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I didn't add much to the story, as I've been at the hospital visiting my daughter, who went into ICU Thursday night with ketoacidosis. She went home this morning. It prompted the only part I've written, and follows:
The band got on stage to start having a good time playing, as playing children always do. Of course, nobody ever really grows up, not even the geriatric. Not inside, anyway. Some people’s souls die, but otherwise there’s a child inside every old codger.
Bill finished up in the pilot room, cursing that damned Mort for dying, and hurrying to the commons. Maybe he could actually catch a show tonight, if that damned phone would shut up and let him be for a while. He sat down next to Mary, who started trying to get the best of him, female style.
Nobody ever really grows up. She pulled out a joint.
Bill wrinkled his already wrinkled old nose. “Excuse me,” he said, and moved to the table Joe was sitting at by himself. After perfunctories, he said “That Mary! I’m glad I’m not Ralph or Jerry. Damned woman was hitting on me. I’m four times her age!”
Joe grinned. “Is that what the company records of your entropy say?”
“No, that’s what the tax collector says, charging me a year’s taxes for a three month run.”
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We’re going to start with a very, very old number called ‘Moondance’.”
Sue started playing her flute.
Harold, as usual, was missing the show, dealing with the various miseries elderly geezers always have most of the time.
“It hurts when I raise my arm like that.”
“Then don’t do that.”
“Ha, Ha.”
“Look, George, gettin’ old ain’t for wimps, you know? You think I don’t have all the aches and pains and heartaches and misery as everybody on the ship?”
“Can’t you give me something?”
“You have arpirin, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but...”
Harold rolled his eyes. “Let me tell you a little ancient medical history. About 1800, not sure the actual year...”
“Krodley! ancient is right. How could it apply today? They didn’t even have electricity, did they?”
“I don’t know, but they made a drug named ‘morphine’ out of a plant that’s now extinct called a poppy. It was kind of like a modern pain diffuser, but if you took too much for too long, you had a physical need for it, so they made strict rules, laws, actually, for its use.
“They developed more and more powerful drugs in that class, but in the twentieth century fascism was born, and was nearly wiped out in a world wide war but the nascent movement started taking hold world wide in the twenty first...”
“They taught us all this is high school!”
“Not all of it, they didn’t. Just about how the entire planet became a fascist dictatorship. Now, the drug industry...”
“The drug what?”
“Believe it or not, producing drugs, actually all aspects of health care were monetized. A diabetic without the means to afford enough medication was doomed to a horrible death by ketoacidosis...”
“You lost me.”
“Their blood turns to acid.”
“They were really that cruel?
“That’s what happens under fascism. Poverty could result in death by torture. But anyway, the opioids, as they were called, were legally only used for [FIXME] pain until the heartless drug dealers, very rich people who made medicines that doctors prescribed, somehow convinced everyone that their drugs could be safely used for [FIXME]. The result was millions of people addicted to the drugs the drug salesmen pushed, dying from overdoses, stealing to support their habits... it was awful. Believe me, you don’t want to go back to that. How about using a diffuser if it hurts that bad?” His instruments told him that George was in less pain than he was.
He shook his head. “I can’t think straight with one of those.”
“Drugs would be worse. Let’s get a beer and listen to some music.”
“It’s Saturday?”
“Well, yeah!”
They walked down, and entered the room as raucous applause was ringing. “Good,” Doc said, “We didn’t miss it!”
Before they reached a table, the applause died, and Bob’s amplified voice said “Thank you! Thank you! You’ve been a great audience, we’ll see you next Saturday!”
“Well, shit.”
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday April 17, @06:41PM (5 children)
Bill hates the smell of weed.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17, @07:40PM (4 children)
"Stoners In Space"
"Cheech and Chong's Way Far-Out Movie"
"Fear and Loathing in Space"
"Friday After Friday In Space"
"Dude, Where's My Spaceship?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17, @07:55PM (1 child)
"In Space, Nobody Can Smell Your Shit [soylentnews.org]"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18, @04:31PM
Dr Benway's Steel as homage to The Corsican Dildo [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 18, @07:30PM
Please Steal This Book
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27, @10:05PM
There it is: "Feels Like Bullshit" [soylentnews.org]. It took some time, but he finally came up with his own book title.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19, @09:09AM (3 children)
Stuff is going down, off page, in the banned journals. Everyone needs to check out https://soylentnews.org/~Legend+of+Aristarchus/ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19, @12:02PM (2 children)
Priceless!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21, @02:20AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21, @02:33PM
Please note that Janrinok likes to hide behind laws yet doxxing in the US is legal, otherwise all the rightwing sites doxxing doctors and professors would get shut down. Janrinok knows this amd has referenced advice from a lawyer as his legal basis for banning aristarchus.
