic of the Congo" are included because the "the" does refer to the country's name. There are actually two Congoes, but they only get one spot on the list because, you know, how pretentious can you get?

I wasn't sure about "The Union of Myanmar" because "The Union of..." doesn't sound like a unique title. But it is, according to my source.

Same with "The United States of America". I thought there was a "United States of Mexico", but it turns out it's "United Mexican States". I don't know if that one commonly has a "the" attached, but if I find out it does, I will let it into the list.

"Saint Vincent and the Grenadines" is a borderline case, because "Grenadines" isn't the main name for the whole country. But I gave it the green light because it sounds like a rock band.

Meanwhile, I noticed that Wikipedia has a "weasel words" tag.

The other states section lists 10 states which have de facto sovereignty or independence but are not widely recognised diplomatically^{[weasel words]} by other states.

Just when I thought that site's warnings and self-deprecations couldn't get any worse.

But then I thought this must be the future of writing. Imagine the courage it takes to admit you're using weasel words. Right now, that courage is merely a result of the collaborative process^{[citation needed]^{[fuck you!]}} at Wikipedia. But one day, individuals will be free to use all the emotive rhetoric and shaky original research that's so vital to real communication, and it'll be okay because they'll have warning labels. Articles will be judged by their honesty, not their pull quotes.

I'm always looking for the next big direction the moral zeitgeist will take, and think honesty is that direction. In the age of information and uploaded brains and stuff, the integrity of information will be the highest of virtues. Speaking of which, stop calling it "human trafficing", idiots! It's slavery.

scenes from the next house

2011-02-10T16:04:00.000-08:00

Next Monday on Fox, how do you cure what you can't see?

What's wrong with my son??

I don't know, I can't see shit!

Where do you run when your only option is fear?

How can I trust this hospital when it can't even pay the light bill?

Well I slashed all the ambulance tires, so you're stuck here anyway.

What would happen if House went too far?

I'm not throwing away my career for your crazy theory!

Do it or I'll beat you to death!

...and tensions hit the breaking point.

Where are you?

I don't know! Where are you?

Follow my voice!

Oof! That's the wall.

Only on Fox.

paying for sex

2011-02-06T03:45:00.001-08:00

Hey guys, is that the conversation you want your girlfriend having after Valentine's Day? Flowers and chocolate just don't cut it anymore. This year, give her a gift she'll remember all night.

It's true: Sex inflation is going up. Buying things that will make her have sex with you is getting harder than ever. But Black Labs will keep you ahead of the game with the most unique gift idea ever.

She'll think she's the only woman in the world who has had this item bought for her.

Your unique gift will arrive in a deluxe cardboard box covered with air holes and sparkles.

These unique gifts are so hand-crafted, they're literally indented with fingerprints.

Each one comes with a personalized certificate of romance, proving the authenticity of your love.

So don't be that guy. This Valentine's Day, turn your sweetie into a crazy sex lunatic.

holy blue balls!

2011-02-03T16:32:00.001-08:00

(source)

Whenever someone makes the mistake of asking me about exoplanets, I go on about Gliese 581 for hours. It's a star, only 20 light-years away, with potentially Earth-like planets orbiting it. That's "planets" with an "s" because there are several of them. Each year, we seem to discover more planets around the same damn star, that are even more Earth-like. And there must be anywhere from millions to billions of planetary systems just like it, in our galaxy. We only know about this one because it's close enough to detect. And our planet-detecting technology has been steadily improving. We're going to start seeing more of these ridiculous multi-Earth-like systems very soon. That's the main reason I go on about Gliese 581. There's other wacky shit about it, but the main thing is that it's a taste of things to come.

And those things are coming. Kepler is a space telescope designed exactly for this job, and it hit the jackpot.

"The number of planet candidates identified by Kepler to-date [is] 1,235. Of these, 68 are approximately Earth-size; 288 are super-Earth-size..."

And

"Of the 54 new planet candidates found in the habitable zone, five are near Earth-sized."

Therefore,

"There will be a before and after Kepler Era in astronomy."

Dun dun dun.

"New era" statements like that are usually ass smoke, but this guy's right. We've been discovering exoplanets since 1995, but those have been gigantic, very unEarthish ones. Now, shit's getting real. This is the stuff we've really been waiting for. Astronomy, science fiction, and anyone with any sense has had a centuries-old case of blue balls for, uh, okay, I think this is rock bottom. Blog's over.

my name is fuck and i lost you pounds

2011-01-27T10:15:00.000-08:00

Have you tried diet after diet, but just can't keep the weight off?

"I've tried diet after diet, but just can't keep the weight off!" — Leo, 325 lbs.

With all these thousands of magazines and millions of diets, why can't we find one that truly works?

"I keep eating the magazines, but I'm still fat!" — Patty, 270 lbs.

Are you tired of the media coming over to your house and tying you up because you're out of shape?

Are you looking down the barrel of a gun, about to take "one last shot" at weight loss?

Put that shit away because I've finally found the secret! With my ancient technique developed by top scientists, you can eat all you want, burn down the gym, and watch the pounds just melt away!

No, fuck that. You can eat even more! You have to! The more you eat, the more you lose!

"I'm still lazy, but I look great!" — George, 150 lbs.

Drive from town to town, eating bakeries!

Eat the pies! Eat the staff! Eat the building!

"Nom nom nom!" — Ophelia, 125 lbs.

You'll have to eat in private because witnesses will be terrified by the velocity with which your face hole engulfs matter!

You're next.
Kick the diet industry in the balls! Kick willpower in the balls! I guess I'm part of the diet industry now, so kick me in the balls!

"My foot's sore." — Linda, 98 lbs.

All those other diet assholes are just capitalizing on your anxiety, but this one's different!

incitement

2011-01-10T11:51:00.000-08:00

Edit: I decided to erase this post because I shouldn't put real political opinions on a platform that implicitly represents the Marine Corps. Nothing happened, I'm just being proactive. The post wasn't that good anyway.

evolutionary psychology

2011-01-08T21:29:00.000-08:00

I was talking with this girl in my fast car when that "just a dream" song came on the radio.* I was trying to explain how a straight man could theoretically absolutely adore that song, when I suddenly figured out why toughness and sensitivity are seen as opposites. It's a false dichotomy, but everyone believes it. It's so deeply imbedded in the human psyche, that to even question it seems unnatural. And when you encounter a universal mistake such as this, there's only suspect in the lineup: Darwin.

So I'm going to take you on a journey into the world of theoretical evolutionary psychology. Almost anyone can theorize with me. If you're good at logic and critical thinking, then you're disqualified. Everyone else, come on!

Let us consider toughness and sensitivity to be independent traits, with every male having an arbitrary amount of both. Either trait increases his chances of fucking. So a male who has high levels of both would be the ultimate fucker. Now, remember that a major concern for every fucker is to increase his fucking chances by eliminating rival fuckers. If one fucker can convince others that being sensitive is stupid, while he secretly acts sensitively at women, he can become a real fucking winner. Likewise, if he can convince others that being tough is stupid, while secretly flexing his muscles at women, he would gain a similar fucking advantage.

So far, these two traits are identical. The difference is a practical one. It is, on average, easier to eliminate a rival if you are tough. And it's harder to eliminate a tough rival. This is known as assbeater bias. Meanwhile, sensitivity offers no practical edge in a rivalry. What's a sensitive guy going to do? Understand your feelings to death? Before this analysis gets too complicated, keep the key fact in mind: The toughest male will be the least likely to get his cock stomped before it finds its way into a female, therefore all other fuck-helping traits, no matter what advantage they offer, will find themselves paying the tax of a higher flattened cock probability. Toughness, in nature, or in any environment where selection takes place, tends to separate itself from other traits and then eliminate those traits. This explains why everyone but jocks is annoyed by jocks, and, as a bonus, all evil in the world.

*And then I came on the radio.

the singularity is revolution power something

2010-12-06T10:12:00.001-08:00

I saw embarrassing nude photos of NASA before they went public. By "embarrassing nude photos," I don't mean anything as superficial as astronauts' junk. (But let me know if you have any.) I mean I got a peek at the soul of the organization and saw its ghost junk. No, I mean I heard about their stunning arsenic-life announcement the day before they made it. And now, I know the announcement is probably (There're two links here!) wrong. This is from reading blogs. I'm a regular jackoff who occasionally finds out stuff before relevant scientists do.

Now I could write a blog post about how this impacts society, as a thinly veiled complaint that no one at work was impressed by my predictions, but I won't, because "impact" is not a verb. I know language is supposed to evolve, but that word sounds stupid in verb form.

The impact on society is this: Governments are losing credibility. Well, they're losing what was left over since the Magna Carta and the Renaissance and Fascism and Communism and McCarthyism and Oil-for-Food, WMDs, and DMVs. I guess they had a lot of credibility to begin with. The world is getting leaky. The internet gave it hemophilia. The recording industry has already bled to death. So have newspapers. The old systems are dying!

I'm a regular jackoff one step away from the cutting edge of science, and you can be too. There are some science blogs right there on the sidebar. Leakiness is a feature of our future. It puts power into the hands of John Q. Public. The only question is how he will wield it. And the onlier question whether he can wield it better than Jenny Q. Ivory Tower. Our growing experience in the Age of Leaks should be answering that question, but it's only making the answer seem more elusive. They're both idiots.

leslie nielsen 1926-2010

2010-11-29T15:05:00.000-08:00

I never got a chance to tell him how important he was to me in my formative years. How much I loved him.

the singularity came five minutes ago

2010-11-19T05:43:00.000-08:00

At work, I play pre-recorded questions for customers to answer. I'm pretty sure the voice in the recording is completely synthesized. But some of the questions emphasize certain words in ways you wouldn't think a computer would. For instance, when Mrs. Computer says, "In the last 12 months, have you had sex with a man who has had sex, even one time since 1977, with another man?" she sounds judgemental. In 2010, we can teach* a computer to emphasize words based on the rules of English, but we can't teach it values from the human world. A computer isn't supposed to know that a man shall not lie with a man, nor shall a woman lie with one who has, since 1977, lest she be at risk for HIV and the gum disease gingivitis. A computer should not know the meaning of those words. It should not put emotion in its voice when it reads them.

