Celebrate Diversity

Caught this piece over at American Mercenary and it got me thinking, particularly this portion.

"Other cultures that "celebrate freedom" are really nothing more than groups that celebrate homogeneity, from motorcycle clubs to drum circles, it is the same BS from everyone in the group. Not so with gunnies. We have gays, goths, The Queen of Snark, an Engineer who hosts Boomershoot for fun, Active/Reserve/Retired Military, Moms, college kids, Ph.D's, Mensa members, machinists, artists, political activists, preppers, threepers, pacifists (yup, Ghandi was one of us), we are truly "diverse" and connected only by our mutual desire for the freedom to be left alone to do what we want to do."

"Messianic Stoners" was missing from the list, but I'll take it in the spirit it was intended.

It is a sociological truism that closed groups tend towards homogeneity over a long enough timeline-look at how punk rock splintered into a thousand tiny identity factions from sXe vegan hardcore to east coast splattercore. Self identification as part of a larger whole can be empowering but it is also the most subtle of traps because you are surrounded by people that are just like you right down to choice of music and dress.

So am I a gunnie? There are plenty of gunnies that would say no. I'm short on guns-I only have one pistol, one rifle and one shotgun, with a smattering of tactical nylon. I flout the law on a daily basis-not just 3 felonies a day bullshit, but laws that people actually get killed for. I have a low opinion of "traditional" (i.e. government sanctioned) marriage and have a lot of deviant sex with multiple partners that would make conservative pundits tuck their testicles back up in their bodies and swear off the Vile Internetz. A lot of these things are not popular on the gunblogging circuit. Yet I have never gotten anything but respect from my fellow gunbloggers.

An armed society is a polite society, perhaps? But that isn't the case really; gun owners get all butthurt about the minutae of their hobby in every gun forum, as any argument over the best charging handle on an AR will demonstrate. We aren't really obliged to "back up his words with his life" on the internetz; no matter how much the market is dying for an iphone app to castrate people through the internet, you remain safe no matter what nonsense or venom you spew online. No one ignores my unpleasant characteristics because they are afraid I'm going to fill them full of 7.62x39s. They do so because these are people who genuinely want to be left the fuck alone and are willing to extend me the same courtesy.

Now for the big question-how far have we fallen as a civillization that this behavior is a novel concept?

Warren Psychology

Hey, ya'll come here to hear about my personal life right? You can't get enough of that shit, you sick little bastards.

Today's lesson is Warren Psychology.

We are in the process of clearing out our storage unit after 8 months of living minimalist in a crappy apartment. The crappy apartment is still the same but now we have more furniture. We are waiting on one roomate to move out tomorrow so we can pile shit up in his room, but for now we just have boxes and shit to the ceiling in the living room with a couple of narrow paths to the TV and weed tray.

This is not an unusual situation for me; back in the day a couple of my homies lived the same way by hoarding hobo chic style mounds of salvageable trash. I learned a little bit about the way humans think when they no longer have the space to turn around. Short answer: it makes them crazier than shithouse rats.

You don't have a place to sit down. You can't find any of your shit. The air has a constant musty smell and every movement kicks up a god awful Grapes of Wrath dust storm around you. You wake up buried in the occasional dirty clothes landslide. All of your towels develop boot prints. Your computer intake fan becomes encrusted with the skin cells of your homies. Just finding a quiet place to jerk off is a quest of Arthurian proportions.

Through all this, we didn't go crazy and our friendships didn't break, so I have high hopes for this occasion. Having Amanda makes a big difference; that girl is a wellspring of practicality and sense in an organization that is, never forget, primarily devoted to building my post TEOTWAWKI empire of madmen and degenerates. She is organized, detail oriented and devoted, so we are making much more progress than I was expecting.

And it feels nice to have most of my books back.

Femslash Friday - Ozma x Dorothy

Today for Femslash Friday, we are going to be dropping science on L. Frank Baum's Oz series. Specifically, sexy femslash science.