Don't get me wrong, banning a user for doxxing is the expected action; but then again so is banning nazi fucks.
(Score: 1) by nostyle on Wednesday April 19, @02:35PM (6 children)
I have been trolled, but I'll go on the record here.
Let me start by saying that I really don't give much of a hoot about $_Offender or the punishments meted upon him. Nobody longs to see the performances of bad actors.
Still, for many years now, I have pondered the conundrum of how every administration ultimately will adopt its own self-preservation as one of its primary missions and will almost inevitably institute oppressions on whatever enterprise it administers to that end and to the detriment of those who arise to dispute that administration's administrating. It would seem to be a universal phenomenon appearing in governments, religious organizations, corporations, or any other sort of "jinn" [i.e. collective] one might imagine - including non-profit agencies.
Then when a point is reached that the self-preservation efforts transcend some limit of reason and decency, some dissidents are made martyrs by those efforts, and these martyrs portend an ensuing downfall of that administration or its enterprise.
So the question becomes, "How can administration of an organization be configured so as to avoid this core defect?" Certainly, within governments, frequent elections and term limits have the potential to mitigate this effect, and Jefferson's comments, "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing,” and "God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion," are apropos.
Extending this notion into a volunteer-based enterprise, however, has no solution which is obvious to me - hence my continued pondering. I do notice that people tend to leave the party after fights break out.
At the end of the day, I don't have anything to recommend, but I am hopeful that by outlining the issue in this fashion I might inspire some reflection and/or debate among those wiser than me that might help resolve things that crop up here.
--
"I really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree", -Steve Miller Band, The Joker
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19, @05:10PM (1 child)
TL;DR
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19, @05:57PM
THIS! [soylentnews.org] was the tl:dr version.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19, @07:35PM (1 child)
The question is: will we get the universal income, or will we get the next brownshirts who kill off enough "others" that they set society back to where universal income is no longer required?
#1301851 = JoeMerchant (3937)
If it gets that bad there will be blood in the streets, and most of the blood will be the blood of the fascists.
#1302160 = mcgrew (701)
>most of the blood will be the blood of the fascists.
We can hope, and January 6th seems to have confirmed it, but there are days when I wonder...
#1302164 = JoeMerchant (3937)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21, @02:59AM
What's troubling is almost a quarter of our population, those who believe that Adolph Trump can do no wrong, seem to be fine with authoritarianism, and nothing in the constitution says we can deport them to, oh, say, North Korea where they should feel right at home.
#1302169 = mcgrew (701)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 19, @09:52PM
janrinok is showing his hand by down-modding crazy posts in a thread that nobody will ever see. Who is he punishing, who is he presumably saving from viewing that insanity, and what gratification does janrinok feel from all that gratuitous down-modding? It's like some officious mall cop, tapping his nightstick on bedposts, working graveyard shift at a loony bin.
Officer Barbrady aside, I feel like a fool for coming back, to be associated with the rest of the inmates. It wouldn't take much to fix it, but like so many problems today, they haven't finished making things worse. Fiery but mostly in pieces.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 26, @02:33PM
"Leave the party" is the answer. The volunteer-based enterprise loses membership until it ceases to exist. Then the parasites move on.
Have options. Consider all the space stuff that has been talked about in recent weeks - particularly the rivalry between NASA and SpaceX. When NASA was the only game in town, there was no proof that things could be done better. Space was hard and expensive. It really did cost tens of billions of dollars just to create a large launch vehicle, honest. Now though, the SpaceX option shows that was nonsense.
My take that what's going on is social/economic parasitism. Every human organization sooner or later gets tapeworms. When there are alternatives, then the parasitism can only go so far before it fails. I think that's also the reason for oppression and other manifestations of authoritarianism. You can parasite a lot better if you can eliminate the competition, inside or outside the organization. Your food supply is no longer threatened.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21, @02:34AM
I just want to say that I hope McGrew's daughter is alright. Sending positive thoughts, and voting for single payer health care.