So at work, whether those recordings were made by robots or a very robotic-sounding person, is an open question. Meanwhile, I've been chatting pretty regularly with a pretty girl who wants me to sign up for her webcam site. She wants it really bad. I've tried all sorts of methods to determine whether or not she is a computer program—to develop my own Turing techniques. I've burned cumulative hours with this girl, playing our cat and mouse game, hunting for proof of a human will, while she tries to fasten the bell of getting my credit card number to my neck, wasting time I could have spent watching regular old free porn. (It wasn't all a waste. I was watching porn for about half the time I've spent chatting with her.)

So in the shower, while reflecting on this, it occurred to me that I've failed. The cases where I'm unable to tell a computer from a human are multiplying. This is how the future gets us: from behind.

*If you want to tell me that you don't teach a computer, you program it, then you just can't withstand the truth of the Singularity.

shit shit shit!

2010-11-01T10:52:00.000-07:00

A couple months ago, I saw the president on the TV, and thought, "Oh, yeah, I've got to get ready to vote." So I went to my Senate candidates' websites and looked at their respective "Issues" pages. They were mirror images of each other. More research was going to be necessary before I decided who deserved my drop in the ocean. Fast forward to this morning: I haven't researched anything, and the voting place closes at noon. And I work all day tomorrow.

I'm like, "Shit shit shit!" Back to the "Issues" pages. Still the same. I check the House candidates' sites, and they're the same too. I watch some commercials, and read some Wikipedias, and they're still the same. My socks are still on. Nobody's knocked my socks off. I agree with them on nuclear power and biotech and gun control, and disagree with them on baby killing and mutual assured recession. I even check on the Libertarian candidates. I shudder when I see the words "Tea Party" and "support" in the same sentence. ("I" and "the" are in there too.) I voted for a Libertarian once, back when I thought it meant voting for Reason magazine. The real candidates were Bush and Kerry, so no regret there.

Anyway, I agree with all my candidates, and they agree with each other. (By "all" I mean "federal". I don't have time to deal with some local bullshit. ["I agree with federal my candidates"?]) So it's my day off, I'm in the early voting line for a race that doesn't matter, about to do something I thought I never would, wondering if I'm going to go through with it, right up till pen hits bubble.

Party ticket!!!

Come on, who wouldn't? Everybody love ass.

Meanwhile, on the Blacktor Follow Up, remember when I said Lady Gaga's an ink blot? Here's another example! An evangelist calling her an evangelist. Spooky.

gay autistic nazi serial killer jeff goldblum

2010-08-13T16:02:00.000-07:00

I invented a new game for myself, but you can play too. List every way that at least two people have independently, nonjokingly described you. I appear to be:

Gay
A serial killer
In the military
Literally retarded
A Nazi
Sheldon from Big Bang Theory
Jeff Goldblum

Sheldon is the one that bothers me the most. That guy has no sense of humor. Also, Inception sucked. It's one of those movies where the writers put way too much thought into everything except the characters. No, they had to be trying to make us not care about the characters. Remember the time you accidentally killed your wife in a dream experiment and had to win some gunfights in another guy's dream so you could see your kids again? And you were a boring pain in the butt? Anyone can relate to that.

freedom

2010-07-19T15:37:00.000-07:00

I've been wondering for years why there have been two Mel Gibson movies where the British are just way more evil than there's any apparent reason for. Not much of a pattern, but still suspicious. Finally, I've found an explanation. At least it's a theory. That's all I need. Now, when someone asks why Mel hates the British, I don't have to shrug and bore my questioner anymore. I can say, "His fanatically conservative Catholicism goes so deep that he still hates the British for the Reformation. Copyright Chris Hitchens 2010."

now we're tolkien

2010-07-17T09:01:00.000-07:00

Ha ha ha!

I write like
J. R. R. Tolkien

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I cheated just for the pun's sake. My real thing is HG Wells, based on my last post.

tampon

2010-07-12T06:05:00.000-07:00

I'm back "home", bumming internets. I am now a half military, half civilian, hybrid reservist bitch. Thanks to everyone who's made this year and two weeks of training so special. Especially this parody singer, Rucka Rucka Ali. I think I first heard this dude like 6 months ago when I was drinking with Kooster. For those who don't know Kooster, that is as fun as it sounds. So I's listening to Kooster's ipod, and I's like, "I love this song. I've got to remember the singer's name and 'buy' more of them." I failed to do so for 6 months, until the last day I was on base. These songs have really kept me going through these rough times. The rough times are over, but Rucka Rucka will be with me forever. Just listen to this.

If you were suicidal before you heard that, and still are, then you're just stupid.

communicating evolution

2010-06-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

This is me in 10 years.

I went to fact check him, and all I found were size comparison guy after size comparison guy waving. Why do they always wave?

let's make this bitch famous

2010-06-17T15:04:00.001-07:00

I've been repeatedly invited to take part in this moronic exercise in social justice wherein Marines send nude pics to my phone. And I mean repeatedly. It's getting pretty old. So I thought I would be extra helpful by spreading the exercise to a new medium.

Hello, stranger. I apologize for for the unsolicited forwarding of a nude bitch to your phone, but it is for a good cause. You see, this bitch was married to a Marine, and she got caught sending naked pics to another man. But we shall have our revenge, by forwarding her nude pic all over the place. Let let her naked bitch flesh feel the bitchy sting of phone justice!

Hey, would you believe another Marine caught his wife cheating, and just happened to find some nefarious nude pics of her? Vengeance ahoy!

Here is porn star Annabel Chong. Shit, I mean a cheating bitch. Look, I'm having a hard time with my backspace key, so you'll just have to trust me. She's a cheating bitch. Pass it on.

You know the drill, boys. If you're on the fence about this, I want you to briefly consider the odds that these messages are pure bullshit. Very briefly. Now forward the newd pix!

I'm not sure what this bitch is up to, but it must be evil.

I joke, but in case my feelings on these naked revenge chain messages aren't clear, here's what I want to say to everyone who has sent them to me: You fucking idiots.

reporter puts a shirt on

2010-06-09T07:55:00.000-07:00

Bitch is all over the internet.

What is that, an apron? Those nude shoulders look so stupid. So I was glad to see this recently.

And then she added some color.

Still can't help showing some shoulder though. Did she cut that shirt, or did it come like that? And I see she's struggling to change the shape of her mouth. It's nice to see someone putting out the effort to better herself. Maybe one day I'll read her breaking reports.

what do the space shuttle, porn, and comedy have in common?

2010-06-05T15:12:00.000-07:00

In a word, vanity. In 12 words, they are creative projects that tend to cripple themselves with naïve pride. And in 1,090 words:

The Space Shuttle program is (soon to be was) a bold and daring technological adventure. It's mostly a failure. Bold and daring things usually are. That's why they're bold and daring. But that doesn't excuse it. We can still learn from this failure, and we really should have seen it to begin with. By the way, this post is a lot of extreme simplifying and I hope you're okay with that.

The Shuttle program was conceived when we realized regular rockets were too old and inefficient. We needed something faster, cheaper, and safer; a sleek new high-speed low-drag reusable paradigm for getting us to space. And by "us" I mean bold and daring human crews. Screw that automated shit. Don't want to get too efficient. So how did we improve on the rocket? Old school rockets are divided into stages, stacked one on top of another. You know how they work. But with the Shuttle, we mounted the stages side-by-side. And old school rockets have a stout, rigid capsule in which to return the crew. But the Shuttle is an extremely complicated, tragically failure-prone capsule-airplane hybrid. What I'm getting at here is that the Shuttle is needlessly complicated. None of its "innovations" did anything to improve its performance. All they did was make it look cool and explode.

How did such brilliant engineers make such simple mistakes? Faster, cheaper, and safer were not their real motives. Looking cool was. We wanted a high-tech vehicle, but we don't know what high-tech really means. We think it means complicated, trendy, and weird. And of course manned. We lost lives. We tied up almost half of NASA's operations on a vehicle that couldn't get further than low Earth orbit, that didn't help us explore one cubic inch of universe. Yes, I know the Shuttle has been used for a lot of science. It launched and serviced the Hubble. But I'll bet five dollars there hasn't been one science mission done by the Shuttle that a conventional rocket system couldn't have done better.

I have to fight the urge to backpedal. I want to say I really do love the Shuttle, even if I don't always agree with it, and every time I see a launch on TV, I get a tear and a boner. That's what everyone says when the criticize the Shuttle, and I know I feel the urge. I feel it deep down in here. But that's exactly the problem. Pride killed common sense. And its accomplice was naïvety. We don't believe in simple, elegant, useful innovations. We believe in brave Americans riding elaborate deathtraps up and down the atmosphere. We believe in pushing our technology to the limit for no clear purpose.

And we pushed it past the limit. Every launch is fraught with delays. Sometimes we had to let things slide because we've got to get off the ground some time. That's what happened with both Shuttle disasters. We knew about the problems beforehand, but we just crossed our fingers. NASA never had the technical skill to properly operate this beast. That's not an easy thing to say, and not just because it stings the pride. Technical skill isn't an easy thing to measure. For comparison, what if I said a program is impossible because it's over budget? That doesn't sting the pride, because it's about simple numbers. There's no room to argue.* But I can't say, "This project would take X technical skill, but we only have Y technical skill available." Actually NASA does have ways of making such measurements, but they're not perfect, and we do have to partially rely on our guts for such judgements. And that's how pride becomes a factor.