You have to dig deep for the canon references, or at least dig up Princess Ozma's Wikipedia Page in order to find this relationship. And I recognize that it is a lot to infer from a throwaway line in one of the later Oz books.

I was delighted to find a long list of Oz Apocrypha during my wikiwander today as well. Apparently some god awful pervert named March Laumer brought it up more explicitly in one of his books; none of the materials I could find detailed which one. Otherwise I'd be on Amazon right now instead of talking to you scum.

Anyway, I can see this one easily. A lonely empress with no peer group in a childless society and an starry eyed young adventurer girl from a Midwest state? Notably, Ozma had already spent her time as a boy during the wizard's puppet regime; her sexual instincts have already been muddled with. I mean, Baum never comes out and addresses the issue; The Magical Land of Oz didn't have Tipperarius wolf whistling at the barmaids or anything like that. But magical gender bending is gonna leave it's mark on the girl by default and it is noteworthy that she never attempts to bring an Emperor in the picture.

And then you have Dorothy. Lost in a strange land, with dreams of a place in Technicolor. I'm not saying she is sexploitation bait but I bet she has the same look in her eye that a lot of hollow eyed girls picked up by pimps at bus stops do. Vulnerable by default, she forges her close bond with Ozma during Ozma of Oz, one of the few Oz books that does not take place in Oz, but rather in the neighboring kingdom of Ev. That was where we established the precedent of Ozma

watching Dorothy back in Kansas using a magic mirror.

Wait, wait, wait, wait....wait. Ozma watching Dorothy through a magic mirror? Sounds a little like voyeurism, doesn't it? Anyway, from the original illustrations, it looks like the hot Blonde Dorothy from Ozma of Oz had a few years to grow up from the chunky lil' thing in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and more to the good, Christ knows I don't need another article I have to tag 'Pedobear'-so I can see how there is definitely something to spy on for Ozma, sitting alone on her gem throne wishing for a similarly aged companion. Sitting alone and burning.

Sometimes it all just comes together for me, y'know? Anyway, pervs, here's some image content for you.

Attention America: #EFAD

You are weapons free (c wot i did thar? FREEEEE) on Operation #EFAD.

Even if we don't see eye to eye politically, we all have the same opinion of free books.

Download Link

Every motherfucker needs to read this book.

Edited to Add: Kindle Reader Apps if you don't have a kindle.

Spider Jerusalem & The 99% Spring

So the media sphere is all atwitter with news of this "99% Spring" thing announced by some UAW and leftist leaders.

Unlike many gunbloggers, I have a lot of leftist friends. It was weird to see them cheering the so called "Arab Spring" revolutions-y'know, those violent mob events where secular governments were overthrown in place of a couple of democratic theocracies. I don't think that is what Occupy wants-in fact it is one of those things they accuse Republicans of wanting, sometimes truthfully. But they don't see it like that; they see the word "Democracy" and their eyes get all misty and their panties get all moist and they go "Yay, pure democracy, the answer to all of our problems!" forgetting what Spider Jerusalem told us about Democracy.

You want to know about voting. I'm here to tell you about voting. Imagine you're locked in a huge underground nightclub filled with sinners, whores, freaks, and unnameable things that rape pit bulls for fun. And you ain't allowed out until you all vote on what you're going to do tonight. YOU like to put your feet up and watch television. THEY like to have sex with normal people using knives, guns, and brand-new sexual organs that you did not know existed. So you vote for television, and everyone else, as far as the eye can see, votes to fuck you with switchblades. That's voting. You're welcome.
-Spider Jerusalem

The Coptic Christians in Egypt are figuring it out.

Dark skinned Libyans are figuring it out.

Are we going to figure it out in time, or are we going to spread our legs for the knife?