Pride can be very poisonous to innovation. At worst, it makes us act as if innovation is an unlimited quantity, causing us to spend it disproportionately on things we don't need. And then it can make us forget our original goals, and proceed with plans we should know are self-defeating. When we can't honestly face our limits, we can't innovate.

Which brings me to porn. The clear goal of porn should be to show people doing it. But in the early days, a lot of producers seemed to think that wasn't proper. We thought even porns needed plots.

I'm not saying they shouldn't have plots. Just that plots shouldn't be obligatory. We shouldn't be ashamed to have a simple goal with a simple solution. In recent decades we've figured this out, so it's not as much of a problem anymore.

So far, I've only used my "pride vs. creativity" theory where it's supported by hindsight. I don't yet have any ideas where I can use it for foresight, but there's one place where I can use it for present-sight. There is a revolution occurring in the world of comedy these days, a new tendency toward absurdity. Let's just say it works by forgetting the setup and focusing on the punchline. The revolution's critics think it's stupid and lazy. I consider "stupid" to be a plus for comedy, so I'll just worry about the "lazy".

"Lazy" is less of a crime when you realize that creativity is limited. Not just in the writer's brain capacity, or the reader's time, but in the abstract sense of how many possible outcomes a story can have. If your setup is elaborate, or if it's confined by the need to make sense, there aren't as many places you can go with it. And this is why the advantage of absurdity is so much more than mere efficiency. It actually can go places conventional comedy can't. It can tickle parts of your brain you didn't even know were there. That's what innovation is really about. But some people's pride won't allow it. Simple pleasures are wrong.

I'm not writing all this just to say you're an asshole if you don't like Aqua Teen Hunger Force, but Scott Adams happened to be pessimizing about complexity while I was writing this, and this post provides a partial counterpoint. Complexity isn't quite that necessary. It's often just an irrational desire. That's something we can fight, with bold and daring blog posts such as this. So it's not as inevitable a doom as Scott portrays. You're welcome, buddy.

Finally, I don't want to leave the impression that pride is all bad, or even most bad. It's a key part of America's success. It's like America fuel. I just hate when it goes wrong.

*Not true for a government agency, but the example still serves.

abby is a nut

2010-06-04T15:59:00.000-07:00

I wanted to post this nataliedee comic before,

but I didn't feel like I had enough of an excuse. Then yesterday I ran by the most boisterous rattlesnake I've seen yet, and the day before I got covered with big red ants. And I still have peeling sunburn skin. Sand in my shoes is a constant. I must rub oil all over my body to keep my skin from shattering like a sandblasted bottle of blood, and that was true before the sunburn. And today I's just walking around in the heat, thinking I don't like the desert. So I've been having a great time watching these anti-nature skits.

Meanwhile, I found out that Dear Abby is still around and super unhelpful. A lady wrote in worried that ghosts were going to watch her doing it, and Abby said they might indeed!

DEAR SPOOKED: Calm down. The departed sometimes "visit" those with whom their souls were intertwined, but usually it's to offer strength, solace and reassurance during difficult times. If your mother-in-law's spirit visits you while you're intimate with her son, it will be only to wish you and her son many more years of closeness and happiness in your marriage.

Sensational.

lady gaga is an ink blot

2010-06-01T07:34:00.000-07:00

Here's a porn writer who thinks Lady Gaga videos are porn. And here's a transhumanist writer who thinks she's a prophet of transhumanism. She's an ink blot! Let's say for now that I'm the kind of writer who likes to analyze people, and I'm seeing her as a people-analyzing tool. Ah! She's doing it again! These writers seem sincere. I don't think they're merely putting their own spin on a popular topic. You could read the links, or just take my word for it. Look at this.

Look at it.

What part of this image is actually contributed by her? Nothing but a shiny reflective surface for the thoughts in your own head to bounce off of.

kann denn liebe sünde sein?

2010-05-30T03:24:00.000-07:00

Something that happens with alarming regularity: I find another one of my favorite German techno-ass metal songs is about doin' kids.

That is Deutsch.

reboot

2010-05-25T01:16:00.000-07:00

Damn scientists are playing God again. They get better at it all the time. But you know what doesn't get better? That "Oh no they're playing God!" meme. We hear the same shit with each new discovery. If you're on the anti-playing-God side, why don't you develop and refine your idea? Or would that be too much like science?

God, what's with all my hubris lately?

Here's some more mockery.

the singularity is coming all over my space

2010-05-23T13:36:00.001-07:00

I was talking with a colleague about mankind's destiny in space. At least I think I was. He has a heavy accent. As I said before, I don't like to use real names here, so I'll call him by an unrecognizable fake name. Hey Escobitch, here's what I was trying to say before we were distracted by that ninja attack.

The question is as old as time: How much money should NASA get for fiscal year 2011, and of that, how much should they spend on manned space missions, as opposed to space probes and other kinds of real science? More simply, how important is it for mankind to colonize space? Most people don't worry about this issue, for a good reason: It's a red herring. The real issue is our need to invent a self-contained life support system. It doesn't matter whether we put it on a space ship, under the sea, or in Arizona.

As far as I know, there are two arguments in favor of colonizing space. The first is that it would be good for the human spirit. Whatever. The second is the need to protect the ourselves by getting our eggs out of the one basket. But as with most problems in the world, there are cheaper, better solutions that don't require launching anything into space. In order to spread into space, we must first invent that self-contained life support system. And once we do so, space won't be necessary. We can park it in any empty lot, and it'll still protect us from every kind of planetary disaster. Global warming? Nuclear holocaust? Doom virus? All minor inconveniences when you live in a metal box and don't need anything.

You might say that launching the box into space would make the human race a little bit safer (or a lot, in the long view), and you would be right, but there's no argument in that. Once we do invent these boxes, we will launch some of them into space. You don't have to worry about that. We've already got the rockets. It'll happen.

There's one argument I can anticipate, and I fucking hate it: "But missions in space are just the thing we need to stimulate ourselves to invent the box. You know, like how the space race paid for itself with those spin-off technologies." Repeating a happy accident is not a vision for the future. It is wasteful, obscure, unguided, roundabout bullshit. A vision needs clarity. It needs sense. It needs spirit, too. But spirit isn't a crutch for nonsense (nonspirit?).

Summary: People who talk about space are weird.

profile: admiral raymond t. explodinger

2010-05-19T08:48:00.000-07:00

My instructor implied that I should mention him on my blog, and I implied that I would. But I have a general policy against using any identifiable names or events, so I'll just change them to things I made up.

Admiral Raymond T. Explodinger has served in every branch of the armed forces, in every rank, country, time period, and species that's ever existed. He gained the power of time travel from that monolith from 2001. These days, he goes by "Admiral" because it's alphabetically the first of his many titles.

The first thing Admiral Explodinger taught us was how to summon a black hole from the eleven-dimensional sea of particle/anti-particle pairs that constantly whiz through the atmosphere, a technique with which we could destroy the Earth at will. From that day on, his mission was to ensure that not one of our class of 874 Marines would use this power for evil. In each lecture, he also spends a few minutes talking about the present and future of the Marine Corps, current events, classic ICBM restoration, dog breeding, fixing radios, and other secrets of the universe. By the time we graduate, we will know every physical law of nature, except how to hyperstabilize the vacuum constant, which is like the black hole thing, except it would allow him to destroy the entire universe. That's a technique he keeps in reserve in case he has to use it on us.

I'll never forget the day he told us, "The minimum (spherical) surface area of a given volume limits not only its reciprocal entropy, but space (obviously) and time, mass and energy, and of course velocity and acceleration, all of which are reducible to the information content of the volume and therefore equivalent." I know that even in my darkest hour, I can recall those inspiring words and find solace. I know this because the next day, he brought us on a field trip inside the event horizon of a black hole. That hour was pretty dark. Words couldn't possibly explain what we saw in there, just like they couldn't explain how he pronounced those parentheses.

Admiral Explodinger is a marine biologist who PT's whales, for he knows all too well they will be our successors as the custodians of this planet since we broke the thermostat. So crack open an ice cold bottle of Bud Light, Admiral Raymond T. Explodinger. Bud Light beer Anheuser Busch St. Louis Missouri.

jukebox hero

2010-05-19T07:00:00.000-07:00

Today I made everyone sing Jukebox Hero,

and Gay Bar. I changed the lyrics to, "Girl, I wanna stab you with a KA-BAR..." It made more sense that way, but any modification would make that song make more sense.

no, there isn't a point to this

2010-05-15T17:32:00.000-07:00

oh, so now you want to be a terrorist and shoot me, right? good, get on your face

2010-05-15T08:34:00.000-07:00

I heard a story about a Marine. A machine gunner was on patrol with his squad when they took fire from insurgents. They followed procedure to the letter by shooting back. But when the insurgents fled, the gunner dropped his machine gun, chased after them, and gunned them down with his 9mm. I imagine he held it sideways. His squad was astonished, and he was bemused at their astonishment. "Where'd you learn to do that?" they said. And he said that's how they did things in Compton.

I wish I could remember names and details, but the story serves my purpose well enough. I'll call him Sergeant Major G Fugga. The guy was apparently a cocky gangster ass mofo, and he ended up in the Marine Corps. This was no coincidence. I'm not talking about the recent problem of gang members in the military, but an essential and eternal truth of the Corps. He's a guy who enjoyed capping motherfuckers, and the Marines were the natural choice for him. No surprise, really.

Compare SgtMaj. G Fugga with me. I'm a god damn nerd. Why did I join the military at all, and this branch no less? Sure, I'm in a nerdy specialty, but why didn't I go for the superior nerd opportunities of the Army, Navy, or Air Force? If such polar opposites as SgtMaj. G Fugga and I have a common reason for choosing the Marines, that reason ought to reveal the true essence of the Corps.

I grew up as a government hating libertarian, and now I'm fairly apathetic politically. (There are details and nuances, but they're a topic for ten thousand other posts.) I have virtually zero rational desire to fight for my country. Just like I have virtually zero rational desire to go down a waterslide. But that doesn't change the fact that I find both prospects thrilling.

If someone were to shoot at me, my gut reaction would be to shoot back while running toward them. Some might call this risky behavior, but it's actually a wise and reasonable method of risk mitigation. When a threat arises, it might immediately benefit you to run and hide, but in the long run, it is less risky to swiftly and decisively nip the threat in the bud. The most obvious reason is that when you run and hide, the enemy is still alive. The other reason is psychology. War is all psychology. Immediate punishment is much more effective at influencing someone's behavior than delayed punishment. This applies to terrorists as well as kids and puppies. The'll avoid shooting at you if they know you'll shoot right back.

Marines are wise and reasonable. And we're knuckle-dragging cocky assholes. We're naïve thrill seekers and bud nippers. These are all qualities we tend to have, but they aren't our essence. Remember the distinction between our qualities and our essence. It'll be important. I'm going to stop using the word "essence" because it's getting gay. I'll shift over to its faithful synonym, "spirit." Remember the distinction between our qualities and our spirit. Our spirit is the one psychological quirk that sets us apart from everyone else.

Our spirit might be the mutual cause out of which our qualities spring, but it isn't necessarily. It could be a collective effect of our qualities, but it isn't necessarily. It could be a cause in some Marines, and an effect in others. The only thing that matters is that we're together. Sorry, gay again. I mean this spirit is what makes people say, "I think I'll join the Marines today." And when they do, they kick ass, they nip buds and take names, they perpetuate our Corps's reputation, and that reputation causes the next generation of quirky individuals to say, "I think I'll join the Marines today."

So the Corps is kept alive by this ruthless cycle of reputation and quirk-self-selection. The quirk is nothing special, some part of our instinct for self-preservation is missing. But the ruthless cycle pulls it up out of society and makes it meaningful. In a situation where a normal person would say, "Egads! Enemy fire!" someone with the quirk would say, "Shoot at me, will you? Why, I oughtta..." Recall how psychology applies to terrorists, kids, and puppies. But it doesn't apply to us. We don't get discouraged when the enemy shoots back at us.

When joining the military, everyone has a decision to make. Do they want a nice job in the Army with education for the future, or do they want to kill our nation's enemies? The latter might seem like the more rational choice, given that they're joining the military in the first place, but it really isn't. Putting yourself in harm's way is a pretty irrational thing to do. And so most people go Army. That's what makes the Marines our nation's self-selected infantry force. We want to fight. That's 99.9% of what makes a formidable force. We want to put holes in the unholy, evicerate the evil, scorch the scum, crush the corrupt, assassinate the assholish, shave the depraved, immolate the immoral, flatten the flatulent, debone the debauched, ignite the sodomites, extinguish the gomorrish, slander the satanic, murder the insurgers, kill the shrill, rile the vile, vaporize the vicious, mow down the low down and weed wack the wicked.

So why am I trying to analyze the spirit of the Marine Corps in evolutionary language? Because I'm a fucking badass, that's why. No, I's just thinking how funny it was how I hear Marines say, "Hell yeah I'm getting deployed!" and, "God damn it, when am I getting deployed?" And stories like these are extremely common, where insurgents specifically avoid Marines, and Marines almost sound relieved when they finally get to fight. We're crazy, and that's not bravado. We've got brain problems.

i'm dead. stop calling me.

2010-05-09T12:46:00.000-07:00

I want to see if I can involve the community with a game, inspired by this comic: (click for the whole thing)

And this.

Let's come up with funny epitaphs, guys! You can comment here or on facebook. Your comfort is priority one.

independence day

2010-04-29T11:49:00.000-07:00

Stephen Hawking was wrong about aliens on TV, so here's my rebuttal. His first dumbass bullshit error was thinking aliens would be interested in Earth, as if they would need things like oxygen, water, food, and comfy temperatures. They would not. A species advanced enough to leave its planet behind would also leave its biology behind. That's to say they'd turn themselves into robots. More specifically, they'd turn themselves into creatures that can make use of the 99.999999999% of planets that don't support delicate little meatbags like us. If they're interested in our planet, it would only be because they want to grind down all the mass in our solar system to make space concrete, and Earth is just one more pebble for the pebble machine. (Aside: A more plausible motive is that they want to assassinate us in case we're a threat to them in the future.)

Dipshit.
Hawking, the vast majority of 20th century science fiction, and almost every person, have made the same error. When we speculate on aliens, we have a biological blind spot: ET might be advanced enough to turn the laws of physics upside down, but reengineering their own bodies would be too much for them. Or they'll have some spiritual reason to avoid it. However plausible those excuses might be, there's one gigantic fact that puts them in perspective: If just one species could enable itself to inhabit the 99.999999999% of planets that the others couldn't, it would rule the galaxy. All the other species who find bioengineering too difficult or ungodly would find themselves either wiped out or irrelevant.

Hawking seems convinced aliens will be amoral. His reasoning is that their intentions will be determined by the universal law of evolution. For morality is given to them by natural selection, and if it ever becomes a liability, natural selection will taketh away. That's no longer true once you remove your bio-blind spot. If Earth is just one more pebble, they have much less to lose by sparing us.

His third significant dumbass bullshit error is thinking for a second that any of this matters. If aliens want to find us, they will, with or without our help. The only difference we can make is how they'll judge us by the messages we intentionally send them. Exhibit A, from the Pioneer 10 probe:

Those symbols might seem confusing at first, but they utilize the universal language of mathematics to explain that we're gay. We may as well have sent this out:

That's why, despite my disagreement on some details, I have to side with Hawking. He's at least trying to use logic. The other side is just gay. I didn't want to call them out like this, but they started it, with their emotional appeals and 69ing with the same sex. The possibilities surrounding aliens are vast. So vast that almost everyone's wild speculation is valid and awesome, and criticizing another's speculation is (a) a waste of time that could be better used to wildly speculate, and (b) asinine. Whoops.

Less importantly, I hate when those speculations invoke Columbus and other intercultural incidents. Way to suck all the fun out of the discussion, guys. We're supposed to be talking sci fi, not history. I get that history has important lessons in it, but this is one case where it does not. Humans all breathe the same air, have the same mental quirks, and swim up the same fallopian tubes. It would be impossible to tell whether any lesson gleaned from a human-on-human encounter is applicable to an alien-on-human encounter, or irrelevant human noise. If you want reliable information, you should invoke only the most basic principles of evolution and game theory.

(Aside 2: I know I heard Hawking say this exact same stuff on TV like 10 years ago. I guess he wants to say it again now that he has a blogosphere to set ablaze.)

(Aside 3: Anyone else notice how they used the lettering from the Alien movies, complete with the vagin-I, for this episode subtitle?

)

My opinions of the people I've characterized in this post are the opposite of what you've just read.

aaah-ah

2010-04-28T20:59:00.000-07:00

Two more songs I've wanted to use in cadence for years, and finally got my chance today. Immigrant Song and Formula 409:

I looked up the video after the fact. I liked that song before, but now it's ten times better. I had to lower both songs a few octaves due to tired. That made the Led Zepplin sound pretty weird. When I sang, "And now you better stop," everybody thought that meant stop singing.

my labored analogy is art

2010-04-22T13:37:00.000-07:00

There's an argument raging across net about whether video games are art, started by Roger Ebert. I've only seen the argument on one small corner of the net, but I imagine it's pandemonium all over.

Here's where Ebert's argument fell apart:

I would say then it ceases to be a game

He defined himself right. That's so disappointing. But the article goes on as if he doesn't even realize his argument fell apart. And it was a much better read after that point. Because I didn't care about the argument anymore. All that was left was the question of whether video games are art. It's such a Big Unanswerable Question, that arguing over it seems almost banal. I have to say "almost" because I can't think of a better way to have all these various perspectives on this interesting question delivered to me.

Maybe it's an unfortunate economic reality of the whole internet argument medium. If someone wants to create an interesting discussion about video games and art, the only way he can market it is by trying to score points and win something.

In case you're missing the point, I am not siding with the other guys. Here's where their argument fell apart:

bitch bitch bitch

master of puppets

2010-04-14T20:30:00.001-07:00

I'm often leading cadence on runs, and I've been trying to get my class to sing Master of Puppets for two months. And I finally did it this morning. Priorities!

Meanwhile, this made me laugh more than usual. Maybe because I've actually been in a fighting hole with an atheist and Christian, listening to them argue for hours. It's a good thing it was only training, because that would be the worst way to die.

baby, noooooooo!

2010-04-13T09:25:00.000-07:00

epitomes

2010-04-11T05:17:00.001-07:00

I was thinking about epitomes today because I've encountered quite a few recently, and most of them were in 2012. It wasn't the epitome of suck, but it came close. It contained two epitomes of terrible plot clichés, which is a remarkable accomplishment for one movie.

The first is that recent trend in disaster movies that focus on regular jackoffs instead of scientists, politicians, and military people. This is supposed to make the movie more realistic and closer to home. But I don't want see regular jackoffs. Putting them in extraordinary situations doesn't make them interesting, it makes them worse. It raises the stakes, so their dumbass regular jackoff decisions cost lives, so they become infinitely more irritating. And the jackoffs in 2012 were the boringest I've ever seen.