"Majority" does not mean "Right." The political far left upholds these "democratic" uprisings as heroic endeavors while ignoring the fact that while they enjoyed popular support, they still suborned the human rights of individuals-and the individuals can't do a fuckin' thing about it, the individuals have submitted to the will of the collective, and all it takes is for one stupid idea to take root in the mob and you are staring genocide in the face. They don't see what they are enabling when they call for a 99% spring...but I do. They want the tyranny of majority, but most mouth breathing jackoffs will simply stampede the way they are herded and that will be over the broken bones of anyone who dissents. After all, they are the 99%, they are an overwhelming majority, and that must mean they are always right.

Naming the Inkeeper: People vs. Encounter Based Gaming

I never can quite write the adventure I am trying to for this pathfinder game.

Since most of my players are old hands at WoD but new to D&D, I sat down at work last night while the calls were slow and banged out a sort of tutorial dungeon and a town that we will be using as a base of operations when we start cracking the big dungeon I am designing. The intro dungeon is just a couple of levels and some giant rats, just an introduction to the kind of things you can expect to encounter in a dungeon so when the PC's go into the Sunken Temple of Fucka-You-Humans (working title) they don't get annihilated in the first corridor.

I put in things that a D&D gamer would expect by default but a WoD gamer would have no clue about so they know how to save against a trap, how to make an attack roll, how to target an area effect spell...it kind of ended up like every tutorial to every first person shooter ever made. And, because at heart I am a wannabe writer, I tried to shoehorn a story into it that goes with the town that I had developed.

The town was just supposed to be a base of operations, but I can't resist creating some local color, from the wisecracking bumpkin mayor to the reclusive cleric in a crumbling temple. I have details about the architecture and history of the town in the dungeon and my players will never care about it; they just want to stomp another monster. I'm not complaining about this; I don't get all butthurt about the "right" way to game and I think people that do are fuckin' stupid. But I'm looking over this adventure and going "Aaaagh, it's just the resupply point and the tutorial dungeon, you don't need these kinds of details!"

But I can't help it, man-for me, gaming is less about the mechanical encounter challenge rating and more about the human interaction element. If I want a carefully patterned, ECL appropriate campaign with five or six limited cut-and-dry options, I'd fire up a console RPG-but I don't, I want the human interaction.

So the grubby little hamlet of Muckshire now has a complete history, some kind of buried sin in the town's past, some interpersonal conflicts, and a diverse cast of townsfolk that is ENTIRELY UNNECESSARY. And I haven't even started the main dungeon yet. I just can't help it-I love people based stories more than nifty collections of traps and monsters.

Hope the PC's don't burn it down in the first scene.

Chivalry in the Age of Internets

One thing I like about the gunblogger community is we treat the gals with some respect.

This thing right here, this whole crazy Smoke & Thunder thing where some dude is either shilling for the Joyce Foundation or viciously trolling his own tribe-has made me realize how prevalent this is. (We also saw this with the whole "Breda Porn" thing) Specifically, the responses of the gunnies to this behavior, which is overflowing with righteous and wrathful snark, make me glad to be a part of this community. Even the scruffy ragged edges of it.

We've gone this long being classier than we have to be. We don't even call ol' Joanie P a cunt very often though if any person deserves this epithet, is it she. However, we don't goddamn tolerate somebody talking rudely to a lady and I think if Mr. Smoke and Thunder said some of the shit he said to a lady in meatspace, he'd probably get his jaw jacked and rightfully so.

Granted, I'm not in the polite sphere of friendly gunbloggers, as evidenced by Mr. Zoomie's hater award. I can call anybody a spunk-spluttering bitch-whore-cunt-zilla on my own blog if I want. But I don't, because I recognize the convention, because I don't want a verbal smackdown, and because I AM A BETTER PERSON THAN SMOKE AND THUNDER.

If you are ego reading this, "Smoke & Thunder Admin" think about that for a minute-the guy who self identifies as Scumfuck is a better person than you. Son, I think if you aren't a troll, you need to take a good look at your own posts and figure out what kind of person you are. Maybe you need to get your mind right before you go all Hollywood nu-media on us, mkay?

After all, an armed society is a polite society, until we hit the internets and then we are all total dicks to each other, right? Google the last part of that quote and you might see why.