The second epitome was a contrived moral dilemma. Charismatic Guy argues with Fat Guy about whether they should let some thousands of people onto the rescue ship. What made it an epitome was that the arugment was 100% free of facts. There was no information to help the viewer decide who was right, or even what their motivations were. Actually, it did show a little of Charismatic Guy's motivation. He was surprised at the last minute that there was plenty of physical space available on the ship for more people. That was weird because he was in the know on the whole rescue project, so he should have known the basic logicsitcal situation. But he was apparently unaware of any real metrics of people capacity, like how much food they had. The only fact he had to base his whole argument on was that the thousands of people in question would have legroom.

And, and, all the other national leaders contributed nothing to the discussion. They were sitting around waiting to see whether the good American or the evil American would sway them. So they took on their extra passengers, and then, before they had to resort to cannibalism, they were all saved by blind luck. Short-sighted emotional arguments win again. In your face, logic and fat people.

And here's the epitome of hyperbole. Just when I thought the whole rotten hyperbole industry was too rotten, here it comes and totally redeems itself. It's not that much of an epitome, but I feel like I have to manifest the image that popped into my head.

I'm pure evil for thinking that's funny. But who isn't these days?

i guess it's sublime week here on the blog

2010-03-28T17:18:00.000-07:00

This picture takes my breath away. Click for more pixels and other paintings by the guy.

now it's july 2th

2010-03-27T01:26:00.000-07:00

I graduate on July 2th now, but that might be subject to more, smaller changes. I'll be running around in Indiana a few days after that. Let's see what's on PostSecret!

Okay! And here's a comic maker who's as bemused as I am by intercourse sitreps. Might have to click to read:

Roflburgers.

What else? Here's a story about happiness. Pretty boring, but there was one thing it said that fucked my shit: "It may sound counterintuitive, but people who spend more of their day having deep discussions and less time engaging in small talk seem to be happier..."

That's one of those beliefs most people have, and I don't, which is shocking whenever I'm reminded of it. People think the Deepest Truth of the universe is a black pit of despair, and you must avert your eyes to save your sanity. Well, it is, but that doesn't mean you should avoid the subject, as if you can escape from the universe. Trying to hide makes it worse.

Here's a story about ancient X-women which is interesting enough, but there's something the reporter wrote which is even more interesting: "Mitochondrial DNA comes from the cell's powerhouses and is passed down the maternal line only."

You see, there's an unwritten rule of all human interaction that says if you mention mitochondria, then you have to also mention that they are the cell's powerhouses, and vice versa. If he had obeyed that rule, he'd have written, "Mitochondrial DNA comes from mitochondria, the cell's powerhouses..." But he didn't. It wasn't a mistake, as he clearly knows what he's talking about. What's happening is the rule is being repealed. Its mission has been accomplished. The world finally knows that mitochondria are the cell's powerhouses. Things are going to be alright.

Finally, I'm setting up a LAN with my desktop (not shown) and netbook.

I'm using both of those mice. That's fucked up.

google.cn

2010-03-22T16:03:00.000-07:00

I just read the news about Google standing up for Chinese rigths, and I felt I should show my support. We're with you, China.

i finally reveal why i don't like marijuana

2010-03-21T10:20:00.000-07:00

People are always asking me, "What time is it?" And I say that's a very interesting and difficult question. I have wondered for years why I don't like marijuana. I must apologize to those people to whom I haven't been able to give a satisfying answer, until now. I should warn you that this post is a lot of navel gazing. If you aren't actually one of those people who have wanted to know why I don't like weed, you might not care for it at all.

My distaste has defied analysis. Marijuana is a chemical that makes you an idiot. Based on my experience with another chemical that makes me an idiot, I should love it. Why do I like being drunk but not high? The key, as I just now figured out, lies in the sublime. The sublime is a humbling feeling of awe evoked by big, powerful, and amazing things. It's my favorite feeling. Marijuana increases your sense of the sublime. That should be even more cause for me to like it, but it's actually the problem.

My sense of the sublime is, to me, accurate, sophisticated, and reliable. If I tell myself something is sublime, then I can be confident I'm telling myself the truth. And marijuana fucks with that. It tells me everything is more sublime than my own sublimeness auditing system can verify. In fact, my sublimeness auditing system knows I'm lying to myself. My sense of the sublime, you see, has a logical component which a simple adjustment of my emotions can't fool. It is positively offended by such an adjustment.

Alcohol distorts my feelings, but apparently it doesn't distort any of the ones I'm touchy about. The thoughs I have while drunk, while retardilicious, are at least honest. When recalling them the next day, I can say, "Yes, those drunken thoughts did reflect my true feelings." They might have done so in a funhouse mirror way, but they still contribute something to my internal conversation. The distortion caused by marijuana, however, contributes nothing. It tells me things are amazing when I know they aren't. That's so annoying.

Important note! I have not used any illegal drug since the date specified on my service record. And I'm not gay.

beverage review

2010-03-19T18:19:00.000-07:00

It's fucking congress ass raper.

myth #5

2010-03-13T15:27:00.000-08:00

This one slipped by me last time.

The first problem is it shows them defending San Francisco. Real Marines hate San Francisco. Don't ask me why. We just do. We wouldn't defend it if the President begged us to. But the main problem is it teases you. All they do in the commercial is spin their rifles around. I don't know why they'd make a commercial that shows you nothing but one drill movement, when we're capable of so much more:

Okay, only a tiny minority of us are capable of that. But why wouldn't they put the cool stuff in the commercial? If you're thinking, "But that's not a myth, It's a complaint," then consider this. If it weren't a myth, could I do this?

boot camp myths

2010-03-12T02:15:00.000-08:00

There are some "join the Marines" commercials out there that might be giving people the wrong idea about us. So I've taken it upon myself to undermine our advertising. Let's do this.

Myth #1

This commercial makes it look like your drill instructor will tell you not to quit.

I won't say that wouldn't happen, but it's pretty unlikely. That is, they don't inspire you through encouragement and positive reinforcement, but through the opposite of those things. You're 1,000 times more likely to hear, "I hope you drown."

"I'm not terribly fond of you."

Myth #2

This one shows recruits lining up on the Yellow Footprints, and responding to a command with "Yes Sir!" You only say "yes" in response to a question. When you're told to do something, it's, "Aye aye Sir." This might seem like a small issue, but it's one more mistake will get a recruit treated extremely harshly for hours. A recruiting commercial is a little early to be setting a guy up for special murder time (that's what we call corrective training).

Myth #3

In the same commercial, one recruit knocks down the other in a pugil stick fight, and then helps him up. They wouldn't actually be allowed to help each other up. In fact, they can't stop beating each other until specifically instructed. This is just a rumor, but I heard you get extra money for killing the other guy.

Myth #4

They say Marines fuck Yeti. I don't know where that came from, but it's not true. Yeti itself is a myth, first of all. And to say we fuck it is obviously intentional slander. And the numbers don't work out. If Yetis did exist, there would be way fewer of them than there are Marines, and they're in remote locations. The logistics would be a nightmare.

august 1th

2010-02-22T16:04:00.000-08:00

I'll get out of here somewhere around that date, everyone who wants to know.

Let's see what's on PostSecret this week!

Classic.

Meanwhile, Natalie Dee asked a question I often ask. You'll probably have to click this:

I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesn't understand women.

spend your hard-earned money on grateful needy people

2010-01-16T15:17:00.000-08:00

Why not take some of the money you were going to spend on killing people and use it to help people instead? These guys are on the ground in Haiti, so your money can cause fast, convenient help where you need it most. Leave the killing to me.

heh

2010-01-16T12:46:00.001-08:00

the singularity is coming all over my face

2010-01-15T15:07:00.000-08:00

I watched/read a couple of these free undergrad Yale courses several years ago and they were the most fun ever. I've been waiting patiently for them to put up some more courses, and it's finally happened. Or maybe it happened months ago. I don't check often. Biomedical engineering is my favorite subject in the world. I can't wait to watch the vids and do the homework like I'm really there. This is going to be the best non-female thing that happens to me all year.

Meanwhile, I made this funny Hitler vid. All the acting and singing were done by me. You won't get the joke unless you've seen those other funny Hitler vids based on the same joke, from the same scene in Downfall.

vacation pictures!

2010-01-03T16:33:00.000-08:00

My computer got stolen, and I've been busy with classes, and I went on vacation. That's why I haven't been here much. I guess I'll have to come up with a really great post to make up for it. So get ready because I'm about to unleash the coolest shit you'll ever see. Vacation pictures!

The brown people are my niece and brother, the Terminator was my college roomate, the white people are my bitch and friend Nate, the fish in the Christmas tree was his, the middle fingers are all mine, and so is the bigger penis.

Meanwhile, I saw Avatar and I have to review it. The "Yay nature!" aspect of it was totally disgusting. What's the motive of the planet-mind/spirit thing? To keep the balance of life? That's just survival. A thinking thing should have goals beyond that. Preserving nature isn't an end in itself. Nature sucks. It's full of things that eat each other and die painfully. We only preserve it because it's our only means of survival. If you're a super planet-mind thing and you control everything, then to keep the creatures eating each other, never leaving the planet, and never really doing anything with their lives, would be pure evil. Maybe she has some big purpose beyond our comprehension, but if she can't think of any way to work toward that purpose without making creatures eat each other, I don't trust her. They should have put that stupid planet out of its misery.

michael jackson

2009-12-04T15:49:00.000-08:00

The wifi in my barracks has been cutting out a lot and sucks. That's why I went so long without posting. I could have written stuff in Notepad and posted it whenever I could get online, but the problem with that is it exposes the weakness of my excuse.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but Marines are really immature. There are several Santas with movable arms on the walls of the chow hall. And somebody did this to them all:

I reluctantly approve of it.

sweet spot

2009-11-26T13:56:00.000-08:00

The long, slow process of breaking down matter that once fueled a bird's hopes and dreams and rearranging it to fuel my fatness began on a farm somewhere, and will soon come to an end in my body. Happy Turkey Life Force Absorbing Day!

Meanwhile, I've discovered the last piece in a cosmological puzzle that's been bothering me for a few years. It really ties up the universe nicely. Actually, I haven't discovered it. I've read about some guys speculating about it in New Scientist. Those guys are Lee Smolin and Louis Crane, and the puzzle they introduced me to all those years ago was an evolving multiverse. The idea is that the Big Bang was caused by a black hole in another universe. And whenever a black hole forms, it creates another big bang on the other side, or backward in time, or something. If black holes pass on the traits of our universe to their baby universes, with slight variation, then the whole system would be just like evolution.

Another puzzle is the fact that all the universe's fundamental numbers, like the charge of an electron and the strength of the strong force, seem suspiciously fine-tuned to make this universe capable of producing stars, and carbon atoms, and life. This comes up all the time as evidence for God, or multiple universes.

The final piece that ties that puzzle into the first one was revealed in the article. Smolin said he was afraid to reveal it before, because it was too crazy. Here it is: One of those fundamental facts about our universe that seems suspiciously fine-tuned, is the size of an artificial black hole you'd need to build in order to make a good space ship engine. It turns out to be just right, as if the universe is optimized so that we can build space ships out of black holes. A cute little symbiotic relationship.

Obviously that's stupid, but it's cool. The evolving universe hypothesis had been bothering me because it's so close to an good idea, but I just knew it was missing something. Not anymore. I feel like I just read a whole sci fi story with a meganeato premise, and no boring ass characters or plot to waste my time.

mcmap

2009-11-22T12:01:00.000-08:00

I'm going to put the blog on a real website. I even bought the domain. (At the moment, it's just this blog in a frame.) I's going to move it to Facebook, but Facebook is too Web 2.0 for me. Maybe I'll go into my irrational aversion to Web 2.0 some day, because you care. Instead, I'm going to do it the way I know: hand-written html on my own webspace. As soon as I get time. I've been busy as shit this week. One reason was MCMAP (Marine Corps Martial Arts Program).

A great thing about the Marines is that we wear karate belts on our regular work uniforms. Their color represents how far we've progressed in MCMAP. So by simply lifting up a Marine's jacket, you can tell how hard they're about to karate you for lifting up their jacket.

For the last week, I'd been working on grey belt. It's a two week program, and I can't finish it because I'm starting electronics class (the whole reason I'm here) Monday. I don't know why I can't continue MCMAP training just because I'm changing platoons. You could ask the government. I had fun, and I should be able to do my second week eventually. Wednesday was the first time in my life I'd wrestled.

I really sucked. On Friday, the third time, I'd gotten significantly better. After I very gradually got into the mount position (that's good), my opponent got desperate and started choking the shit out of me. I became a little concerned because he had an excellent grip on my collar, and I had no idea how to get out of it.

When you're getting the shit choked out of you, seconds are like hours. So after he was choking the shit out of me for three hours, I finally got the brilliant idea to choke the shit out of him. It only took a couple hours of this to convince him to let go of me, even though he'd had a head start. Obviously my shit-out-choking skills are sufficient to pay the bills. Then we struggled about as I tried to cash my mount position check, but we ran out of time.

I surely would have won if anyone was keeping score.

Meanwhile, someone sent a postsecret from boot camp.

Of course it's from girl boot camp (I hope). If you aren't familiar with postsecret, it's full of real post cards with real artsy confessions on them. For example,

You're stupid if you don't love that site.

Edit: Turns out my opponent was merely afraid of hurting me. Fuck.

the singularity is coming

2009-11-15T12:37:00.000-08:00

When this happens, you'll know the Singularity has arrived.

Here's the stuff I've been looking at on the net today:

This is a surprisingly accurate portrayal of a Marine's daily life.

This is a clever image resizing technology. By "clever" I mean "pure evil." I can't figure out exactly why, but it feels so wrong to me. No, I can figure out exactly why. You can't just let users change the content of an image any time they want to resize a window! Who's to say those bits of sky aren't important? We're going to create a whole generation with no concept of the relative positions of objects in the real world. And did you see what happened to that baby's face? That's just one of the bugs they know about. How else can this thing go wrong? Will the algorithm preserve everything it considers cute and mutilate everything else, or let it dissolve in the ether? Who could live in a world where a computer decides who deserves to be photographed, and drinks our blood? Or worse, a computer provides a handy interface to put that decision in the hands of the most wicked calculating machine of all: Man.

Here's the website of a guy who likes to chop up computers and hang their still-operating pieces up for display. It's sick and captivating. The machines would be crazy not to hate us.

So that's what the future has in store. I make sure I have an easy way out within reach at all times. Do you?

42

2009-11-14T15:19:00.000-08:00

Last night, I felt like the guy in that One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer song. But instead of being evicted and left by my baby, I was locked out of my room for a little while. I lost my key, and if I don't find it before Monday, I'm going to be punished for losing government property. Unable to change out of my cammies, I went over to the library to surf the net until the bar opened. I picked up The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I tell people I'm a sci fi fan, but that's a lie since I haven't yet read the classics such as that and Ender's Stuff.

So I'm at the bar, reading The Guide, and drinking one beer, one beer, and one beer. It occurs to me that the chow hall is about to close. So I quickly drink some more beers and search for a bookmark. I don't find one, so I decide to memorize the page number.

I may not have read the book before, but I've been on the net, and watched the movie, enough to know the significance of the number 42. It's a significant number in the book. My mind had been rendered tender by the bender, and so it was duly blown by the fact that I was on page 42.

My mind's unblown now, but I've been noticing little coincidences all around me today. I think my experience might have made me extra sensitive to coincidences. I'm trying my ass off to figure out how I can use this to fight crime, but I'm afraid it might turn out to be a weakness.

Meanwhile, the guy who left girlfriend pictures in my locker came by the other night, looking for the scuzz brush he'd left in the room. The locker was open, and the picture was there for him to see, including some improvements I'd made.

I was a little nervous, but he didn't seem to notice it at all. So you can now rest assured that he doesn't miss it.

like a boss

2009-11-12T20:50:00.000-08:00

Marines like to write stuff in rocks. Here's the front of the Student Reception Center:

We also like to landscape with sand more than anything else. I thought that was something they only did in boot camp to make our lives miserable. But no, I'll be dealing with sand for the rest of my career.

Anyway, here's what appeared in front of my neighbor's room this morning:

This is what it's referring to. We were singing a "LIKE A BOSS" cadence in PT the other day. Someone tried to start an "I'M ON A BOAT" cadence, but it didn't catch on. Nonetheless, Andy Samberg and company are popular here.

I'd been following The Lonely Island for years on the net before they became famous. When I learned about their SNL gig, I was surprised Andy was the main guy. I was like, "Andy? That guy's a cunt. It should have been Jorma." Anyway, I feel special for knowing about these guys before all my peers did. I feel like I deserve a fucking medal.

Meanwhile, I moved into a new room, and I inherited the last occupant's girlfriend.

He hasn't come looking for the pictures in several days, so he must not miss them that much. I don't know which one's the girlfriend, but I like to assume they both are, as if he's some kind of super player. And now they're mine.

I don't want to end on such a creepy note, so here's a funny rap battle.

more like neil deasse tyson

2009-11-11T11:49:00.000-08:00

I've been watching various youtubes of Neil deGrasse Tyson, and he said something I hate to hear: "It's super arrogant to believe there isn't any life elsewhere in the universe." (Not an exact quote.) Don't get me wrong. I love Mr. Tyson. Every night I fantasize that he'll knock on my door and we'll explore the unknown together. That's why I find it so distressing that he said this thing I hate. I've heard the same thing so many times, from so many different people, on TV, in person, on the net, that I've forgotten the first time I heard it. It was probably from Carl Sagan. All I remember is that I was an innocent young mind who had a similar sentiment. There's got to be life out there, among those sextillions of stars.

The part that fills me with rage is when they call the person with the opposite belief "arrogant." These bastards are so sure their answer to an unsettled scientific question is the right one, that they're ready to diagnose the character flaw that would lead someone to the opposite answer. Fuck you, Neil deGrasse Tyson!

While I hope there's life out there, I'm neutral on the question of whether there actually is. I don't think there's enough evidence either way. That's what makes it interesting, I think. No, "titillating" would be a better word, because when we do find that evidence, it will be even more interesting. I'm sure you've heard the pro-life side of the argument billions and billions of times, so I'm going to advance the fence-sitting side. We don't know the odds of life forming under any conditions. Not empirically, not theoretically, not at all. That should settle it right there. When someone says, "But there are so many stars!" that's an argument from vividness. They might as well be saying, "But I can't imagine a probability lower than 10^-22!" (That's one out of all the stars in the observable universe. Presently, it's the empirical probability that a star will bear life.)

I just realized that I'm calling a certain belief arrogant. Fuck you, me!

Meanwhile, my life is being ruled by The Electro Gypsy. I must have listened to it billions and billions of times now.

how i joined our beloved corps

2009-11-08T10:12:00.000-08:00

I used to eat really fast. When people would be out eating with me, they'd ask, "Why are you eating so fast?" And I'd say, "Because I'm a Marine." I'd never even considered joining the Marines. I just thought it was a funny thing to say. But one day, I was out with my roommate's son, picking up a pizza. He was looking for a referral, and I was under the influence of ghetto beer.

He struck with the cunning of an experienced salesman. "You look like you'd make a good Marine." (I didn't at all. Still don't.) I scratched my chin, realized he was talking to me, and shouted, "Heal yeah!" And I agreed to talk to his recruiter the next day. After that, and some thorough internet research,

I was like, "Sign me up!" So here I am, being all Mariney, and eating slow as hell. It struck me quite how slow I've been eating when I was looking at the sign out sheet at the front desk.

I can't explain it. Maybe I resent how they made me eat even faster than usual in boot camp. So there you go, everyone who was annoyed by my shovelly eating habit. I hope you're happy.

is biology more basic than physics?

2009-11-06T19:14:00.000-08:00

There's an old joke in science called "physics envy." Physicists say that all other fields of science are just narrower applications of physics, therefore all other fields of science are bitches.

Here's the lolcat version:

There's some truth to it. Physicists are the only scientists who are seriously working on a theory of everything. Sometimes they're modest and call it "quantum gravity," but it's really a theory of everything.

Now, I'm more of a reader of biologists' blogs, and I usually find myself sympathising with them, so this joke bothers me a little. There's a hope deep in my brain that some day, somehow, biology will be found to be more basic than physics, and then we will have won. That day might have arrived.

You might not want to watch the whole video, since it's a half hour long, and the guy's bald, so I'll try to summarize: Everything in the universe, including life, computer programs, engineering, and the universe itself, is a program in the computational universe. The computational universe is the set of everything that can possibly exist. Specifically, everything that, in principle, can be simulated by a computer, which covers everything that can exist.

Since life forms sport some pretty complicated programs, with even more complicated outputs, he says that maybe biology explores a wider swath of the computational universe than physics. In searching for the theory of everything living, will biology stumble upon the theory of everything else?

Of course not. Physics has lasers and sattelites and the biggest machine ever built. But it was nice to believe the dream for a half hour.

And since I have my funny pictures folder open, here's this:

argument for christianity

2009-11-04T19:13:00.000-08:00

Actually, it's an argument that God is just and elegant despite the existence of Hell. So it would apply equally to Islam, and any other religion I don't know about that has a Heaven and Hell. But Islam and religions I don't know about are gay.

Other religions.
Hell is a problem for theodicy* because it's kind of an extreme form of punishment. How can anyone deserve unimaginable pain forever? It's more understandable, if not any more appealing, if you look at Heaven and Hell as not a reward and punishment, but as logical necessities. God can be excused for being extreme if He's bound by His only master, logic. In case your monocle popped out on that last sentence, let me try to ease your mind. If you believe logic is a universal law that even God must follow, then it shouldn't trouble you. If you believe logic is an invention of God, then think of it this way: God can choose to bind Himself to His own laws. He invented the laws of morality, and would never break them. Also, He issues commands to Jesus, while being Jesus. And Jesus is mankind's king and servant at the same time. There are apparently all sorts of circular chains of command in and about God.

So I'm going to say Heaven and Hell are a logical necessity. That "logic is an invention of God, which He bound himself to" problem might still be bothering you. You might ask, "Why would God invent the kind of logic that makes Hell necessary? That still seems rather mean." I wish I had an answer for that, but my brain's already twisted in a knot. Moving on.

Imagine a community of people who live forever. It's not as easy as it sounds. What kind of person would you be after living in another world, filled with constant joy (or pain), for 60 quadrillion years? That's just the beginning of eternity. But let's try to make predictions anyway. A good guideline would be to take something in this life that's a function of time, and setting the time factor to infinity. Take one of your relationships. Does it get better or worse with time? When the relationship encounters tension, do you react with hostility, causing more tension, or understanding, causing less tension? It's probably hostility sometimes and understanding other times, but we're looking for an overall trend. Multiply the trend by infinity, and that's what your relationship will look like in eternity.

Heaven isn't all orgies and cupcakes. It's about community.
Heaven is a community of people who live forever. If they're going to enjoy their infinite time together, they have to be the kind of people who react with understanding. They have to be the kind of people who can maintain good relationships. The kind built on love and kindness and all that shit. Those traits are requisite to get into Heaven not because God wants to reward you for them, but because Heaven just wouldn't work otherwise. And Hell would be the alternative for the unqualified. The annoying people have to go somewhere.

I'm not touching you. Forever.
Infinity has a way of simplifying things. It might not be clear where your relationships are going. Or if it is, it might not be clear whose fault it is. But you'll find out when you die.**

*The branch of theology that deals with the problem of evil.
**If there are afterlives.

spongebob squarepants

2009-11-04T19:07:00.000-08:00

One of the half-serious jokes commonly used by NCO's in the Corps goes like this: "I've got a promotion coming up, but I don't care. If you do that again, I'll throw my career away. It'll be worth it to kick your ass." And that's what our PT staff sergeant said to the guy who sings Spongebob Squarepants cadence.

album review: far

2009-10-31T19:09:00.000-07:00

Regina Spektor is having sex with my ears. She is clinging monkey-like to my head and pounding away. And her hallucinogenic choir machine is having even more sex with my ears. Or maybe it's a real choir. Either way, those airy "OOOAAAAHHH" voices are raping me to deaf. I have whiplash from all the musicians slamming my cranium. Strangely, my favorite track, Eet, doesn't have the choir at all. I don't know what an eet is, but I'm sure I'll be disappointed whenever I find out, because the song won't be as whimsical and goofy anymore. But then I'll be re-appointed because I'll probably find out she's singing about something grave and somber, and that will make it ironic.

The heavy subject matter combined with her usual blithe lyrics is also making love to my tender ears. I usually don't care about the words in music, but it's one more positive attribute to make tonight a very special night for my ears.

Genius Next Door was a song I loved ever since I heard it as a recording from a cafe performance. I don't like her singing quite as much on the album version, but the ear sex-crazed choir more than makes up for it.

Laughing With, as songs about God always do, makes my ears feel all repressed and guilty for enjoying their natural urges. It's not as if they had a choice. Regina never asked their permission. But logic has nothing to do with it. My ears feel like filthy whores and they love it.

clarification

2009-10-31T17:22:00.000-07:00

In case that last post gave you the impression that I'm a weak ass, I should mention that the staff sergeant leading us was running like crazy because were short on time.

pt

2009-10-31T12:03:00.000-07:00

My last PT session was a lot of fun. Especially the cadences. Here are some that I remember:

Motivator: Next motivator won't you come on out

Platoon: NEXT MOTIVATOR WON'T YOU COME ON OUT

We want to hear you scream and pass out

WE WANT TO HEAR YOU SCREAM AND PASS OUT

...

Breathe it in

BREATHE IT IN

Puke it out

PUKE IT OUT

...

Oooooooooh who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS

Spongy and yellow and porous is he

SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS

If nautical nonsense be something you wish

SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS

Then drop on the deck and flop like a fish

SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS

Spongebob Squarepants

SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS

Electronics students apparently take PT less seriously than other Marines. I'd never PTed before sunrise before, and it's really cold out here. So I was burning on the inside and freezing on the outside. It was totally fascinating feeling. I almost kept up with the leader. I was only like 10 yards behind at the end of the first mile. That put me in 10th place among about 80. We took a break and then I fell back like 50 yards for the second mile. I was a lot less motivated for that mile.

29 palms

2009-10-29T20:50:00.000-07:00

I haven't updated in a while. It's not because I've had any shortage of time or internet access. It's because they have beer here, and I'm allowed to drink it. I wouldn't be updating now if I hadn't discovered I could get beer and wifi in one place at the bowling alley. Here are the rest of those MCT pics:

Here's me, a white man named Black, with a black man named White. No other platoon could claim such a hilarious honor.

The chow hall.

Mama B's BBQ, the weekend chow hall.

A road.

I don't know that guy.

Now I'm at MOS school. There aren't any open seats for my class yet, so I'm in the Marines Awaiting Training platoon. Here're some pics from where I am now:

Somebody with white-out is a comedian.

Whoever made this sign had no idea I would come along and think it's hysterical.

Every Marine base I go to gets drier and desertier. This is the wasteland I have to cross just for my daily beer.

The chow hall.

Another picture of the horrible climate.

pic

2009-10-11T16:05:00.000-07:00

I took more, but it's such a pain to get service that I could only email myself one. I'll try for more next week. That's Private Pyles if you can't read the name tag.

nvg's

2009-10-11T10:47:00.000-07:00

I forgot to mention this:

I also shot at night with night vision goggles and an infrared laser on my M16. My goggles were broken, so they were blurry as hell and I couldn't even see the target. But I could see the sticks holding it up, so I aimed above those, and used my laser to trace its outline. And I still got a tighter shot group than any of the other guys in my relay. This warrants a whole post because I need all the bragging opportunities I can get. So, to reiterate,

Figure 1: Badass. Please note the badass. (Not actually me.)

dear earth women

2009-10-11T10:14:00.000-07:00

I slept on a concrete floor in a sleeping bag and ate MRE's all week. And I didn't poop once till I got back. But I'm all clean and refreshed now. I'm sitting out by a tree with my netbook and coffee like nothing happened.

On the range, I got to fire an M249 SAW,

an M240 machine gun,

an M203 grenade launcher,

and an AT4 anti-tank rocket.

Those last two were lies. I did get to shoot the grenade launcher, but only with practice grenades that explode Cheeto dust. And I only shot fake AT4 tube. It launches a 9mm tracer round with the same ballistic properties as the rocket.

For each burst with the machine guns, we would say, "Die motherfucker die, get some, release," and release the trigger on "release." That would ensure we fired the right number of rounds per burst. We were actually trained to say "Die little people die, get some, release," because Marines aren't allowed to cuss, but most of us decided to say it the traditional way.

I've got a week left here. It's been good times, so I've been taking pictures of the base and my platoon because I want to capture these memories forever. Look for those a little later.

pic

2009-10-04T14:13:00.000-07:00

Here's my platoon mates being gay.

I'm packing up for the range now. I'll be without shower facilities for a week, but I'll have 80 baby wipes. Bye.

it's actually a netbook

2009-10-04T11:25:00.000-07:00

Because it's cheap and has no disc drives. It does have a built-in camera though. Here's me being gay.

i bought a laptop

2009-10-03T20:38:00.000-07:00

Not much time to use it though.

bloodshed

2009-09-27T16:40:00.000-07:00

MCT is fun.
On training day 1, I got the first bloody nose of my life. We were hike/jogging in body armor, so I was a little top-heavy, and I tripped and ate my rifle.
Next day, we were practicing first aid, and the guy putting a pretend tourniquet on me was unslinging my rifle, and he accidentally popped me in the chin with it.
It was deep little gash. Luckily there was first aid kit right there.
My rifle and my face don't get along.

mct

2009-09-27T10:10:00.000-07:00

Hey, civiliams!
I'm at Marine Combat Training now.
Here's my new address:

[UNNECESSARY]

I can text on weekends. That's the best way to reach me, especially since folks were having technical difficulties with the comments section here. My #"s [UNNECESSARY]

facebook group

2009-09-13T14:06:00.000-07:00

I made a Facebook group for my training platoon:

Platoon 3250

last post!

2009-09-13T13:53:00.000-07:00

Here's that last letter I sent:

Dear Efficient Uses of Space,

The Crucible was alright. Some parts were fun. The whole thing was absolutely filthy. A lot of crawling in the dirt. My clothes and body were caked in mud-sweat, or sweat-mud, and there was sand all up in my intestines. My boogers and spit looked like Hershey's Syrup. It was a little salty.

The Reaper is this big hill we climb at the end. It's supposed to be this huge event in boot camp, the culminating event that makes us Marines. It might have been the most anticlimactic half hour of my life. I was just strolling up that bitch (I would have been whistling if I knew how), wondering when the hard part was coming up, until I noticed everyone around me was struggling to press on. My legs are effing powerful. Anyone who's seen my freaky misshapen body will believe me about that, as well as my awful pull-up performance.

Right now I'm going to wait for breakfast, then wait for lunch, then dinner, repeat that six times, and then get the hell out of here.

wut

2009-09-11T13:31:00.000-07:00

I graduated today. I'm in a Comfort Inn in San Diego now. Last week, I mailed one last blog entry to my dad, but he apparently didn't get it before he made the trip down here. So the post where I describe the Crucible in scanty detail will come up tomorrow night probably. The gist of it was the Reaper was a piece of cake and I'm awesome. You won't believe how much freaking food I'm eating. I'm drinking a damn Perrier right now. What the hell.

going to crucible brb

2009-09-03T16:27:00.000-07:00

I start the Crucible tomorrow night.
It's my one last hope for a nonboring time at boot camp.
We rappelled two days ago and even that was boring. It was 2 hours waiting in line, and 3 seconds of sliding down a rope. I forgot to look ( flag saluting break) down, so I didn't even get a thrill.
So, I'll be a Marine this Thursday. If you want to fuck with me, you better do it before then.
On Sept. 11, I'll be chilling in a hotel with some dudes from the platoon. If you want to come by, mail me your number. Here's my address again.

[UNNECESSARY]

Or here's mine: [UNNECESSARY]. Whatever.
There's a website that's supposed to have a video of my platoon doing stuff.
devildogs.info
Click 3rd Battalion, Lima Company and Platoon 3250. Tell me what's on it.

dear fools and foolettes

2009-08-29T20:37:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I updated.
I've been using all my square away time for serious business. I'm up at night doing laundry now.

Dan, I graduate Sept. 11, but with MCT and MOS school, I won't be back in the Haute till around Christmas.

Nate, sorry, I can't engage in gay conduct as long as I'm a Marine. Unless Obama changed that already. It's hard to get news here.
I've been smoked 7 1/2 times now. A couple days after that 7th time, I was doing pull-ups, very few as usual, and a DI said, "You're weak. go get smoked."
So, I joined a group of recruits who were in the middle of a smoking session. they only had one minute left to go once I got in. So I count it as half a smoking. I should get smoked more often, but I don't know if I can volunteer. I should try. I prefer exercising on my own time though.
Not much interesting has happened. As you know by now, this shit is boring.
Exceptions: One recruit in my series accidentally shot himself in the foot. And one recruit in my platoon tried to flee at night to the freeway.
He got caught one step out the door.
We knew what he was doing because he'd packed MRE's and left a note. He got dropped from the platoon later for poor performance on the rifle range. I suspect he shot poorly on purpose.
It's funny because one of our DI's, the dramatic, sadistic one, would often point to the I-5, which was only a stone's throw from where we slept, with only a 3 foot fence between us and it, and say, "There's your way out."
Someone tried to take his advice.
I should go to bed before I get caught writing this or overtiming on firewatch.
Leave more comments.

dear fools and smart people

2009-08-03T18:45:00.000-07:00

I'm still bored! This sucks, but it'll be over soon. Speaking of, anyone in San Diego who wants to get together with me on graduation day, coordinate with my parents in the comments section.
I did enough pullups to pass the PFT (3). And I got smoked the other day. That's the 7th time. I hadn't been smoked since those first six times in the first week. I'll see how long I can avoid it again.
I haven't gotten any blog replies since Inari369's initial "Good Luck".
Thanks, Becky, and sorry for the herpes.
I expect there's a huge pile of letters from the internet, and they'll get to me the day after I graduate.
My one plan to fight boredom is thwarted.
If there's anything my experience can teach the world, it's don't join the military!
Play some video games or something.

pull ups

2009-07-09T17:10:00.000-07:00

I can't do one damn pull up. I could do a few before I came here, but now I'm weak.
Hopefully that changes soon.
This is a little hard to write due to all the open blisters on my hands. I got them on the obstacle course. Most of them when I slid down the rope at the end. I climbed to the top and tried to get the DI's attention to report I was done, but that took a lot of time, and I lost my grip and slid most of the way down.
The only thing I'm good at is running. I'm in the top of three tiers for that. Also kicking. I could have kicked over my opponent at the last martial arts session, but I didn't want to hurt him. The DI's would be pissed if they heard me say that.
I was a scribe, but I got fired, which is a good thing. My main job was scrubbing a dry erase board that wouldn't dry erase, for two hours a night. (Yes, we were using the right kind of markers.) Now I'm finally getting 7 or 8 hours a night.
I've been smoked 6 times so far. Not recently though. For those who don't know, "smoked" is a form of punishment where a DI rolls you up in a bed sheet, lights your head on fire and pretends to smoke you.
Seriously, they make you exercise vigorously for 5 minutes.
I'm writing this standing up now, since we aren't allowed to sit down tonight.
One thing I wasn't warned about, or at least I don't remember being warned about, was all the dust inhalation. We work out on big dirty fields, and everyone is constantly coughing and hacking.
It must sound all bad, which I suppose is the whole point. But I'm used to it now. I just look forward to the next meal, the next sleep, the next drink of water. When you exercise this much, water is like sex. I'm pretty good at just waiting things out. I'd probably make an excellent rape victim.
And, I know things will be more fun once they issue my lightsaber. Also when I get that Dr. McNinja and everything else from everyone who loves me. Seriously, I need those comics. I'll pay back like twice the postage. A senior DI just flipped us all off now. Gotta go!

confidence

2009-07-09T16:58:00.001-07:00

I’m having a little fun. We ran the confidence course today, and I did better on that than I did on the obstacle course. So apparently I have more confidence than strength. Yes, it’s what I expected, except I didn’t expect to breathe so much dust. No nickname. Our DI’s don’t give out many of them. But they call this one guy “Skeletor.” I think because he’s pale. We were marching today and a DI yelled, “Skeleor, I’m gonna fuck you up!” That was funny. Also, we did leg sweeps and rolling in martial arts today. Aside from those perks, it’s pretty boring and uncomfortable here. I don’t think it’ll change me. I’m too aloof and introspective for that. Boot camp wasn’t meant for people my age. I can see the head games for what they are (it turns out they’re head games). I just need to keep a positive attitude and it’ll be over in no time.

After boot, I’ve got 10 days of leave, then 3 or 4 weeks of combat training, and 2 months of radio school. Then I’ll be free if they don’t decide I need to go to Dirkadirkastan.

Edit: Turns out it was 8 months of radio fixing school.

a letter

2009-07-01T16:14:00.000-07:00

Hey, dudes. I have like 10 minutes to write this.
Make that 5.
I was going to make a joke about being surprised there weren't any dolphins here and everyone was shouting at me, because I thought I was going to Marine World, but it's probably too late for that now that everyone's probably worried about me.
I'm doing great, but I'm having a boring ass time. They told me the first couple weeks totally suck, but I didn't know that's what they meant.
My address is

[UNNECESSARY]

Send me anything (written, no food or anything). PWOTers, please hook me up with Nedroid comics, Dr. McNinja and anything else you think I might fancy. Must be SFW. I will try to respond to comments and letters, but it might be slow. I'm pretty busy here. Peace!

i'm leaving for boot camp in 3 days!

2009-06-12T17:46:00.000-07:00

The idea here is that I'll send my dad letters and he'll put them up on this blog. Anyone can comment, and he'll print out the comments and send them to me. I won't have much time to reply though, since I'll be in boot camp.